how long in between pregnancies

[smile4loubie]

Hi ladies,
How long did you wait between pregnancies? Were you told to wait a certain amount of time?

Xxx

 

[newbs]

There are 4.5 yrs between my two girls, longer than we'd planned because of ttc but we did want a 3 yr age gap, just personally our choice. I was advised to wait a year before ttc again after 1st daughter was born though, just to get body and thyroid/diabetes levels back to normal I think.

 

[smile4loubie]

Thanks newbs xx

 

[Cate]

We have 2y9m between our two, I had a miscarriage in between - with that one, the gap would have been 2y5m.

We're going to TTC #3 next year, aiming for a 2y9m ish age gap again - we found it worked really well in terms of relative independence of 1st child when 2nd was born etc and also the fact that preschool was in the not too distant future!

I was told to leave it at least a year between PGs, but that was because I had a csection with both of them. Otherwise I think there's a higher risk of scar rupture.

Do I need to say good luck?

 

[Ellie Jones]

Nothing was ever really mentioned, there's 4 years between my oldest daughter and my son, but 18 months to the day between my son and my youngest daughter...

But I have to say that my son and youngest daughter weren't planned😱

When they were young the 4 year gap was nice lots of time for my oldest daughter and when my son came along she was a bit of a mother hen with him (still is today, he still does as he's told by his big sister🙄) but having the only 18 months gap, was pretty hard going more so because my ex-husband wasn't the most helpful chap going when it came to child care..

 

[rachelha]

I have not been given any advice, but we are planning on ttc again once I am on my pp and my hba1c is good enough again. My dsn is aware of this, and did not say no. Ideally I would rather leave a bit longer but my biological clock.is on overdrive.
Are you thinking of no. 2?

 

[smile4loubie]

I'm on the injection but thinking after next one if my bloods etc are good to come off it. If I got preg straight away (which is unlikely due to injection) Imogen would be a year and a half when no2 is born.

 

[Emmal31]

Hi Lou

We're thinking about ttc in about 18 months time. Main reason is that we want to wait until Jessica is over 3 so she'll be at nursery a couple of mornings a week and she'll be that bit more independant by then. Can't imagine trying to keep her entertained at those weekly appointments we have to have that can run up to 2 hours a time. If that all works out how we want she will be 4 by the time the little one is born 😱

 

[beckyp]

Thanks for starting this thread Lou! I was thinking about this just the other day.

When my doctor left the surgery at E's birth her parting words to us were "see you in a year" - which left with me with shivers down my neck! Having said that I would like a small age gap between them so was thinking of 18 months - meaning we would start trying in just 3 months - which now seems a bit unrealistic...and my husband would like to wait longer as he thinks we had a tough time at the beginning and if a second one/birth is the same as E then we'll struggle - I keep telling him people have worse and that we were lucky!

I'm not sure that it'll make much difference to us what age E is when a second one arrives...it'll be tough whatever age. The hospital appointments are always long and frustrating in our area,the doctor is still a neurotic crazy man (reminds me of the doc out of Back to the Future!) 🙄 and testing sugar levels is always going to be a pain in the bum! I'm trying to get my HBA1C down now and will continue to monitor it closely so that we're given the go-ahead quickly. I'm finding it much harder to test my sugars regularly before and after meals with a baby so that may take a while longer yet.

I wasn't told to wait a year but it would make sense for recovery (after c-sections).

There are 5 years between my brother and I which always seemed too much when we were growing up and there are 2 and a half years between my niece/nephew and my sil says that she wishes there was less time (her daughter is currently in nursery 2 mornings per week). She unfortunately miscarried before having my nephew so she would have had a small age gap if things had worked out. Watching them together is lovely but my niece really does have a problem not being the 'be-all-and-end-all' in the family now and struggles to let him have any attention - so much so that sil has given up breastfeeding at 3 months as she doesn't feel she has the time for them both.

As a previous pregnancy poster it'll be interesting to see which ones of us start posting second pregnancy news! 🙂

 

[Monkey]

I don't think I've ever been told anything explicitly, altho when the mw discharged me she said 'see you in 2 years', a bit like you, Becky!

C's 2 now, and we've got our first pre-conception appointment in a fortnight, aiming for a gap of not less than 3 years. Lots of reasons - my diabetes was really hard work for the first year after his birth, and I'm now feeling more comfortable that my hba1c should be close to where I'd want it for a pregnancy. I also had an emergency section with C, and would be planning an elective next time. We've not got family close enough / old enough (my parents both work fulltime!) to help a great deal, so we felt that C needed to be independent enough for it to be vaguely manageable.

Saying that, I think a second/third is hard regardless of the gap, it's just that diabetes gives you another thing to consider.

Again, I've never been explicitly told how long between pregnancies from a c-section point of view, but I've heard several other people say 12months.