Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? Honest Practical Advice
The Nutella crepe in front of Lila was half-eaten, edges gone soggy from the extra maple syrup she’d drizzled over the top, when she leaned across the wobbly brunch table and asked it: “Should I wait to get pregnant after having a couple of vacations?”
Lila and her partner have been ready to start a family for a while, but they locked in a two-week food trip to Portugal next spring and a long weekend backpacking in the Smokies this fall six months ago. Everyone they know has an opinion: her sister says she’s crazy to delay starting just for trips, since “you can travel any time with kids,” while her mom insists she’ll regret it forever if she doesn’t go now, before sleepless nights and stroller parking take over. Lila’s 31, her doctor says there’s no medical reason she can’t wait a year, but she can’t stop second-guessing herself.
I get it. I’ve sat on both sides of this question. Six years ago, my husband and I wrapped up our big pre-baby trip to Japan, the one we’d saved for over a year to take, and everyone told us we’d better knock out one more small trip before we started trying. So we waited six months to book that long weekend at the Oregon coast we’d been talking about, then started trying afterward. It took 18 months for me to get pregnant, and by that point, the money we’d saved for that coast trip was gone to fertility co-pays, and we never took it before our son was born. My cousin, on the other hand, waited four years for three big pre-baby trips she’d dreamed of since college: a section hike of the Appalachian Trail, a road trip around Iceland, a month-long backpack through Southeast Asia. She got pregnant first try when they started trying, had a healthy baby, and still talks about how grateful she is she got to have those experiences exactly the way she wanted them, no car seats or nap schedules to work around.
There’s so much noise around this question that it’s easy to lose sight of the small, concrete things that actually matter, instead of the generic “go now” or “don’t wait” takes everyone spits out. After seeing both sides, I’ve found it’s less about the decision itself and more about asking yourself a few specific questions that most people don’t bring up.
First, I asked Lila how much of her trips were non-refundable. She’d put down a 20% deposit on the Lisbon apartment and bought plane tickets that allowed free changes up to two weeks before departure, so if she got pregnant earlier than planned, she could reschedule without losing thousands of dollars. That’s a low-stakes risk. If she’d put down a non-refundable $5,000 for a private safari that couldn’t be changed, that would be a different calculation, but it’s also a different situation than just waiting for the fun of it. I also told her to be honest about what kind of trips these are. If she wanted to go to an all-inclusive beach resort that could easily accommodate a baby, waiting wouldn’t make much sense. But her Portugal trip is all 8-mile coastal walks, stopping at tiny tapas bars that don’t have high chairs, and staying in a 200-year-old cottage with no extra space for a crib. That’s not a trip you can just adapt for a baby, and that’s a totally valid reason to want to take it before you start trying.
Next, I asked if she had any reason to think conceiving might take longer than average. She doesn’t have any known fertility issues, her periods are regular, and she’s under 35, so waiting a year isn’t a big risk for her. For me, I had no red flags either, but it still took longer than we expected, and I’ve talked to enough other women to know that’s common. If you’re over 35, or you’ve been diagnosed with PCOS, endometriosis, or any other condition that can affect fertility, the practical move is to book a pre-conception checkup with your OB before you decide how long to wait. Ask them what timeline makes sense for your specific body, don’t just go off what your friend did.
The last thing I told her was don’t wait just because everyone says you should. I’ve seen so many women put off starting their family for a pre-baby vacation they didn’t even really want, just because social media is full of glowing pre-baby European babymoons. If you don’t care that much about the trips, and you’re ready to start trying now, don’t delay just to check a box. But if you’ve been dreaming of these trips for years, and you know you’ll wonder “what if” for a long time if you don’t go, that’s a good enough reason to wait.
Lila ended up deciding to keep her trips, and wait until after both to start trying. She said if she gets pregnant accidentally before, she’ll just reschedule, no big deal. I left brunch, stopped at the grocery store for milk on the way home, and walked in to find my 4-year-old drawing on the entryway wall with a blue crayon I thought I’d thrown away. That night, I pulled up our old Japan photos on my laptop, and I’m still glad we got that trip, just the two of us, before the chaos of parenthood started. I do wish we’d started trying right after we got back, instead of waiting six months for that coast trip we never took, but we went last summer with our son, built lopsided sandcastles, ate too much fried shrimp, and it was a great trip, just different.
There’s no perfect answer here. Some people get everything they planned, some people adjust, and most of the time it works out either way. Right now, Lila’s marking pasteis de nata spots on her Google map, and she’s happy with her choice. We’ll see how it goes.
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