Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After My Planned Vacations? What No One Tells You
I was sitting at the kitchen counter last April, folding mismatched gym socks while my sister rambled on FaceTime. The sun was through the window, hitting the pile of baby hand-me-downs my neighbor had dropped off that morning, and my sister’s voice was tight when she got to the point. She and her husband just put a deposit on that two-week trip to Portugal they’d been saving for three years—they’re staying in a tiny guesthouse in the Algarve, doing a wine tour through the Douro Valley, everything booked and paid for. Their fertility consultation last week ended with a nurse asking if they planned to hold off on trying until after they got back, and now every person they’ve asked has a different hot take. “So what do you think?” she said. “Should I wait?”
I knew exactly how that felt. Five years ago, my husband and I were in the exact same spot. We’d just closed on our first little house, the one with the leaky back faucet and the creaky porch swing, and we’d already locked in two big trips: a long weekend in Cabo for my best friend’s bachelorette that June, and a 10-day road trip up the Pacific Northwest that fall to visit my college roommate. When I went in for my pre-conception checkup, my OB brought up timing, and I left the office with a crumpled pros and cons list scribbled on a prescription pad, coffee stain blurring half the lines.
Half the people I talked to said waiting was crazy. “You never know how long it’ll take to get pregnant,” my cousin, who struggled with infertility for two years, told me. “Why put it off for a couple of vacations?” The other half said waiting was the only smart choice. “You’ll never get another trip just the two of you again,” my neighbor, who has three kids under 10, said. “Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.”
We ended up waiting. Six months, just until after both trips were done. I still think about that road trip, driving up the coast with the windows down, stopping at every random fruit stand and lighthouse we saw. We hiked five miles through a rainforest one day, slept in a cramped tent on the coast that night, ate smoked salmon for breakfast and drank pinot noir at tiny wineries every afternoon. If I’d been pregnant even six weeks along when we went, I would have spent half the time overthinking: Is this hike too hard? Is this salmon risky? Am I tired enough that I should call it a day when everyone else wants to keep going? Instead, I just did whatever I wanted. I didn’t have to adjust my plans for anyone, and that’s something I haven’t gotten to do very often in the five years since our son was born.
That doesn’t mean waiting is the right call for everyone, though. My friend Lila didn’t wait, back when she and her husband were planning their first baby. They had a trip to Italy booked, and she got pregnant the first month they started trying. She had pretty brutal morning sickness the first week of the trip, and she skipped the wine tasting she’d been excited about for a year, but she says she wouldn’t change a thing. That trip became her unplanned babymoon, and she has photos of her tiny baby bump in front of the Colosseum that she looks at all the time. “I got to have the trip and the baby, just a little earlier than I planned,” she told me last month over coffee.
After talking through this with more friends than I can count, I’ve landed on a few concrete things to think about, instead of just listening to other people’s opinions. First, check the actual risks of your trip. If you’re traveling somewhere with mosquito-borne illnesses that require medication unsafe for early pregnancy, or you’re planning a big physical activity like a multi-day hike at high altitude that your doctor would recommend you avoid if you’re pregnant, that’s a solid reason to wait. If it’s a long weekend at the lake you visit every year, that’s not a big reason to push back trying—you can go next year, no harm done.
Second, if you’re on the fence, buy travel insurance that covers pregnancy-related cancellations. It’s usually 5 to 10% of your total trip cost, and it means if you get pregnant before your trip and your doctor recommends you don’t go, or you just don’t feel up to traveling, you can get most of your money back. That takes a lot of the financial stress out of the decision, and it lets you start trying earlier if you want to.
Third, factor in your own fertility timeline. If you’re under 30 and have no known fertility issues, waiting six months or a year for a big trip isn’t a big risk for most people. If you’re over 35, or you already know you have issues like PCOS that can make it harder to get pregnant, talk to your doctor about how long a wait is safe for you before you decide. Don’t just put it off on a whim because someone told you to.
Last week, my coworker asked me this same question over lunch. She’s got a trip to Costa Rica booked for October, and she’s been ready to start trying for a baby for months. She told me she’s leaning toward buying the travel insurance and starting trying anyway, no wait. I think that’s a great call, for her. I don’t regret waiting for my trips, and Lila doesn’t regret not waiting. There’s no perfect answer that fits everyone, and whatever you pick, you’ll make it work. Right now, that’s good enough for me.
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