Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? A Real Parent’s Perspective
The salt air was sticking to my iced margarita glass, and my phone buzzed against the wicker table of our Cabo balcony last fall. Lila, my college roommate who’d been mapping out a pregnancy timeline for six months, typed: We just booked a second European river cruise next fall. Should I wait to get pregnant after these two vacations? Everyone says we’re being selfish.
I laughed into my drink, because I’d been in that exact spot five years earlier. My husband and I had just decided to put off trying to conceive for 12 months so we could check two big trips off our list: a backcountry camping trip in Banff we’d planned since our wedding day, and a long weekend in New Orleans for my best friend’s 30th birthday. The unsolicited opinions rolled in fast. My aunt pulled me aside at a family barbecue to remind me “fertility doesn’t wait.” The moms in my neighborhood Facebook group had a thread a week earlier calling women who delayed pregnancy for travel “irresponsible.” I laid awake some nights folding baby hand-me-downs a friend had given me, wondering if I was making a huge mistake.
We went anyway. Banff meant 10-mile daily hikes, campfire hot dogs that were slightly burnt, and a tent that leaked halfway through the trip when a surprise rainstorm rolled through. I didn’t have to pause every 20 minutes to accommodate morning sickness, or strap a toddler to my back, or cut the hike short because someone needed a nap. New Orleans meant dancing until 2 a.m. on Bourbon Street, beignets for breakfast at 10 a.m. while hungover, and no need to beg a stranger to watch our stuff so one of us could run to the bathroom with a kid. When we got home, we started trying, and I got pregnant on the third try. My son is four now, and we haven’t had a trip that unstructured since.
But that’s just my story. I have a friend who waited two years for a round-the-world trip, turned 38 while she was gone, and ended up needing three rounds of IVF to get pregnant. She still says the trip was worth it, but she also says she wishes she’d checked in with a fertility doctor before she left to understand her risks. I have another friend who skipped her dream trip to Japan to start trying, got pregnant right away, and still thinks about that trip every time she sees a sushi commercial on TV. She can’t see herself rescheduling it for at least another six years, when both her kids are old enough to handle long flights and jet lag.
That’s the thing no one tells you when you’re asking this question: there’s no universal right answer, but there are concrete things you can do to figure out what’s right for you, instead of listening to strangers judge you on the internet.
First, pull out a notebook and write down two things about each of your planned trips: what about this trip can’t you do later, and how long would you have to wait to do it if you get pregnant now. For example, my Banff trip required 30-pound packs and 10 miles of hiking a day—something I couldn’t do pregnant, and can’t do now with a four-year-old who can barely make it two miles before asking to be carried. It would have been at least 10 years before we could have done that exact trip, if ever. If your trips are all-inclusive beach vacations where you can lounge by the pool pregnant or bring a toddler along, you don’t need to wait. If they’re multi-day treks or trips to countries with health risks that make them off-limits for pregnant people and infants, and you can’t reschedule for five years or more, that’s a solid point in favor of waiting.
Second, book a 20-minute check-in with your OB-GYN or fertility provider before you decide. Don’t rely on generic internet stats or your aunt’s cousin’s story. If you’re under 35 and have no known fertility issues, waiting 6 to 18 months for a couple of trips doesn’t meaningfully change your odds of conceiving, according to most clinicians I’ve talked to. If you’re over 35 or have pre-existing conditions that impact fertility, your doctor can help you weigh the risk of waiting against the regret of skipping your trips. For people who can afford it, you can also do a simple ovarian reserve test to get a clearer picture of your timeline, which takes a lot of the guesswork out.
There’s no shame in prioritizing these trips, either. People love to call delaying pregnancy for travel selfish, but before you have kids, you get a very small window of time where you and your partner are just you two, no other responsibilities pulling you in a dozen directions. Those memories don’t disappear once you have kids—they become the thing you fall back on when you’re exhausted from bedtime battles and doctor’s appointments and all the hard parts of new parenthood.
I’ve had people ask me if I regretted the 12-month wait, if I wish I’d had my son sooner. I don’t. I love that we have those two trips that are just ours, that we can still joke about the leaking tent and the beignet crumbs all over our hotel bed when we’re having a hard week. If I’d gotten pregnant when we first planned, those memories would never exist.
When I wrote back to Lila, I didn’t tell her what to do. I told her to make that list of regrets: what will you regret if you wait, and what will you regret if you don’t. She texted me a week later saying she’d talked to her doctor, made her list, and they decided to keep the cruises and start trying after the second one. Last month, she posted photos of herself hiking along the Danube, a glass of local wine in her hand, no kid strapped to her chest, no morning sickness slowing her down. I don’t know what will happen a year from now, when she starts trying. She might get pregnant right away, or she might struggle. But for right now, she doesn’t have that quiet “what if” hanging over her, and that’s enough.
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