As you may wonder from the title of this post, I am pregnant, due in a couple of months 🙂
Yes, I will hopefully still be traveling. Yes, I will carry the baby in a backpack and I am gonna be tired. Yes, this will hopefully not stop me. Or it will, and I will close the blog and this will be it.
Anyway, this year, same as I do every year, I wanted to spend most of the summer exploring Greece, but I had to take into consideration I was pregnant.
What changes in your planning if you want to travel to Greece while pregnant?
In the time I was there, I would be in my 6th and 7th months of pregnancy, so I would still be allowed to fly (you are not allowed from the 8th month onward) but I had to keep in mind that if an emergency happened, I could give premature birth in Greece. If you are in the earlier stages of pregnancy, on the other side, you can’t really give birth but you can still have any kind of complications where you would need to see a doctor. So, in all of these cases, you need a hospital. We needed a hospital.
The places I like the most in Greece are the remote islands, and in those ones, you definitely do not have a hospital (not even a doctor in some cases). I would say if you leave the mainland, hospitals are scarce, and if they exist, they may not be equipped for emergencies.
Now, theoretically, if you are in a remote place, and you are in a life-threatening situation, Greece has some helicopters available to bring you to the nearest hospitals, but what happens if there are more emergencies at the same time? You don’t really wanna be holidaying thinking this could happen.
Our initial plan (before pregnancy) for this summer was Anafi, a beautiful island in the middle of nowhere with no doctors and a ferry passing by every 4 days. Obviously, it was ruled out as soon as we found we were expecting.
So, which of the >200 Greek islands have hospitals? Mainly the following:
- Corfu
- Cefalonia
- Zakynthos
- Syros
- Santorini
- Naxos
- Kythira
- Crete
- Icaria
- Samos
- Lesbos
- Kos
- Rodas
For some of the above, like Icaria, we heard that even if they have a hospital, you should not really rely on it. In my opinion (and also the one of a Greek gynecologist we consulted), you should not count on doing any treatment/surgery/giving birth in any of those hospitals (maybe just the Cretan ones as it’s a big island), but you can just use them as an intermediary. You have an emergency, you go there, they check you and send you via ambulance/helicopter/whatever to a bigger hospital.
Where did we finally go?
We picked Zakynthos (or Zante), Syros, and Kythira. Luckily I did not have any emergency so I did not need to check their hospitals, but it was good knowing I was covered if anything happened.
We also spent a couple of weeks in the mainland, Kardamyli, and Foinikounta in the Peloponnese region.
Other things to take into consideration if traveling to Greece while pregnant
Apart from emergencies & hospitals, if you travel to Greece while pregnant you have to keep in mind a couple more things.
Pick bigger ferries over small boats
The first reason is that you don’t want the boat to be bumping up and down all the time.
The second reason is that you may be dizzy already and want to avoid being dizzier.
Consider taking a car
This was life-changing for us. As a person that doesn’t drive, I was used to carrying my backpack and waiting under the sun to enter the ferries while having all my stuff on me, then getting to the arrival port and walking to the accommodation. Then going every day to different beaches by walking/hiking/taking public transport.
If you are pregnant, you are gonna be too tired to do any of this. Unless you are one of those fit mums who keep doing CrossFit & lift weighing through their pregnancy that I see on Tiktok, you will not be able to carry any weight, walk longer than 15 mins, or even just be under the sun.
Moving around with a car allowed me to not have to carry around absolutely anything (everything was in the car), not have to wait standing in lines, not have to walk too long, hiding in an air-conditioned space when it was too hot.
I got so spoiled now I think I always wanna go in a car from now on.
Be careful with the heat
I was the one that never needed an umbrella on the beach and would cover in a sleeping bag if there was air conditioning on. I would always walk carelessly in the sun in the summer heat.
That changes a lot when you are pregnant. I couldn’t stand a minute in the heat, so we always had a tent for the beach to cover from the sun and I even avoided the peak hours when it was too hot.
Cool stuff about being pregnant in Greece
Greek people are very hospitable and if they see you are pregnant they will really go out of their way to make you feel comfortable. I would always get the best spot, skip every line, and get fresh fruit delivered to my room just because, it even happened that didn’t let me pay (sunbed & ombrella for example) just to nurture me. Strangers would come to me and just wish me the best all the time while being very protective in any way possible.
And that’s why a Greek holiday while pregnant isn’t just possible; it’s a fantastic idea!
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