Should I Wait to Get Pregnant Until After a Couple of Vacations? A Parent’s Honest Perspective
The salt was still crusted on my calves last month as I sat cross-legged on a lumpy Puerto Vallarta Airbnb couch, listening to my best friend Mia stir her third margarita and say the thing she and her partner have circled for six months. “We keep pushing trying to get pregnant back,” she said, nodding at her husband rinsing sand off snorkel gear at the chipped kitchen sink. “First this trip. Then my cousin’s wedding in Portugal in October. Everyone says take all the couple trips you can before kids, right? But what if we’re just… waiting forever?”
Jake dropped a snorkel mouthpiece in the dish rack and leaned against the counter. “My coworker says he and his wife haven’t left the state in seven years,” he said. “I don’t want that to be us.”
I get it. I had the exact same conversation with my husband Sam four years ago, three months before our 10-day Japan trip. We’d been married two years, had started talking about trying, and every person we knew told us to wait until after the big trip. Don’t risk morning sickness ruining the ramen, they said. Get all your travel out while you can.
I made a phone note for November 15, the Monday after we got back, to start tracking ovulation for real. I turned off fertility reminders for September and October, paid the non-refundable kimono rental deposit in Kyoto, and spent three months saving for the tiny counter-only ramen shop I’d followed on food blogs for years. The trip delivered: we got lost in bamboo groves, ate matcha soft serve for breakfast twice, came home with a suitcase of weird ceramic souvenirs. I peed on a stick three weeks after our return, and it was positive. Everyone said we had perfect timing.
For our son Leo’s first 18 months, I thought they were right. We didn’t go further than my parents’ house 45 minutes away. When Sam’s sister invited us to her lake house for a long weekend when Leo was 10 months old, we said no immediately. We’d have to haul the pack ‘n play, white noise machine, 17 extra blowout outfits, he’d nap terribly, we’d spend the whole weekend chasing him instead of relaxing. What was the point? We’d already had our last big fun trip, right? We’d scroll our Japan photos after bedtime like artifacts from a whole different life.
That shifted on a random Saturday when our next-door neighbor, mom to two elementary-aged kids, knocked while we loaded groceries. They were heading car camping an hour out, had an extra tent and spare pack ‘n play, asked us to tag along. We almost said no out of habit, but Sam shrugged and said why not. We threw in diapers and a bag of Goldfish and followed.
It rained all first night. Leo ate a handful of pine needles before we could stop him, cried 20 minutes when a goose hissed at the shore, and we forgot his stuffed rabbit lovey, so we drove 20 minutes to Walmart at 8 p.m. for a $5 stuffed bear he still sleeps with. After he passed out, Sam and I sat on a log by the fire drinking cheap beer, and he said he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that relaxed. It wasn’t Japan. It was messy, half the plans went wrong, but it was fun. We’d been so convinced fun with a kid wasn’t possible we hadn’t bothered to try.
This is the unspoken part of the vacation timing debate: the choice isn’t just about working around a flight. It’s about what story you buy into about life after kids. Most people who told us to cram in travel first weren’t being unkind, but they passed on the idea that your own wants and joy go on indefinite hold once you have a kid, that you have to stockpile good times before your “real” parenting life starts. That idea doesn’t just wear new parents out – it shapes how kids experience the world, too. Leo’s preschool teacher mentioned last semester that kids whose caregivers regularly do low-key, flexible outings where plans shift roll with disruptions far easier, whether that’s a rained-out field day or a last-minute class schedule change. They don’t need everything to go perfectly to have a good time, because they’ve seen the adults around them roll with changes and still enjoy themselves.
That doesn’t mean you should cancel booked trips and start trying tomorrow, no exceptions. A friend got pregnant two weeks before a long-planned Italy trip, and she was so nauseous all 10 days she could barely eat pasta; she still says she wishes they’d waited three months. If you have trips with non-refundable deposits, if you’re in a wedding party or attending a family event you’ve looked forward to for years, waiting makes total sense. Mia’s Portugal trip is her cousin’s wedding, she’s maid of honor, and her doctor says the eight-month wait won’t shift her fertility timeline even with endometriosis. There’s no prize for getting pregnant as fast as possible.
The trouble starts when you keep adding vague, unplanned “one more trip” after another just because you’re scared of what comes next. I’ve watched couples put off trying two extra years to cram three international trips on credit cards, just checking boxes, then start parenthood already burnt out and in debt. A simple, concrete check-in works better than generic advice: pull up your calendar right now, mark only the trips that have money down, that you’re a core participant in, that you’ve planned 12 months or longer. Those are worth waiting for. Any random “someday” beach trip or European tour you thought of last week? You don’t have to get that in pre-kid. You can go later.
If you do wait, one small shift makes the transition to parenthood easier: do one low-effort, loose-plan outing a month that you could easily bring a kid to. Pack a picnic and drive 45 minutes to a new state park, book an $80 motel at a nearby lake for one night, wander a weird small-town museum for an afternoon. These aren’t “last hurrah” dates – they’re practice for fun that doesn’t require a full kid-free day or a perfect itinerary. Mia and Jake tried this after we got home from Mexico. They skipped a fancy weekend wine tasting they’d debated booking and got a cheap cabin an hour out for Memorial Day, brought hot dogs and board games, spent most of a rainy Saturday on the porch. She texted a photo of them grinning under a blanket, said it was more fun than any fancy dinner in Puerto Vallarta.
They’re still waiting until after the October wedding to start trying, no extra last-minute trips added. I don’t know if they’ll get pregnant the first month, or if it will take a year. I don’t know if their first trip with a baby will be full of meltdowns or weirdly quiet and nice. Sam and I just booked a return trip to Japan for 2026, when Leo will be 6. We’re skipping the fancy kaiseki dinner we did last time, putting the extra money toward a Tokyo toy store and the Nara deer park. It won’t be the same trip we took in 2019. We’ll probably be tired, someone will spill juice on a train seat, Leo will beg to leave the temple after 10 minutes.
I still don’t regret waiting for that first trip. But I’m glad we eventually learned good trips don’t run out when you have a kid. They just don’t look the way you thought they would.
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