Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What I Learned From My Own Unplanned Timing
I’m sitting across from my friend Lila at our usual neighborhood coffee shop, her oat latte sweating through the paper sleeve onto the table, a hand-woven blue bracelet from her recent Portugal trip twisted around her wrist. My 4-year-old is at the next chair, coloring a picture of a unicorn and dropping blueberry muffin crumbs all over my tote bag. Lila just traced the rim of her cup with her finger and asked the question she’s been turning over for six months: “Should I wait to get pregnant after the couple of vacations we wanted to take? Everyone says to do all the travel first, but I’m scared waiting will mess things up later.”
I get it. Five years ago, I was sitting in that exact same spot, asking myself the same question. My husband and I had checked off two big trips we’d dreamed of for years: a two-week hike in Costa Rica, a two-week road trip around the Pacific Northwest. I had Iceland next on the list, and I insisted we wait until after we went to start trying. No kids tying us down, no schedules to work around, right? Then a month before we were supposed to book, I took a test on a random Tuesday because I was a week late, and it was positive. I cried for an hour in our bathroom, because I thought I’d ruined my big chance. I thought I’d never get a trip alone with my husband again, that I’d spend the rest of my life regretting not waiting.
What I didn’t expect then was that I’d still get that Iceland trip. I didn’t get it before the baby, sure. I had my first trimester on a last-minute weekend trip to the Smoky Mountains instead, eating gas station chips and napping in the car. When my daughter turned two, my mom offered to watch her for four long days. We booked that Iceland trip last minute, got a cheap rental car, drove around the ring road, slept in, didn’t pack a single sippy cup or pack of wipes. It was amazing. And it was even better than it would have been five years earlier, because we’d spent two years in the thick of toddlerhood, and we really appreciated that quiet.
Lila says she gets flooded with Instagram reels that say “travel while you can, once you have kids you’ll never get to do anything fun again.” Her cousin waited 10 years to check off all her dream trips, and now she’s 38 doing IVF and wishing she’d started sooner. Her old college roommate had a baby at 27, never got to do any big trips, and complains about it every time they get together. So Lila’s stuck between two worst-case scenarios, and no one will give her a straight answer.
The thing no one says out loud is that the whole “do all your travel before kids” rule is a pretty new idea. It assumes parenthood is a hard stop on all fun, on all travel, that any trip with kids is a nightmare, and any trip you take after kids is never going to live up. That’s just not true. I’ve taken my daughter to the Outer Banks for a week, we’ve driven to Chicago to visit my sister, it’s different. We don’t spend three hours wandering an art museum or sit at a sidewalk cafe for two hours drinking wine. But we build lopsided sandcastles and eat too much saltwater taffy, and it’s still a vacation. It’s just a different kind.
When Lila asked me what I’d do if I were her, I didn’t give her that useless “follow your heart” advice people love to hand out. I told her three specific, small things she could do this month to stop spinning her wheels. First, write down only the trips you’d actually regret missing if you got pregnant tomorrow. Cross off any that are just on a “before baby bucket list” you saw online. When I did this five years ago, I realized only Iceland actually mattered to me — the other six trips I’d written down were just things I saw people post about, not things I actually cared that much about doing before kids. Second, if your list is one or two trips you can do in the next 12 months, go do them. If it’s a big trip that will take two more years to save for and schedule, see if you can shift it. You can go as a babymoon in your second trimester, when most doctors say it’s safe to travel. Or you can plan it for when your baby is a year old, and bring a family member to watch them for a couple of days while you get your alone time. Third, if you’re over 30 or worried about fertility at all, go get a basic checkup now. Most OBs will do a simple blood test to check your ovarian reserve, and talk to you about your timeline. That way you’re not guessing about how much time you actually have, you’re making a decision based on facts, not social media anxiety.
Lila left the coffee shop that day with a crumpled napkin with those three steps scribbled on the back. Last week she texted me: she booked her Thailand trip for next spring, she has her OB appointment next week. If everything looks good, she’ll start trying when she gets back. If not, she’ll move the trip to 2025, and go after the baby comes. It’s not a perfect plan, and there’s no guarantee it will work out the way she wants. There’s no perfect time to have a baby, no matter how many vacations you check off your list.
I still haven’t been to Italy, still haven’t hiked the Inca Trail, those things are still on my list. Maybe I’ll go when my daughter is old enough to hike it with me, maybe I’ll go when she’s in college and I have an empty house. There’s no rule that says all the fun travel has to happen before you have kids. It just has to happen, sometime.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations