How Soon After Having a Baby Can I Get Pregnant Again

For older mothers, it can experience similar there'south little time to waste before trying for another kid. Simply there are real risks linked to getting pregnant over again too shortly. Lauren Bates/Getty Images hide explanation

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Lauren Bates/Getty Images

For older mothers, it tin experience similar there's footling time to waste earlier trying for another child. But there are real risks linked to getting pregnant again too soon.

Lauren Bates/Getty Images

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Many older offset-fourth dimension moms face a dilemma when it comes to baby No. ii. The clock is ticking louder than ever. Merely doctors advise waiting at least a year and a one-half after giving nascence before conceiving once more.

This is the standard communication, based on multiple studies and public health guidelines. Only deciding when to try again can be a difficult determination — weighing medical gamble against infertility risk. Now there are some new data points to cistron in. A paper published Mon in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine analyzed medical records from nearly 150,000 Canadian pregnancies to tease out how a mother'south age influences the furnishings of a shorter-than-recommended interval between pregnancies.

For older moms in a hurry, the bad news is that the study adds testify that conceiving within 12 months of a birth does mean heightened health risks for both female parent and child. But epidemiologist Laura Schummers, who led the inquiry while at Harvard and is now a mail service-doctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, says in that location'due south good news for you here also:

"The optimal spacing window that we found was ane to two years subsequently the commitment of one child until the conception of the next pregnancy," she says. "That'south when we found the lowest risk for both mothers and babies." And, she adds, that'due south short compared to some previous studies that had suggested the optimal look was between 18 months and up to five years.

Past research has found a clear link between short "interpregnancy intervals" and increased risk of wellness problems for mother and baby, including premature nascence. Just why? The debate, Schummers says, revolves around whether the short interval is a directly biological cause of the risks, or whether information technology it is itself a result of other forces at work in the mother'southward life — for example, a lack of access to health care and unintended pregnancies.

Because older women are likelier to program their pregnancies and have improve admission to intendance, Schummers and colleagues hypothesized that those mothers would not incur as much risk as younger women do if they had babies close together.

They found out they were incorrect.

"In fact," Schummers says, "we found that at that place were risks of adverse infant outcomes for women of all ages.

"The risks to the babies were higher amongst younger women, which was consistent with the team's hypothesis. But risks to the mothers were higher amid older women — indeed, only older mothers incurred college risks to their own wellness by getting pregnant again so soon.

Afterwards accounting for other factors that could drive these numbers, Schummers says, the stats shake out like this:

• For women 35 years or older who conceived just six months after a birth, half dozen.2 per thou experienced serious illness or injury, including death. Wait 18 months and that risk dropped to ii.six per per thou. And so, small absolute numbers but a dramatic difference.

• A "severe adverse babe event" includes stillbirth and being born very early or very small. Among women ages 20 to 34, those who conceived after but six months had twenty babies per thou with those severe outcomes; the hazard drops to 14 per one thousand among those who waited 18 months.

• Among women 35 years or older, in that location were 21 severe baby outcomes per one thousand amid those who waited only half-dozen months; the run a risk drops to 18 per thousand amid those who waited xviii months.

"This shows you both the relationship between pregnancy spacing and the increased hazard," Schummers says, "but as well that older women tend to accept a college baseline risk of many of these outcomes at all pregnancy spacing lengths."

The research turned upwardly a like design for premature nascency: A brusque pregnancy interval raises the risk for all women, but particularly for younger women. The risk for them dropped from 53 per thousand at a six-calendar month interval to 32 per grand at an 18-month interval. For women over 35, the risk dropped from 50 per thousand at vi months to 36 per chiliad after xviii months.

It seems like common sense that a woman'southward torso may need more than than six months to fully recover from edifice a baby and giving birth, just the actual mechanism behind the risks of brusk pregnancy intervals is not fully clear.

The leading theory, Schummers says, is that nutrients like atomic number 26 or folate could be depleted in the mother'due south body. Just more research is needed to meet if that theory holds in developed countries similar the U.s.a. and Canada, or if there are other mechanisms that accept not yet been identified.

For now, she says, her squad hopes these new findings can help women make decisions within their own personal contexts, and in consultation with their medical teams. The data may be particularly helpful for older women, she says, because they more often make up one's mind to take curt pregnancy intervals on purpose.

"And then if you're making that kind of decision on purpose," she says, "information technology'due south easier to say, 'Yous know, let's await another three months.' "

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/01/663181674/how-long-should-older-moms-wait-before-getting-pregnant-again

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