Should I Wait to Get Pregnant After Taking a Couple of Vacations? What I Learned
I’m wiping crusted salt off my stainless steel water bottle on our back porch, the dented blue cooler from last weekend’s beach trip still dripping condensation onto the wooden step. My phone buzzes again, another comment on the Instagram carousel I posted of our spring trip to Lisbon: “Why rush? Enjoy one more big couple’s trip before babies trap you! Wait another year.”
I’ve been here before. Five years ago, when my husband and I first started talking about having our first kid, every aunt, every coworker, every random mom in the grocery store checkout line told us the same thing: check all your dream trips off the list now, because once you have a baby, it’s all road trips to grandma’s and crowded Disney World days until they leave for college. So we did. We postponed trying for three years. We took a two-week trip to Japan, a 10-day trek in Peru, a long weekend in New Orleans for our anniversary. Every time we finished one, another friend posted photos from a safari, another dream popped into my head, and we pushed the trying date back again.
When we finally went off birth control, it took 18 months to get pregnant. By the time Lila was born, I was 34, and I spent half my third pregnancy worrying that if we wanted a second, we’d waited too long.
After Lila turned two, we tested the “no more couple trips” myth. My mom offered to watch Lila for a week for free, we saved up the same amount we would have spent before she was born, and we went to the Outer Banks for our anniversary. It wasn’t the lazy, sleep-in-till-10 trip we took to the same place before we had her. I checked my phone every hour for photos from my mom, I cried when Lila refused to say goodnight to me over FaceTime, but we still got to sit on the beach at sunset and drink cold beer and talk about something that wasn’t diaper rash or daycare waitlists. It worked. That trip changed how I thought about waiting for vacations before having kids.
When we started talking about baby 2 earlier this year, my sister-in-law suggested we squeeze in a couple more trips before we started trying. That’s what we did: one week in Lisbon, one weekend beach trip with friends, and now we’re parked here, ready to start. But the comments keep rolling in: why not wait longer? Why not do that Iceland trip you’ve been talking about?
The first thing I’ve realized that no one talks about is that the “one last trip” can turn into an endless loop. There’s always another place you want to see, another trip that feels like the final one you need to take before your life changes. When we were waiting the first time, I thought once I did Japan I’d be ready. Then after Japan, I thought I needed to do Peru too. If I’d listened to that voice, I’d still be waiting, and I’d never have Lila.
The concrete step that helped me decide was that instead of checking every trip off my list before getting pregnant, I just scheduled the one I want most for after. I texted my mom last month and asked if she’d watch Lila and the new baby for four days when the baby turns 10 months old, and she said yes. We put $50 a month into a separate savings account for that Iceland trip. It’s not going to happen before I get pregnant, but it’s going to happen. A lot of people act like once you’re pregnant, you’ll never get another couple’s vacation again. But the truth is, most of us have people we trust who will watch our kids for a few days, even when they’re little. You can trade a weekend of childcare with a couple friend for your own weekend away, you can save up for a reputable overnight sitter for a couple nights, you can ask a family member. It doesn’t have to be a big expensive international trip every time, but you can still get time away together after you have kids.
Another thing I tell friends who ask me this same question: if you have any concerns about fertility at all, go book a quick pre-conception appointment with your OB before you decide to wait another year or two. I did that this time around, and my doctor told me that based on my history, there’s no reason to delay, but that waiting another year wouldn’t hurt either. That concrete information helped me make the choice that felt right for me, instead of just going off what random people on the internet or well-meaning relatives say.
Right now, Lila runs back through the porch, grabs a handful of grapes from the bowl on the table, and asks when we’re going to get ice cream after dinner. I wipe the popsicle juice off her cheek, and she’s gone again, chasing our tabby cat across the lawn. I look at the comments on my post again, and I don’t bother replying to most of them.
Some days I still wonder if we should have squeezed Iceland in first. Some days I worry that once we have two kids under five, we’ll never get that quiet sunset on the beach again. But I also remember what it was like waiting the first time, the low-level stress of pushing back something we really wanted just to check more boxes off a travel list. We’ve had our two nice vacations, we’ve got our next trip already planned for after the baby comes, and that’s enough for us right now.
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