Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After My Vacations? A Parent’s Honest Perspective
The butter chicken takeout containers are still warm on my coffee table, a crumb of garlic naan stuck to the old apple juice stain on my couch, when Lila turns her phone toward me. It’s a photo of us, sunburnt and grinning, on a cliffside in Santorini last month, followed by another of us covered in mud at a hot spring in the Blue Ridge Mountains two weeks ago. “So,” she says, twisting the stem of her wine glass, “should I wait to get pregnant after these? I feel like I’m being selfish for putting it off another six months.”
Her mom has been texting her daily about “ticking biological clocks.” Her fertility influencer cousin posted a reel last week shaming people who “waste their prime childbearing years” on vacations instead of starting their families. Lila’s 34, she and her partner have been talking about kids for a year, and they paid off these two trips with extra overtime last year. They’re just not ready to pull the goalie yet, and she can’t shake the guilt.
I told her what I wish someone had told me five years ago, when I was in her spot. Back then, my husband and I decided we were ready to start trying, and a group of my college friends invited me on a girls’ trip to Belize, six months down the line. I turned it down immediately. I thought if I waited, even six months, I was being selfish, putting my fun ahead of the family we wanted. I got pregnant that first month, but I miscarried at 10 weeks. Then we spent two and a half years trying again. Every time my friends posted photos from that trip, all I could think was I gave that up for nothing. I could’ve been there, drinking cheap rum on the beach, instead of sitting at home peeing on ovulation sticks every morning.
That guilt I felt, that pressure to rush things, it’s everywhere right now. But the thing no one spells out for you is that the “wait” you’re panicking about is almost never as big as it feels. Eighty percent of healthy couples get pregnant within the first year of trying, and most don’t conceive the first month. The average is somewhere between three and six months. If you already have two vacations planned, and you wait until after those to start trying, that’s only going to push a potential due date back by three or four months, max. That’s not going to make any difference long term for most people.
I didn’t tell Lila there was one right answer, but I walked her through the concrete stuff I wish I’d considered back then. First, check your own situation. If you’re under 35, have no known fertility issues, and these are trips you’ve dreamed of for years, waiting six months isn’t going to hurt anything. If you’re over 35, or you already know you have PCOS, endometriosis, or other factors that can affect fertility, you don’t have to commit to waiting a full year for multiple big trips. But you can still go on the two you already planned and paid for. A three month delay isn’t going to tank your chances, and canceling non-refundable trips just for the chance to start a few months early doesn’t make sense for most people.
Second, you don’t have to choose between canceling your trip or delaying trying entirely. If you’re on the fence, keep trying before the trip. If you get pregnant before you leave, call your doctor. Most low-risk pregnancies are totally fine for air travel and most activities up to around 36 weeks. I have a friend who got pregnant two weeks before her two-week safari in South Africa, got cleared by her OB, and came home with the best pregnancy photos I’ve ever seen. If you don’t want to travel pregnant, most travel insurance and resorts will let you reschedule for a fee. You don’t have to throw away thousands of dollars just because you got lucky faster than you expected.
Last week I was at the neighborhood playground pushing my four-year-old son on the swing when I got to talking to Mia, another mom with two kids ages four and six. She and her husband canceled their long-planned Europe trip back in 2018 to start trying, got pregnant two months later, and haven’t had a chance to go since. She doesn’t regret it. They’re booking the trip for next year, when their youngest is old enough to remember the Eiffel Tower, and she says it’ll be more fun going as a family anyway. That works for her. There’s no one-size-fits-all here.
The part that gets me, though, is how we’re taught that wanting time to yourself or time with your partner before kids makes you selfish. I love being a mom. I wouldn’t trade my son for anything. But the truth is, after you have kids, big, carefree trips just the two of you don’t happen very often. We’re lucky if we get one night away a year right now, and that’s totally fine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still wish I’d taken that Belize trip when I had the chance. I’d rather you take the trips and wonder what it would’ve been like to start earlier, than skip the trips and wonder what it would’ve been like to go.
Lila texted me three days after our wine night. She confirmed their November trip to Puerto Vallarta, wrote “start trying: December 1” on her fridge whiteboard, and blocked her mom’s comments on her Instagram. She still panics a little when her aunt asks about baby plans at family dinner, still has nights where she lies awake wondering if she’s making a mistake. But she said at least she won’t be sitting where I was five years ago, scrolling old friend photos and wondering what if.
I’m still saving for that Belize trip, anyway. By the time I go, my son will be old enough to snorkel with me, and it’ll be a totally different trip than the one I skipped. It’ll still be good. Nothing is ever as final as all the online parenting chatter makes it seem.
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