Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? A Real Parent’s Perspective
Last Tuesday, my friend Lila showed up at my door at 10 a.m., still caked in trail dust from her morning hike, carrying a crumpled ovulation calendar printout and a half-eaten salted caramel granola bar from the gas station. She dropped both on my kitchen table next to my lukewarm coffee and the half-finished puzzle my 3-year-old had abandoned that morning, and said, “Okay, be totally honest. Should we wait to get pregnant so we can take the two trips we’ve had booked for a year?”
I immediately recognized the tension, because I sat in that exact same spot five years ago, same table, same iced coffee pitcher in the fridge, same question bouncing around my head. My husband and I had just paid off our last student loan, we’d booked a two-week trip to Portugal that we’d been daydreaming about since our first date, and a 10-day road trip through the Rockies that we’d planned with another couple. All our friends and family had opinions: My mom kept dropping hints about my “biological clock,” my cousin who’d had her first kid at 24 said we were crazy to wait, that you “never know how long it’ll take,” and my sister-in-law, who traveled through Europe with a 1-year-old, said we were being ridiculous for putting life on hold for a couple of beaches.
We ended up waiting 18 months, took both trips, started trying when we got back, and now we have that wild 3-year-old who leaves puzzles half-finished all over the house. It hasn’t been the perfect story anyone promises — we had a miscarriage six months into trying, and there were days I sat on the couch crying, wondering if we’d messed everything up by waiting. But even on those hard days, I never regretted the choice we made.
What most people don’t talk about when they’re giving you this advice is that this question isn’t really about vacations, it’s about what you value right now, and how to balance that with the fear of what might go wrong later. Lila told me her two trips are a cherry blossom tour of Japan she’s been planning since she and her husband dated in college, and a week in an Alaskan cabin where his grandpa used to take him fishing before he died. They saved for both for two years, working extra side gigs to pay for them, and they don’t want to go if she’s 7 months pregnant and too tired to hike to the fishing spot, or if they’re juggling a teething 1-year-old who won’t sleep anywhere but his own crib. That’s not being selfish, that’s honoring something that mattered to you before kid-shaped plans took over your life.
I told her about my Portugal trip: I spent a whole afternoon sitting in a tiny bookstore in Alfama, just flipping through old travel books and drinking espresso, no one asking me for goldfish crackers or needing me to wipe their butt. My husband and I stayed out till 1 a.m. one night, sitting on a seawall drinking cheap white wine, talking about nothing important, just watching the waves. I would never have traded that afternoon, that whole trip, for anything. When we had that miscarriage a few months later, those memories were what got me through the worst weeks. I didn’t sit around wondering what if we’d gone sooner, what if I never got to have that time. I already had it.
But that doesn’t mean waiting is the right choice for everyone. My friend Mia got pregnant unexpectedly three months before her big trip to Italy, and she went anyway. She posted photos of her 6-month pregnant belly in front of the Colosseum, ate all the pasta and gelato she could, took naps every afternoon in her Airbnb, and says it’s still one of her favorite trips. She never regretted not waiting, and she’s got the photos to prove it. The difference is, she didn’t have her heart set on a trip that required her to be active, or that was tied to a specific once-in-a-lifetime timing (like cherry blossom season, or a family cabin that’s being sold next year).
When people ask me what they should do, I don’t give them the vague “follow your heart” line. I tell them three concrete things to do this week that will help you figure it out, no overthinking required. First, grab a napkin and write down your top two reasons for waiting, and your top two fears about waiting. That’s it, no fancy journal, just a quick list. Lila wrote hers on my paper napkin right there at the table: Reasons were 1) We planned these trips before kids, saved for them, don’t want to waste the dream. 2) We work 50-hour weeks, haven’t had a full week off together in two years, we need to remember how to be us before we’re mom and dad. Fears were 1) What if I can’t get pregnant after waiting? 2) What if everyone judges us for putting trips first.
Second, if your biggest fear is fertility, call your OB and schedule a 30-minute baseline check. It’s just a couple of blood tests and an ultrasound to check your ovarian reserve, and it gives you actual facts instead of the scary anecdotes you see on TikTok. It won’t answer everything, but it’s way better than guessing. Third, for the judgment part: just stop talking about your timeline with people who don’t get it. When my aunt started leaving passive aggressive comments on my Instagram about “waiting too long,” I just started replying “We’re doing what works for us” and changed the subject. I didn’t owe her a breakdown of our plans or our fertility.
Lila left my house that afternoon with the napkin folded in her jacket pocket, and said she’d call the OB first thing the next morning. Last I heard, they’re going ahead with the trips, and they’ll start trying two months after they get home. I don’t know how it’ll go. They might get pregnant right away, they might struggle with fertility, they might look back in 10 years and wish they’d started sooner. But that’s the thing about all big choices before you even have the kid: there’s no perfect answer. All you can do is get the facts you need, ignore the noise, and pick the choice that doesn’t leave you wondering “what if” later.
I still have that photo of my husband and I on that Portuguese beach, sunburnt, covered in sand, no diaper bag, no sippy cup, just us. I pull it up sometimes when I’m waiting out a 3-year-old’s tantrum in the grocery store. I don’t regret a single day we waited. That’s enough, for me.
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