I’m not pregnant, yet, but we’re ready to start trying. The thing is, we’re planning on a week-long cruise in late February. The cruise line says pregnant women who are at less than 24 weeks gestation at the time of the cruise are allowed on board, so we can put off trying for now, do some math, plan our timing around that date and make the cutoff. But do I even want to cruise while pregnant?
My concern is for medical care, if something happens - are there doctors on board or would I get tossed on shore to find a hospital and left to make my own way home afterwards?
My biological clock is none too happy about putting off babies for a few months, let alone till after February, but if the cruise will completely suck if I’m a couple of months pregnant, then maybe waiting longer makes sense.
I know lots of Dopers have been on cruises, and many have been pregnant. I’m hoping that there’s a bit of overlap and someone has cruised while pregnant, but if not, feel free to make wild guesses based on cruise and pregnancy experience!
Based on pregnancy experience I would say wait until after the cruise to get knocked up. I was pretty nauseous for the first 10-12 weeks of pregnancy and the idea of adding sea sickness on top of that is pretty horrifying. If you end up being one of those pregnant ladies with no nausea you might find you have no trouble at all but if you end up being someone who has a lot of morning sickness (which is a misnomer, actually…it should be called all-damn-day-and-night sickness) you will jump ship and swim back to shore to avoid adding sea sickness on top of that.
FWIW I went on a boat trip for about 10 days when I was about 6 months pregnant - it was the ONLY time through the whole pregnancy that I didn’t feel sick to my stomach and didn’t barf once.
And it was a 32 foot boat in the open water of the Pacific Ocean - a cruise would have been a piece of cake. Also, you can eat your own body weight in ginger while pregnant to help with morning (HA) sickness and it also works well for sea sickness.
Obviously, you would check with your doctor before eating your own body weight in anything, pregnant or otherwise.
When I was pregnant with #3, there was a serious miscalculation on my due date. I booked a cruise, believing myself to be 22 weeks at the time of sailing (it was a 2 week cruise) so I figured I’d be pushing the envelope, but within the limits.
WRONG. About 2 weeks before the cruise (of course, after it was way too late to even hope for any kind of refund, I was told that I’d actually be 26 weeks at time of sailing. That wound up being wrong too, though I didn’t find out until after I was home from the cruise. I was actually 30 weeks pregnant at sailing, and 32 weeks along when the cruise was over.
So anyway, the moral of the story? I had a wonderful time. It was awesome to have somewhere (the nursery) to drop off my younger kids so that I could “go out” to dinner with my husband every night.
Yes, they do say 24 weeks OR ELSE, but guess what? They didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell. Not like they can call you out on it, after all. It was kind of my “last hurrah” before the new baby was born, and I got home feeling very rested and refreshed.
I’ve cruised pregnant several times now, and I never had any trouble with seasickness, except briefly when I was on a tender boat with high waves one day. None of my babies ever had trouble with motion sickness either. In fact, they seemed to sleep even better than usual, whether it was from being extra tired and worn out, or the rocking of the ship, I’m not sure.
As far as getting medical help on board, for pregnancy… well, sad to say, but a first trimester miscarriage can’t be fixed by any doctor anywhere, including the ones on board the cruise ship. The situation they’re trying to avoid is the early BIRTH, where someone has a baby at 24-30 weeks. The baby would be viable if born in a major hospital, but will possibly die if born in the middle of the ocean with no MedEvac helicopter handy. (That’s what they do, incidentally, if you’re close to land and there’s a medical emergency.)
Cruise ships really don’t like it when people die onboard, though since they do cater to the geriatrics, it does happen. They have a small makeshift morgue on board. (They also have a small makeshift “jail” for unruly passengers, as an interesting side note.) What they don’t have is a state-of-the-art operating room, trauma center, NICU, or other specialty medical care on board, and they’ll do what they can to cover their asses and not get sued. Thus the 24 week rule. Which is more of a guideline, since it’s pretty hard to enforce.
So anyway, bottom line, if you’re planning a cruise in the Caribbean, or somewhere that you’re never more than a day’s sailing away from land, (Alaska, Europe) don’t even think twice about booking it. In an emergency, you’ll be back in Miami or Houston or another first-world country so quick your head will spin. If you’re planning a Transatlantic cruise where you’re going to be several days away from land at any point, you might think twice before bending their rules on 24 weeks or less. I myself did it, booking a “circle Hawaii” cruise with 4 straight days at sea both ways, and nothing went wrong, and that was an acceptable level of risk for me, but YMMV.
In my own defense, it was too late for me to reschedule or cancel without losing most of my $10k, so it was a financially motivated choice, but it worked out fine.
Personally I would go for it, but my first pregnancy and my current one have both been a breeze. I didn’t really get sick that much. However a coworker was vommiting for the first five months of her pregnancy.
Unfortunetly every womon reacts differently to being pregnant and there really is no way to know beforehand how it is going to be.
IMHO if you want to, than book it, but be prepared for the possibility of being sick and tired the whole time.
ETA 24 weeks is what I call the golden time. The first trimester sickness and tiredness is over, and the uncomfortable period of the big gut hasn’t started yet. It’s the time when you can almost forget you are pregnant.
We went on a Caribbean babymoon when I was 12-13 weeks pregnant. We did a day cruise on a smallish boat which involved a couple hour-long motors between islands on barely-choppy water. I got sick, sick, sick… and I never get motion sick. Blleeuurgh.
Referring to the previous poster, there was no time in the pregnancy that I was able to forget I was pregnant.
Ginger pills. If you do go on the cruise, take a supply of ginger pills, and try to get them in your system as soon as you hear word that there might be waves.
I will tell you what my doctor told me when I asked him about traveling overseas during my first pregnancy: You would probably be fine. However, if something did go wrong how would you feel? How about if something started going wrong and we could address it here, but you were away?
Being a nurse, I always introduced myself to the medical staff on board.
On one cruise, a woman’s water broke, without initiating labor (a bad thing to happen) We were off the west coast of Mexico. She was airlifted off the boat to a local hospital. One of the nurses from the ship went along. The woman delivered her baby in Mexico and went by medical transport back to San Diego.
Even though she lied to the cruise company about her due date, they made sure she got home safely.
I keep misreading the thread title as “Cursing while pregnant?” and was wondering if the OP was worried that her newborn would pop out with the vocabulary of @#%&&*!!@ dock worker.
I read it correctly as “cruising”, but with so many other more interesting definitions of “cruising”, I never thought she meant riding the Love Boat.
Playing cougar at her local watering hole, spending all night Friday & Saturday driving slowly around in a convertible, strolling the waterfront looking for sailors or maybe drugs, etc.
