Cotton-Pickin’ Days

Is that for the beginning of the pregnancy or is that from birth to birth?

I’ve done it both ways if you look at it… Caelan and Elli are 6 1/2 years apart (so that’s more than 59 months) and PJ and Elli are only 20 months apart so I conceived on her first birthday… only 12 months apart. No wonder both Elli’s and PJ’s pregnancies were complicated. I’m a statistic!

Honey, if all of us were conceived according to how scientific journals say we should be, most of us wouldn’t be here.

kimmellee: Fascinating! I think it means the time from the end of one pregnancy to the beginning of another. Here’s the LA Times article for more info.

Kate: Phhhht. Not that I won’t die trying to have a perfect life or anything.

Gah I thought you were expecting! I’ve been seeing too much of this ultrasound scans in blogs lately!!

Heh, unfortunately nature works on its own clock!

Adoption?

Those sort of decisions sure aren’t easy ones! Whatever you decide though, everything will work out just fine. My husband is an only child, and I’m the oldest of four, and we’re both equally insane

Debra: LOL!! That was Stephen’s ultrasound. Ahhh. The Memories. *sniff*

Jean: Drat that Nature.

mdmhvonpa Are you offering one of yours?

Deb L: Insanity…. I’ll take it!

Sometimes I wonder about the point of medical studies like this. I mean, really, is anyone going to make a decision about when to have a subsequent child based on this type of study? Or are pregnant women who have pregnancies outside the limits of “safety” imposed by this study to be automatically treated as high risk? I’m all for basic research, but it seems to me that there are more important medical issues to be tackled.

For the record, my brother and I are 10 years apart. My hubby and his siblings (four total) were all born within 6 years (one set of twins). And we’re all just fine, thank you (though the twins were low birth weight).

Somewhere in my culture, i remember my grandparents, some uncles talking about it. The “healthy” lifestyle. The right age for woman to marry, by 24. The husband should be 4 years older and the blood type should match. Then first child to be conceived 2 years after marriage. This will give time for the couple to bond, be husband and wife before a child comes in. Building foundation. The second child should come 4 years later. The first born would have been taught and must have learnt to share and stuff, so having a sibling would come good at this time. 2 years apart is a bit risky as they are just learning to share, etc.

This is written somewhere in the scripts somewhere it seems. And has been around for a few thousand years. But most realise this might be the ideal, if it works it works. Real life can be, and often is quite different.

hehe, i’ve never heard of that birth spacing theory before…only heard that it isn’t good to be pregnant over when you’re 40 and above.

but it’d be nice for stephen to have a playmate…

My antenatal teacher told us, for our health, it was best to leave at least 2 years between pregnancies – which makes sense, and you can imagine that would have a knock-on effect on the baby’s health. I find it harder to rationalise the long gap, unless it is just a feature of mum being significantly older the second time. It would be interesting to see a break-down by mothers’ ages, wouldn’t it – was the effect more pronounced for older women.
Are you planning, then?!

I join all your friends in saying it happens when it happens, don’t let all the statistics blind you to the fact that the most important thing is for you to feel like it…anyway from previous entries I thought it wasn’t a question of what you want but what your body wants, and that was quite stubborn the first time around!
For what it’s worth I liked the maternity services in England, very mother friendly and non-interventional.

[...] Cotton-Pickin’ Days « Birth Spacing [...]

“Are you offering one of yours?”

LOL … have two, we’ll make more! (old chip commercial)

river2sea72: Now I’m looking back on the comments for this original baby spacing post and I can see why you thought I’d argue with you. LOL

Smitha: It’s amazing how much people in history understood about the natural progression of life even if they might not have understood the intricacies of biology.

laurina: I take it you wish you had a sibling?

Lisa: Yes, one of the hypotheses is that the longer gap means mothers are much older and their bodies not as healthy. Yikes! As for planning…we’re letting fate decide.

Snowy: Thanks for reassuring me about maternity services in England!

mdmhvonpa: Get busy then!