Concieving under 12 months after last baby scare?

[ericacaca]

My friend at work mentioned this to me and so I went off and stupidly found an article about it online! urgh!

There is research that says that children conceived under 12 months after childbirth are 3 times more likely to have a learning disability or be autistic and be premature and have low birth weight? They say this because the woman's body has to have time to repair itself after the prior pregnancy so the new baby gets the best it needs.

This is the first I've heard of it and many of my friends have children less than 20 months apart and they are all fine. I conceived our LO 6 months to the day of delivering our baby girl at 18 weeks and he's perfect?

Has anyone else heard of this before? What are your thoughts?

 

[Louise88]

First I've heard of this, my boy was conceived when my dd was 9 months old. My midwife told me your body only really needs 5 months to recover after birth as after dd was born but you get your nutrients and stuff from pre natal vitamins so surely you wouldn't need that much of a storage in your body!

 

[phineas]

First I've heard! I concieved when dd was 2 months! And my mw said there's no risk to baby at all!

 

[cruise]

Remember, correlation isn't causation.

There is probably something different about women who conceive again quickly vs. women who choose to wait -- for instance, women who wait years are more likely to be educated about birth control, and therefore richer/less malnourished/healthier.

I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[bamm]

I have several friends with a sibling about 13 - 14 months older than them and they are all very intelligent (more so than me, and I came 4 years after my sister! ;p)

 

[Justagirlxx]

My sister is 18 months younger than me (so I was 9 months old when she was conceived) and I've always wondered why she is so much stupider!


LOL.. totally kidding ... sorry. She was very healthy and big! (9lbs) and doesn't have any learning disabilities. Of course that is only one case. I have also heard that miscarriage is more likely after a recent birth but I haven't heard anything about learning disabilities. I'm afriad to even look it up lol.

 

[sojourn]

I am 18 months older than my brother. He is WAY smarter than me! He's a former straight A student with a Master's from fancy school in England. I am the one with learning disabilities and weird sensory problems that have the potential for being on the autism spectrum.

My older brother is 5 years older than I am! Plenty of recovery time. Especially since my mom was 17 when she had him. Young, healthy bodies recover fast.

My mom didn't get that she was pregnant right away with me and spent 5 months not worrying about vitamins or anything and regularly skipped meals so that my older brother could eat.

She knew immediately that she was pregnant with my little brother since at nine months I weaned myself, learned to walk and started saying my first words. A friend joked with her that she was probably pregnant and I was preparing to have to take care of myself.

She skipped her period the next month and had the luxury of military docs/hospitals/insurance.

I'll point out that with all of my delightful "abnormalities" I am not any worse off for it. I did very well in college, regularly topped standardized tests, I have a college degree. My only struggle was that I was a super active wild child and I wouldn't behave myself.

There is SO much to worry about right now, don't let this be one of the things you pick. Before birth control people had kids within 12 months ALL the time that were just fine. (I'm not one of those people that think everything that was always done works just fine. I just think we would have a lot more causal data to support these claims if it were, in fact, true. Correlation is NOT the same as causation)