WTT baby no.2 and age gaps?

SVT1991

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Hi im new to this, just hope im in the right place!
Im 23 and a proud mum of one with my recent husband, got married in July! we've been together for nearly 5 years.. was rough falling with our first and hope the next will be easier..
Anyway I was hoping for some advice on what people thought of the right age gaps? my little one just turned a year old and hoping to wait till the end of the year to try, thinking itll be a nice gap.. providing all goes well! what do you think is the best age gaps as I am quite worried how our little one will take it??

Thanks!!
 
I don't think there really is a wrong or right age gap - just what works best for your family!

I'm thinking around 3 years for our age gap - we have free preschool here on post that starts at age 3, so that would give me two days a week with just the baby so I can still spend one-on-one time with them, and hopefully DD will be potty trained by then so we're only buying one set of diapers.
 
It really depends on what you're looking for. Just keep in mind that no matter what age gap you go with, it'll always work out in the end :hugs: I decided to have mine two years apart for a few reasons, but that doesn't mean having them sooner/later is a bad option either.

Personally, 2 years apart was amazing. Had we been able to conceive sooner, 18 months apart would have been even better. But in a way, I'm happy that my eldest got to celebrate two birthdays where he was the center of attention. The reason why I hesitate to go 3 years apart is that I've seen so many "whiny" 3 year olds, and I cannot imagine going through sleepless nights with the whining. True, 2 year olds throw temper tantrums, but you can ignore those (which you're suppose to do anyhow). At 3, they are at their most jealous time... if they're a boy. I've see 3 year old girls though be very "motherly" towards a new baby, which is nice.

Something else is that I find babies are very needy (duh!), 2 year olds are trying to explore and be independent, yet at 3 they revert back a little and want to be with you a lot. Again, it worked out perfectly that my eldest was 2 and wanting to be left alone while I could spend some much needed time with the baby. 2 year olds are independent, can follow instruction, feed themselves, and (usually) talk enough for you to know what they want.

One last thing that I considered with age gaps was them regressing. I didn't want to put them time in to potty train my eldest for them to start messing when the baby came (as they'll do it for attention). I knew that he wouldn't be trained at just barely 2 years old, so there was no risk of regression. I waited until my youngest was sleeping through the night before I tackled that task!--

But - this is just my opinion. I do not mean to insult anyone that had them sooner/later. I am WTT again, and I plan to have them 2 years apart.
 
Our 1st & 2nd are 2 years 9months apart, our 2nd & 3rd is 5 years 4months apart. I didn't like having a baby and toddler very hard work. I much prefaired the bigger age gap.
 
theres 51 weeks between my 2 and I love it, yes both were planned.
the eldest took 2 years to conceive so we decided with permission of our doctor as eldest was a emergency c-section to start trying again when he was 3 month, no one expected us to fall again so quickly.
my eldest was a bit jealous to begin with, and every now and then still is. you'll get that no matter the age gap, but most of the time they get on so well, every morning I wake up to the sound of them playing together. he kisses his brother daily, just recently my youngest has started to hug and kiss my eldest, they are always getting into bed with each other, just the other day I walked in their room to wake them from their nap and they were both in the same bed cuddled up to each other.
Hubby wants to wait another 2 years before we have another, i'm not sure I want an age gap that big though, I figured with the trouble we had the with the first we would be looking at at least a 5 year age gap
 
Mine children are 18 months apart & I'm loving it. There are 11 years between me and my brother and we get on fantastic so I think any age gap can work :flower:
 
Thanks girlies, you all said what I hoped for, and I am now feeling alot more confident about what we have decided, hopefully all will go well and we can TTC from september!! Best of luck with all your plans!
 
my first 2 are 3 years apart the next will be nearly 4 years apart. My personal preference was 2 but it still worked out well. Our oldest was fully potty trained and sleeping 12 straight before the second came along.
 
There are 18 months between our first two and I really thought it was great! MommyPrice gave a lot of reasons that I would second.


