Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What I Learned Postponing TTC
Last month I sat across from my best friend Lila at our neighborhood coffee shop, crumbs from our blueberry scones scattered across the table, as she pulled up photos from her and her husband’s recent weekend trip to the mountains. They’d booked a cabin, hiked at dawn, and ate so many s’mores they still felt sick talking about it. When she locked her phone, she pushed her oat latte aside and leaned in. “We’ve been talking about starting to try for a baby next month. But we already had this fall beach trip booked, and a long weekend in New York for my sister’s wedding next spring. Should we wait to get pregnant until after both? My mom says we’re being reckless, that we’ll regret waiting if something goes wrong.”
I told her I’d been exactly where she was, five years ago. My husband and I got married at 27 and 28, and we had two big trips locked in within the first year and a half of marriage: two weeks in Tokyo, which we’d been planning since we started dating, and a two-week trip to Costa Rica for his 30th birthday. All our extended family kept dropping hints about when we’d start having kids, and half the pregnancy groups I’d lurked on online said waiting for vacations was a silly mistake. The other half said you’ll never get alone time again, so take all the trips you can. I had no idea who to believe.
My mom kept bringing up her friend’s daughter, who’d waited a year for a European honeymoon, ended up needing IVF that cost $40k and still didn’t work the first two tries. My OB shrugged when I asked at my annual checkup, said “it’s your call, most healthy women under 35 don’t have issues waiting a year.” We ended up deciding to wait, anyway. I was burnt out from two years of wedding planning and 60-hour work weeks, and the thought of adding morning sickness and prenatal appointments to that pile made me want to cry. We wanted those trips, just the two of us, no diaper bags, no middle of the night wake-ups, no one else to answer to but each other.
We took Japan first, six months after the wedding. I drank warm sake with dinner every night, hiked up a mountain outside Kyoto to see the cherry blossoms, ate raw fish at the Tsukiji market at 7 a.m. without a second thought. Then Costa Rica the next spring, we hiked 10 miles through the rainforest to see a waterfall, spent three straight days laying on the beach reading trashy romance novels, ate so many mangoes we got sick of them. I don’t regret a single day of that. When we got back, I stopped my birth control, got pregnant three months later, and had our daughter nine months after that.
That doesn’t mean waiting is right for everyone, though. I have a cousin who waited two years for three big trips after she got married, started trying at 36, and has spent the last three years going through fertility treatments. A friend of mine got pregnant on her honeymoon, no warning, and she still says it was the best surprise she ever had, even if she spent most of the trip napping in the hotel room. The thing no one tells you when you’re asking this question is that there’s no one right answer, but there are small concrete steps you can take to make the choice that fits you.
First, get a preconception checkup before you decide to wait. That’s not something I did, looking back I wish I had. A quick appointment can catch any red flags—low egg reserve for people over 30, irregular cycles, any underlying conditions that might mean waiting a year isn’t the best call. It takes the guesswork out of the decision, instead of just going off your cousin’s horror story or your friend’s easy pregnancy. Second, if you do decide to wait, put a hard time limit on it. A couple of vacations usually means 6 to 12 months, which is low risk for most people. What gets people into trouble is letting “one more trip” turn into three years of putting it off, because it’s easier to keep planning trips than it is to step into being a parent. Third, if you’re traveling before you start trying, update your travel insurance to cover unexpected pregnancy care just in case you conceive earlier than you planned. It’s a small add-on most of the time, and it saves you from a huge medical bill if you need care out of the country. Fourth, be honest with each other about why you want to wait. If it’s because you want this time together, you’re burnt out and need a break before the big change, that’s a good reason. If you’re just scared and using trips as an excuse to put off trying, that’s a conversation you need to have earlier rather than later.
Lila left the coffee shop that day saying she’d call her OB to book that preconception appointment this week. She and her husband are still planning the fall beach trip, and they’ll start trying after that. For me, five years later, I still don’t know if we made the “right” choice. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we’d started right after the wedding, if we’d have a second kid by now. But I also have those photos of us covered in cherry blossom petals in Kyoto, of us laughing so hard we spilled margaritas on our beach towels in Costa Rica, memories that are just ours, no kid interruptions, no sleep deprivation fogging the edges. Travel with kids is fun, in its own messy way, but it’s not the same as traveling with just your partner before you become parents. I don’t think waiting for a couple of vacations is stupid, and I don’t think it’s always the best call. It’s just a choice, one that works for some people and doesn’t for others. Right now, that’s enough for me.
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