Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? A Parent’s Honest Experience
Last month, I sat across from my friend Lila at our neighborhood coffee shop, watching her stir an oat latte so fast the foam sloshed over the edge onto the paper napkin. She twisted the new engagement ring on her left hand and leaned in, like she was asking a question she’d been too embarrassed to say out loud. “Mia and I are booking a 10-day trip to Portugal this fall and a ski trip to Jackson Hole next January,” she said. “Everyone’s telling us we should start trying for a baby now, not wait. But… should I wait to get pregnant until after we go on these vacations? Is that stupid?”
I immediately thought back to 5 years ago, when I sat in that same booth, asking myself the exact same question. My husband, Jake, and I had just put the final down payment on our 1,100 square foot fixer upper, and every relative we talked to leaned in and said the same thing: “Don’t wait, your fertility doesn’t wait for you.” But we already had a 2-week camping trip to the Rocky Mountains booked that summer, and a destination wedding in Cabo San Lucas the following April. We couldn’t imagine canceling either, but we also couldn’t imagine being pregnant on either.
I ended up with morning sickness so bad I could barely get off the couch for the first 12 weeks when I did finally get pregnant, so I know I would have spent that entire Rockies trip hunched over a picnic table instead of hiking the trails we’d planned. We decided to wait, use the 18 months between the trips to get the house in order, and start trying after we got home from Cabo. We hiked 10 miles a day through pine forests, ate fish tacos and drank cold beer at trailhead parking lots, slept in a leaky tent and laughed when our sleeping bags got soaked during a random thunderstorm. In Cabo, I swam in the ocean at midnight after the wedding reception, drank three margaritas too many, danced barefoot on the sand until 2 a.m., and never once checked my phone to remember when my next prenatal appointment was. I never had to google if the local ceviche was safe for a fetus, or turn down a backcountry ski run because my doctor said it was too risky.
When we got home, we started trying. I was 31 by then, and the fear we’d been pushing down for 18 months bubbled up: what if we waited too long? It took 10 months for me to get pregnant. Some months I cried when the test came back negative, and I wondered if we’d made the wrong choice. If we’d started earlier, we’d already have a baby by now. That fear doesn’t go away easily, I get it.
But the thing no one tells you when you’re weighing this choice is that regret goes both ways, and you can prepare for most outcomes instead of just panicking about the worst case. There are a few concrete things I tell people now when they ask me this question, things I wish someone had told me back then.
First, go to your OB or fertility provider for a pre-conception checkup before you make your decision. Ask them point blank, based on your age, your health history, any known issues like PCOS or irregular cycles, what a safe wait time is for you. For me, I was 29, no known issues, and my doctor told me waiting 18 months was no big deal. If Lila was 37, or had endometriosis that her doctor had already flagged as a potential issue, I’d tell her don’t wait two years for two vacations. That’s not a one size fits all answer, it’s specific to your body. That’s way better than listening to your cousin’s roommate’s story about her friend who waited and never got pregnant.
Second, write down what you actually want out of these vacations, not just the generic “we want to travel before baby” line. When I did this back then, my list wasn’t fancy: I wanted to sleep in until 10 a.m. every day without a baby waking me up. I wanted to hike a 14er without getting winded at the 2 mile mark because I’m carrying extra weight. I wanted to not have to pack a diaper bag, a car seat, and a pack n play just to go to the beach for an hour. That list made it clear how much these trips mattered to me, instead of just going off what everyone else said I should do. If your list just says “we want to say we went to Paris” and you’d be fine going in 3 years with a toddler, then maybe you don’t need to wait. But if you’re craving that time just you and your partner, that’s a real thing that doesn’t just go away once you have a baby.
If you’re still torn, you can split the difference. Do the shorter, closer trip this year, start trying after, and plan the big international trip for when the baby is 1 or 2. You don’t have to choose between two big vacations and starting your family right now if that doesn’t fit. That’s what I would have suggested if Lila’s doctor had said don’t wait 18 months, and it’s a good middle ground for a lot of people.
Lila left the coffee shop that day saying she’d book the pre-conception appointment first, then go from there. Last week she texted me that her doctor said 18 months is totally fine for her, so she booked the trips. I don’t know how it’ll go for her. She might get pregnant two months after she starts trying, or it might take a couple of years. But I know she won’t spend the next 10 years wondering what that trip to Portugal would have been like if she’d put it off.
Last year we took our 3 year old daughter to the beach, and it was wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But I spent the whole week brushing sand out of her diaper, chasing her away from the waves, and never got to sit and read a whole novel on a beach chair like I did in Cabo. That’s okay, that’s what parenting is. But I’m still glad I got that week just for me and Jake, before we became mom and dad. There’s no perfect choice here, but there is a choice that fits you, and that’s enough.
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