The general recommendation among modern health and family planning professionals is at least two years in between the birth of siblings.

Nigerian women are often told that spacing the birth of their children provides  benefits to a newborn and this new research shows one of the ways in which it does.

According to a new study, women who become pregnant again within 18 months after having a baby are more likely to deliver early.

A group of US researchers looked at the birth records of 450,000 babies born to mothers who had given birth previously.

About 11% of the births occurred after an interpregnancy interval of 12 to 18 months and about 2% followed an interpregnancy interval of less than 12 months.

The researchers found that 53% of women with interpregnancy intervals of less than 12 months gave birth before the 39th week of pregnancy, compared with about 38% of women who had normal interpregnancy intervals of at least 18 months.

Twenty percent of women with the shortest interpregnancy intervals delivered prematurely – before 37 weeks – compared to 10% of women who waited 12 to 18 months between pregnancies and about 8%of women with a normal interpregnancy interval.

The new study “brings up the importance of adequate birth spacing as a potential modifiable way that women, especially high-risk women, can decrease their chance of having a preterm baby,” Emily DeFranco who worked on the study at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Ohio told Reuters Health.

 

“Women who are at the highest risk for preterm birth are those who have had a previous premature birth so (for those women it is) especially important to try to optimize their pregnancy timing,” DeFranco said.