There is a 6 year age gap between DD3 and DD2. It hasn't been too bad. DD2 dotes on DD3. It's also nice that DD2 goes to school during the day so I don't have to worry about entertaining a little one and meet the needs of an infant.

Like others have said-it just depends on what you're looking for and what will work best for you. Good luck!
 
My lo will hopefully be 4.5 when his sibling is born. Ideally I would have liked a smaller age gap but I'm happy with this as lo is now a lot easier
 
I think age gap is quite a personal choice really. Everyone from every type of age gap will tell you why it was great.
I read this post few weeks back and it explained all the different age gaps and the positives/negatives for each. Was an intresting read :winkwink:

We always said a three year age gap but it looks like (if we fall straight away) that it will be a 2yr.5month age gap roughly. I'm happy with this as got all this one2one with my baby boy before no.2 and he will be way out of nappies which is one huge thing to cope with when u have two in nappies (from seeing other family members with smaller gap)
Ds will be old enough to want to help out with his little brother or sister so will feel included when i am doing things with baby (cause hes doing it with me)
But thats me. We are wwt until Sep and if fell straight away ds would be 2and a half. Id rather slightly bigger than smaller gap as i dont enjoy the "baby stage" like a lot of others so it will be hard first 6months.

Sounds like your gap would be a little bit bigger and as i said we always originally said 3years :winkwink:
 
There's just under 2 years between my boys and whilst its early days I love it. So far my son hasn't shown any jealousy whatsoever to the baby, he adores his baby brother but I think that's more to do with his character and temperament than his age.

I think any age gap can work, I personally wanted them close in age, I wanted to be done with nappies, bottles etc. Its still quite an adjustment, I didn't realise how easy and independent DS1 was until I had a baby again!

I think there's positives and negatives to all age gaps but ultimately you know what will work best for your family :flower:
 
Like everyone said, I think it's really down to your personal circumstances and what works for your family. At a minimum, we'll be trying for a 3.5 year age gap. That's largely due simply to the fact that I'm too busy with work to take any time off before that, but I'll actually be finishing up a postgraduate degree and wanting to look to move on to a new job after that, so it's a good time to take a break. Our daughter, who is 2 now, is also really getting to the point where parenting is a lot easier and less intensive and more fun, so my husband and I also want to just enjoy her for a bit longer and enjoy being able to have a date night here and there again before a new baby comes along. It certainly helps that she'll get her free preschool hours next spring as well, which will help financially when I'm on maternity leave. So really, it's much more down to finances and work commitments, how much of an age gap we have. If I didn't have those to worry about, I'd probably not have wanted to have another much sooner though.
 
I feel like 3 years is a good gap but for my family my husband needs more time so we will ttc no 2 when no 1 is 3 so they will have a 3 yr age gap :) I do believe it varies for each family and of course I see a lot of woman 30 and up having kids close in age due to infertility risks ad you age!
 
As others have said, there really isn't "perfect" age gap. It's what works for your family.

We're planning on TTC #2 next August. So, if things go okay, there will be a 4.5 to 5 year age difference between the 2. We have a myriad of reasons - one of those would be finances. DH has a large student loan and we want to work on getting that down to as little as possible. Daycare is expensive, so as much as we could make it work with 2 in daycare, it'd be tight. We also have a vacation planned with my family next August, and would prefer to bring one child.

Probably my #1 reason was I wasn't actually ready for another child, and I'm kind of not ready still. Motherhood took a huge toll on me, for various reasons. I thought I'd be the "perfect" mom, and when different things didn't work out, I was kicked into PPD and anxiety. Now that she's 2.5, it's getting better and I'm feeling more confidant about having a 2nd. So yeah, it comes down to personal preference. I have friends who wanted to be done quickly and say close in age is the perfect gap, and others who say the large gap worked well.
 
Mine are 2y9m apart. I think I would have preferred a smaller gap but we wanted to buy our first home when we just had one dependent (for mortgage purposes) and also it took us 5 cycles to conceive. I think there are pros and cons to any age gap and also it comes down to the individual child's personality more than their age as to how they adapt to a new sibling :flower:
 

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