Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What to Consider Before You Decide
I’m sitting at my sister Lainey’s kitchen table, picking crumbs of sea salt chocolate chip cookie off my notebook, when she tilts her iPhone toward me. The screen glows with photos of her and her husband, Jake, on their recent trip to the Oregon coast: they’re wrapped in flannel, standing on a cliff covered in wild purple lupine, a shipping-container-sized driftwood log behind them. “That was the first one,” she says, swiping to photos from their spring trip to Cabo. “We’ve got the Inca Trail booked for next September. Deposit’s non-refundable. All I keep seeing online is people saying I’m being reckless waiting to start trying. So what would you do?”
I remember five years ago, sitting at my own kitchen table, holding a positive pregnancy test two weeks before we were supposed to leave for Patagonia. My husband and I had saved for two years for that trip, booked the guided hike, put down more than we paid for our first used car. I called my mom, crying, because I didn’t know what to do: cancel the trip and put our lives on hold, or go and be nauseous and tired on a trip I’d dreamed of for a decade. I ended up going. No one could tell I was six weeks pregnant, except for the fact I stopped halfway up every hill to throw up in a bush and ate three times more empanadas than anyone else in our group. I got to see the glaciers glow blue at sunrise, and when I got home, I had a healthy baby boy nine months later. But I still think about that trip sometimes: how much more I would have enjoyed it if I wasn’t exhausted from early pregnancy. Not that I regret the timing, but it was a trade off I didn’t fully see coming.
I’ve watched enough friends go through this decision to know there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. There’s my friend Mia, who waited three years, checked off four big bucket-list vacations, then had trouble getting pregnant, ended up doing two rounds of IVF that drained every spare dollar she’d saved for a down payment. She says if she could go back, she would have started trying earlier, fit the trips in between appointments instead of putting trying off entirely. Then there’s my friend Lexi, who waited a year, did the two cross-continental trips she’d planned since college, got pregnant two months after she got back, and still pulls up those photos when people ask if she regrets waiting. She says she wouldn’t trade those unencumbered weeks for anything, because she knows the next time she hikes a trail that long it’ll be with a 10-year-old who complains the whole way.
What I’ve learned from all this isn’t that you should wait or shouldn’t wait. It’s that most people skip the small, concrete questions that actually help you make the call for your own life. I started listing them out for Lainey right there at her kitchen table.
First, book a 15-minute pre-conception check-in with your OB, and ask one specific question: “Based on my age, my health history, and any fertility issues I already have, how much does waiting 6 or 12 months change my odds of getting pregnant when I do start trying?” Lainey admitted she’d only gotten her info from TikTok, and hadn’t actually asked her own doctor. For Lainey, who’s 32 with mild PCOS that’s well managed with medication, her doctor already told her last year that a one-year wait doesn’t change her odds at all. For someone who’s 38 with irregular cycles, that answer might be totally different. This isn’t about scaring yourself, it’s about gathering facts that actually apply to you, not a stranger online.
Second, be honest about what your vacations actually are, not what Instagram makes them out to be. Lainey’s Inca Trail trip is 10 days of hiking at high altitude, requires a yellow fever vaccine that’s not recommended for pregnant people, and the non-refundable deposit is $2,000. That’s way different than two long weekends camping at a state park two hours from home, which you can reschedule for a $50 change fee. I told her to write down three quick numbers: how much money you’ll lose if you have to cancel, how easy it is to reschedule, and rate 1 to 10 how much it would bother you to go on the trip pregnant and adjust the itinerary (like skipping the hardest hike and resting at base camp instead). That takes the vague “I don’t want to miss my trip” feeling and turns it into something you can actually weigh.
Third, talk through the specific what-ifs with your partner, not just the vague talking points. Don’t just stop at “we want to travel before kids.” Ask each other: If we start trying now and I get pregnant next month, what do we actually do? Are we okay going on the trip and cutting out the hiking, or would we both be gutted to miss this thing we’ve worked so hard for? If we wait a year and it takes us two years to get pregnant after that, are we okay with that timeline? Most people I know just go with what their friends or their mom says is the right call, instead of hashing out what feels right for them.
Lainey leans back in her chair, twists her engagement ring around her finger, and says she’ll book that OB appointment tomorrow. She thinks she’s going to go ahead with the trips, start trying after they get back. But she’s still not 100% sure, and that’s okay. I pack my bag, because my son just texted me that soccer practice ended early and he needs a ride home. On the way out, I grab the last half of Lainey’s cookie.
There’s no perfect answer here. Whatever you decide, there will be a small thing you wish you’d done differently. That’s just how big life decisions go. I got my son when I wanted him, even if I threw up through half my dream trip. She can get her trip, and then get her baby, and that’s okay too. I pull out of the driveway and turn on the radio. No one gets a guarantee that their timing will work out perfectly anyway.
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