Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What No One Tells You
Last month, I was wiping tomato sauce off my 3-year-old’s high chair tray when my best friend Lila texted me the question that’s been bouncing around her friend group chat for weeks: Should we wait to get pregnant after we do our two big planned vacations this year? Lila and her husband have been talking about starting a family for over a year, booked a two-week Portugal trip six months out, then a long weekend to visit her older sister in Hawaii next spring. Everyone’s got an opinion: her OB says if she’s healthy and under 35, the choice is hers, her mom warns fertility doesn’t wait, her cousin with two toddlers under 5 says don’t even start trying until you’re back, you’ll never get time alone like that again. I sat there, wiping crumbs off the table, and I remembered being right where she was.
Back when my husband and I decided we wanted to start a family, we already had a two-week trip to Japan booked for 8 months later, then a 10-day road trip around the Canadian Rockies planned for after that. My mom called every other week to remind me my cousin had tried for three years before getting pregnant, why push it? My sister, who had a baby two years earlier, said if we didn’t go now, we’d always regret the trip we never got to take the way we wanted it. I cried over coffee one morning because I felt like whatever I chose would be wrong.
We ended up waiting. We held off on trying until we got back from both trips. We ate late-night ramen at hole-in-the-wall shops in Tokyo, walked 10 miles a day between temples without stopping for snacks or nap breaks, got drunk on cheap sake in a basement bar and stumbled back to our hotel at midnight. On the road trip, we camped in a tiny two-person tent, changed our itinerary last minute because we saw a trail sign for an alpine lake we wanted to explore, stayed up until 1am stargazing because we didn’t have to wake up for anyone. When we got home, we started trying, and got pregnant on the third try.
I have a friend, Sarah, who made the same choice 5 years ago. She and her husband waited to start trying until after their two big planned vacations, one to Costa Rica and one to a family reunion in Scotland. After that, it took them four years of IVF and multiple miscarriages before they had their first baby. She still says she wishes she hadn’t waited. But when I talked to her about it last week, she also said those two trips gave them memories that got them through the hardest parts of treatment. They wouldn’t have had that slow, unplanned time together if they’d jumped straight into fertility appointments.
The thing no one tells you when you ask this question is that it’s not really about fertility or travel or even timing. It’s about whether you can give yourself permission to prioritize what matters to you, instead of what other people say should matter. Most of the advice you get boils down to what worked for that person, not what will work for you. There are a few concrete things you can work through to make the call, though, that don’t involve scrolling through TikTok comments for 3 hours.
First, write down three things in your notes app: how much non-refundable money you already have sunk into the trips, if either trip is something you can’t reschedule or redo later, and what your personal fertility risk factors are. If you’ve already dropped $4,000 on non-refundable flights and lodging for a trip you’ve been saving for since college, you’re under 35, and you have no known fertility issues, waiting 6 to 12 months is rarely a big gamble. If you’re over 35, you’ve already had trouble conceiving in the past, or the trips are just two weekend getaways you can book any time, then don’t wait. It’s that straightforward. You don’t have to overthink it.
Another thing to remember: if you get pregnant before your trip, it’s not automatically a disaster, but it can change every part of your plans. I’ve had three friends who lost thousands of dollars on non-refundable trips because they got pregnant right before departure, had crippling first-trimester nausea, and couldn’t get on a plane. Another couple I know planned a big safari trip for their babymoon, ended up going when the wife was 32 weeks pregnant, and her doctor wouldn’t clear her for the internal flight to the reserve, so they just sat at a hotel in Johannesburg for a week. It’s okay to admit you don’t want to risk that, especially if it’s a trip you’ve planned for years.
You also don’t have to do all or nothing. If you’re truly on the fence, you can start tracking your cycle, keep trying up to a month before your first departure, and if you don’t get pregnant by then, you can pause until you’re back. That way you don’t feel like you’re actively delaying anything, but you don’t risk losing your trip either.
Last I heard, Lila and her husband decided to wait. She just sent me a photo from Lisbon last week, grinning covered in powdered sugar over a pasteis de nata, at 11pm at night. No one was pulling on her arm asking for a bite or needing to go home to bed. I texted her back that it looked perfect, and it was. There’s no guarantee you’ll make the right call, no way to know what the future holds. For now, that’s enough.
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