Should I Wait to Get Pregnant Until After Our Vacations? A Parent Educator’s Take
I was at a community picnic last month, trying to keep a bowl of pasta salad from tipping over, when a neighbor named Laura caught me. She had that look people get when they’ve been thinking about something for too long without saying it out loud.
“Okay, I need a parenting educator’s opinion,” she said. “We have a beach week in June and a wedding in Mexico in October. If I get pregnant now, I’ll be nauseous for the first trip and huge for the second. Should we just wait until after the vacations?”
I laughed, because I’d asked myself the exact same question ten years ago. My husband and I had booked a trip to Thailand. We were newly married, and the itinerary was seven cities, twelve flights, and one very hopeful snorkeling excursion. We decided to wait. Our logic was impeccable: we wanted “one last real adventure” before babies. So we waited, I got pregnant the month after we returned, and I spent most of the next summer lying on our couch while the world went on vacation without me.
That’s the first thing I tell parents who are trying to time a pregnancy around travel. The plan works, and then it doesn’t. You wait for the trip, and something else comes up. A work project. A sick parent. A global event nobody predicted. Or you get pregnant exactly on schedule, and you still feel like you missed everything because your body had other plans.
But I don’t think the real question is about the vacation. I think the question underneath is, “Can I still be myself before I become a parent?” And that one deserves more than a yes or no.
In my parent education classes, I’ve seen a lot of couples trying to do this math. They’ll say, “If we get pregnant in March, I’ll be due in December. That means we can still do Thanksgiving, but the holidays will be shot. So maybe we wait until May.” They’re trying to fit an entire life around a due date, and it’s tempting because it feels like control. I understand it. Before my daughter was born, I made a spreadsheet of all the months I didn’t want to be pregnant for. July, because it was too hot. November, because I didn’t want to be huge in holiday photos. February, because my birthday month should be about me for one more year.
I got pregnant in August anyway. The spreadsheet went into the recycling bin.
Here’s what I’ve learned, both as a teacher and as a parent: babies don’t ruin vacations. They ruin the idea that a vacation is about seeing things. That’s a hard adjustment, but it’s one you’ll have to make with or without the pregnancy planning.
Laura pushed the pasta salad aside and said, “We haven’t really traveled together much. This feels like our last chance.”
That’s the phrase I hear over and over. “Last chance.” Last trip as a couple. Last time to sleep in. Last time to be irresponsible. And I get it. There is something real about the shift from being two people to being three. But if you’re the kind of person who needs a big trip to feel alive, you’re still going to be that kind of person after a baby. You just have to change the shape of the trip.
One of the best pieces of advice I give to families is this: decide what the trip is actually for. If it’s for rest, then book one rental and don’t schedule anything. If it’s for adventure, then pick one or two outings per day and let the rest be unstructured. If it’s for being together, then you don’t need a beach. You need a place where someone else makes the meals and you can play cards for six hours.
I remember taking my daughter to a lake cabin when she was seven months old. We had a blow-up baby bathtub, a white noise machine, and absolutely no plan. Every morning we sat on the dock while she reached for pine needles. My husband and I took turns napping. We didn’t see a single museum or historic site. But we both came home feeling more rested than we had all year, because we hadn’t expected to be anyone other than ourselves.
The problem with waiting for the perfect time is that the perfect time rarely exists. There’s always another trip, another promotion, another reason to put your life on hold. And I don’t say that to guilt anyone. There are completely valid reasons to wait — financial stability, health issues, a partner who needs more time, a house that isn’t ready, a career transition that’s genuinely incompatible with a newborn. I’m not saying everyone should just throw out their birth control and see what happens.
What I’m saying is that “we have a couple of vacations booked” is not a strong enough reason on its own. A vacation is a week or two. A pregnancy is a decade of decision-making. If you wait for the vacations, you’ll probably find yourself waiting for the right season, the right age gap, the right time to tell your boss. And before you know it, you’re four years older and still asking the same question.
If you do decide to go ahead and try, here’s something practical: plan the vacation around the worst-case scenario. Assume you’ll be pregnant, because you might be. Then ask yourself if you’d still be glad you booked it. If the answer is yes, because you’d be fine sitting by the pool eating guacamole while everyone else hikes, then go. If the answer is no, because you’d feel cheated, then maybe wait — but wait for the trip, not for the pregnancy. Take the trip. Enjoy it. Then start trying.
One couple I worked with put it nicely. They said, “We’re going to Mexico in March. If I’m pregnant, I’ll be the one drinking virgin piña coladas and giving everyone else a ride back to the hotel. We’ve agreed that’s okay.” That’s the phrase to practice: “We’ve agreed that’s okay.” Because no matter how you plan, something won’t go the way you wanted. The question is whether you can say those six words and mean them.
I think Laura came away from our conversation a little less obsessed with the calendar. She told me she was going to talk to her husband about whether they wanted the beach week to be a “last big adventure” or just a week off. I told her that when you can answer that, you’ll know what to do.
I don’t know what she ended up deciding. We didn’t exchange numbers, and the picnic ended with someone’s toddler crying under a table. But I still think about her question. It’s a good one, not because there’s a right answer, but because it gets to the heart of what’s hard about becoming a parent. There’s no way to keep everything. There’s only deciding what to let go of first.
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