Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Couple of Vacations? What I Learned From Our “Last Trips”
We were standing in the airport baggage claim, waiting for our suitcases to slide out, when my husband turned to me and said, “So. Do we start trying when we get home?” I had been waiting for that question for months. I had planned it, actually, in a spreadsheet with the two trips highlighted in green. One long weekend in Mexico, one two-week trip to Japan. After that, I told myself, I would be ready. The bags came down, and I realized I didn’t feel ready at all.
I keep thinking about that moment because it taught me something about the way we make big decisions as parents. We like to draw lines in the sand. We tell ourselves that after the wedding, after the promotion, after the move, after the vacation, we will be prepared. But the lines are mostly imaginary.
The trips themselves were good. Mexico was warm and slow. We ate tacos and fell asleep by the pool. We slept past eight both mornings, which felt like a miracle. I remember lying on the beach and thinking, “This is why we’re doing this.” I wanted to store up the stillness before a baby turned our life upside down. The Japan trip was different. We walked so much my feet hurt, and I kept seeing pregnant women on the train and wondering if that would be me. I found myself checking restroom signs in every station, not because I was pregnant, but because I was imagining what it would feel like to be nauseous in a foreign country. I wasn’t really present. I was rehearsing a future that hadn’t happened yet.
Looking back, I think the vacations were less about vacation and more about control. I wanted a clean line between “before” and “after.” I wanted to be able to say, “This is the last time we’ll ever be able to do this,” and then close the chapter on my own terms. That feeling is very human. But it’s also a little dishonest, because there is never a last time. There’s just a different time. Travel with a baby is harder, but it’s still travel. Travel with a toddler is exhausting, but it’s still travel. And there will always be another reason to wait — another trip to book, another project at work, another season to get through.
The real question isn’t whether you should wait for a vacation. It’s what you’re actually waiting for.
When we finally did get pregnant, our son was nearly three. I had assumed that the age gap would make things easier. He was verbal, potty trained, and seemed excited when we told him a baby was coming. We had taken our “last trips,” we had a stack of picture books about siblings, and I thought we were set. But the first month after his brother was born, he went through a phase where he would only wear his yellow dinosaur shirt. Every morning, if it wasn’t clean, he cried. Not screamed — just a low, tired cry that made me want to cry too. I remember sitting on the floor of his room, holding a baby in one arm and a damp yellow shirt in the other, wondering what all that trip planning was for.
What helped wasn’t something we had packed in a carry-on. It was routine. We kept his drop-off and pickup times the same. We did the same bath sequence, the same two books, the same song. We let him stick his hand into the baby’s bassinet and pat his head while we said, “Gentle, like a bunny.” He gave the baby a rubber duck he had picked out at the store, and every morning he checked that the duck was still there. Those ordinary moments did more than any vacation could have.
I also learned to say something I hadn’t practiced. When he asked, “Does the baby have to eat all the time?” I stopped trying to explain breastfeeding and just said, “Yes, but you and I can still have our pancakes on Saturday.” He needed to hear that his own routines weren’t disappearing. It wasn’t about teaching him to share or be mature. It was about making his world feel small and predictable when everything else felt new.
If you’re asking this question now, I would say this: think about what the vacation is actually for. If you want to sleep in, swim in the ocean, and share one quiet meal with your partner before your body changes — do it. Book the trip. Enjoy it. You don’t need to justify that. But if you’re hoping the vacation will make you feel emotionally prepared for a second child, it probably won’t. No beach is that powerful.
Try to name the specific thing you’re worried about. Are you worried about parenting a toddler while pregnant? About your partner’s ability to help? About money? About losing your identity? Those are real concerns, and they don’t get solved by a plane ticket. They get solved by having a conversation on a normal Tuesday, over mediocre coffee, with a pen and paper. We did that. We made a list of how we would divide night wakings, who would handle school pickup, and what we would do if childcare fell through. It wasn’t romantic. But it was more grounding than watching a sunset in Kyoto.
A few practical things helped us when the baby arrived. We practiced with a doll before the birth — my son wrapped it in a blanket and put it in the bassinet, and I told him, “You’re helping.” We bought a gift “from the baby” and let him unwrap it, which sounds gimmicky but actually worked. We also kept the baby’s first weeks boring on purpose, so our toddler’s routine stayed solid. We didn’t host guests or plan outings. We just let the house be a little messy and let everyone adjust.
I’m not saying we should have skipped the trips. I’m glad we went. Mexico and Japan are still part of our story, and we talk about them more now than I expected. My son points at a photo of us on a bridge in Tokyo and says, “That’s before my brother.” That’s a nice thing for him to know. But I no longer believe those trips made us ready. They made us tired, sunburned, and a little poorer. The readiness came from somewhere else.
Right now, our baby is teething, our toddler is insisting on wearing rain boots in the house, and I haven’t slept through the night in months. We talk about taking the kids to the coast next summer. I don’t know if it’ll happen. I do know I’ll probably second-guess the timing, try to pick the perfect week, worry about nap schedules and car seats, and then go anyway because the alternative is waiting for a perfect window that doesn’t exist.
If you’re standing in an airport right now, asking yourself whether this trip is enough — I understand. Take the trip. Then come home and make your decision. Just don’t expect the luggage carousel to hand you a clean answer. It never did for us. We’re still figuring it out, one ordinary day at a time.
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