Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After a Few Vacations? What I Learned From Choosing to Wait
The coffee ring on my kitchen table was still damp when my friend’s text popped up yesterday, right as I was sorting through printed photos from my husband and my pre-baby trips. “We’ve got two big vacations booked for this year,” it read. “Everyone’s got an opinion—some say hold off on trying for a baby until after, some say don’t wait a single minute. What would you do?”
Five years ago, I sat in that same chair, staring at the same wall calendar, asking myself the exact same question. We were 28, had been married two years, and every family dinner ended with my aunt leaning across the table asking when we’d give her a grandniece. We’d had a cross-country U.S. road trip on our bucket list since we were broke college students dating in a dorm, and a college friend had just invited us to her destination wedding in Phuket. If we started trying that month, odds were good I’d be pregnant for at least one of the trips. If we waited 12 months until after both, we’d have the trips we’d dreamed of for years, but what if it took longer than we planned to get pregnant?
We ended up booking the trips, pushed off trying, and I still remember every messy, unplanned part of them. We slept in the back of our dented 2008 Forester for the road trip, paid $20 a night for campground showers, ate gas station bean and cheese burritos for lunch three days running, and hiked the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail at 5 a.m. to beat the heat. In Phuket, we stayed in a $40-a-night beach bungalow with no hot water, went scuba diving three times a week, and stayed up until 1 a.m. drinking cheap mojitos with our friends, no bedtime, no schedule, no one to answer to but each other.
We got home, stopped preventing pregnancy, and it took 10 months for me to get pregnant. That 10 months was stressful; I cried more than once when my period showed up, wondering if we’d made the wrong choice. When I finally got that positive test, I was relieved, but I also couldn’t stop circling back to the what ifs. When I was eight months pregnant, sitting on our couch with a bad back and constant heartburn, scrolling through those photos, I was still so glad we went when we did. I knew if I’d been pregnant on those trips, I wouldn’t have done half the things we did, and I would have always wondered what it would have been like.
I have a neighbor my age, though, who waited two years for two big international trips. She’s 32, has PCOS, and it’s been four years and she still hasn’t gotten pregnant. She told me once she thinks about that choice all the time, that she wishes she’d started trying earlier and just adjusted the trips instead of putting off trying entirely. That’s the thing no one tells you when you’re asking this question: there’s no perfect answer, but there are concrete things you can do to figure out what’s right for you, instead of just scrolling TikTok or listening to your cousin’s unsolicited take.
First, start with the medical basics. Pull up the CDC travel health page for the places you’re going. If you’re traveling to an area with malaria, Zika, or other conditions that OBs recommend waiting a few months after exposure before trying, that’s a non-negotiable, not a preference. If that’s the case, you’re already waiting anyway, so that answers that part. If there’s no medical recommendation to wait, then you get to decide based on what matters to you.
Second, sit down and write two quick, one-page lists. No overthinking. First list: What would actually change if you got pregnant before the trips? Not the scary stories your friend told you, the actual stuff for your specific trips. For me, that was no scuba diving, no unpasteurized goat cheese in the mountain towns we were stopping at, no 8-mile hikes, no overnight boat trip that didn’t have accessible bathroom access. Second list: What’s the actual worst case if you wait? For me, that was it taking two years to get pregnant, me being 29 instead of 28 when I had my first, and that felt manageable to me. For my neighbor with PCOS, her worst case was needing IVF and being too old for it to be covered by her insurance, and that’s what actually ended up happening. Writing it down makes it less scary, because you stop worrying about vague “what ifs” and start looking at actual facts that apply to you.
Third, if you’re over 35 or you know you have a pre-existing condition that affects fertility, call your OB and ask this question directly. Most will tell you that waiting 6 months for one trip isn’t a big deal, but waiting two years for two trips might be something you want to adjust. You can always do one trip this year, start trying, and do the second trip as a babymoon instead of a pre-baby trip. That’s a middle ground most people don’t stop to consider.
I texted my friend back yesterday, told her about the lists, told her to check the CDC site, told her to call her OB if she’s got any fertility worries. I didn’t tell her what to choose, because I know it’s her call. I taped that muddy waterfall photo from Costa Rica into my scrapbook, right next to the photo of my three year old covered in ice cream last weekend. My kid points to the waterfall photo every time she sees it and says “That was before me, right?” and I say “Yep, that was our adventure before we had our favorite adventure.” I still don’t know if we made the “right” choice for every person, but I know we made the choice that was right for us, and that’s all any of us can do. Right now, my friend is still thinking it over, and that’s okay too.
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