Should I wait to get pregnant after a couple of vacations? What I learned from waiting 3 years
The ketchup was dripping down my 1-year-old’s arm onto the grass when my sister-in-law Lila pulled me aside at last month’s neighborhood BBQ. She twisted a cold seltzer can in her hand, glanced over at her boyfriend flipping burgers on the grill, and leaned in. “Be honest,” she said. “We just got back from Portugal, we’re talking about one more big trip to Costa Rica next spring, then a road trip after that before we start trying. Should I wait to get pregnant after a couple of vacations? Everyone’s telling me I’m crazy for waiting when I’m 28.”
I nodded, wiped ketchup off my jeans, because I’d been exactly where she was. When my husband and I got married at 26, all our relatives leaned in at the reception with the same question: when are you starting a family? We had a list, though: two trips we’d been talking about since we were dating, working extra side jobs to save for. A 10-day backcountry trip through Banff, and a food tour around Tokyo where we’d eat nothing but street food and ramen at 10pm. We decided we’d do both first, then start trying. That meant waiting three years total.
The Banff trip still lives in my phone as a folder of blurry, windblown photos. We hiked 10 miles a day, ate bean and cheese burritos from a mountain gas station that left my stomach hurting for half the trip, slept in a leaky tent when it rained and ended up with sleeping bags so wet we had to hang them over tree branches at dawn. If I’d been pregnant even a few months along, none of that would have happened. We couldn’t have hauled 40-pound packs up that rocky trail, couldn’t have skipped hotels for backcountry camping, couldn’t have laughed off a night of cold, wet sleep like that. Tokyo was the same: we stayed out till 2am drinking warm sake in a tiny alley bar that didn’t open till 8pm, wandered through an art museum for six hours without stopping once for a nap or a snack change, took a last-minute train to Osaka just because we read about their famous takoyaki. No diapers to pack, no bedtime to stick to, no one to entertain but each other.
After we got back from Tokyo, I was 29, we stopped using birth control. I thought it would take a couple of months, max. It took 18 months. That year and a half was full of crumpled negative pregnancy tests, awkward early-morning doctor’s appointments, me crying in a grocery store parking lot after another disappointing result. I’d never had any obvious signs of fertility issues, so no one had ever warned me it could take this long, especially once you hit 30. I started wondering if I’d messed up, if our two nice vacations had cost us our chance at a kid. That stress didn’t go away until that positive test finally showed up, and even then I was on edge for the first three months.
That’s the thing no one tells you when you’re debating waiting, right? It’s not a black and white “wait don’t wait” answer. It comes down to a few concrete things you can check right now, before you book your tickets, that I wish I’d done. First, go get a basic preconception checkup before you lock in your timeline. I didn’t do that. I just assumed everything would work, because I was young and healthy. A 15-minute appointment can tell you if you have any underlying stuff that might make conceiving harder—things like PCOS or endometriosis that a lot of people don’t know they have until they start trying. You can ask your doctor what your personal timeline looks like, based on your health, not just generic stats about fertility after 30. If my doctor had told me back when I was 26 that I’d probably need a little extra time, I would have started trying earlier and squeezed the trips in between appointments, or done one instead of two. That’s a concrete step anyone can do, it takes an afternoon.
Second, be honest about what kind of trips you want to take. If your “couple of vacations” are annual weekend trips to the lake that you can still take once you have kids (even if they look a little different), there’s no reason to wait to start trying. But if these are two big, once-in-a-lifetime trips that you’ll never be able to take the same way again, that’s different. We’ve taken family trips since my daughter was born, they’re fun, but they’re not the same. Last summer we rented a cabin two hours from town, and I spent 70% of the time chasing her away from the fire pit and refolding the clothes she pulled out of her suitcase. I wouldn’t trade that, but it’s not the trip I would have taken before kids. If you know these are the trips you want just you and your partner, that’s a valid reason to wait, as long as you’ve checked the fertility box first.
Third, check your savings. Vacations cost money, and having a kid (especially if you need fertility treatments) costs a lot more. I know a couple who spent all their extra savings on two big European trips, then ended up needing IVF and had to take out a personal loan to cover it. That added a whole layer of stress they didn’t need. We were lucky, we had separate savings for fertility and pregnancy costs, so even though it took longer than we planned, we didn’t have to stress about money. That’s another simple check: make sure you have enough set aside for unexpected baby costs even after you pay for your trips.
I told her all that at the BBQ, and she nodded, twisting her seltzer can again. Grill smoke blew over us, and my daughter started screaming because the squirrel stole her cracker. I went to get her, but we talked about it more later over text. Last week she sent me a screenshot of her doctor’s appointment confirmation for next week, and a screenshot of her Costa Rica hotel booking. She said if the doctor says everything looks good, she’s going. If not, she’ll push the trip back a couple of years.
That feels right to me. I don’t regret my two trips, even with the 18 months of stress trying to conceive. I still pull up that photo of me at the top of that Banff mountain sometimes, wind in my hair, no baby on my hip, and I’m so glad I have that memory. It worked out for us, but it could have gone the other way. The answer isn’t the same for everyone. All you can do is get the facts first, then make the choice that fits you.
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