New research led by Curtin University has questioned the existing health advice that mothers expect at least two years after giving birth to become pregnant again, in order to reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. pregnancies, such as premature age and small gestation births.
The research found that a World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation wait at least 24 months to conceive after a previous one birth it can be unnecessarily long for mothers in high-income countries such as Australia, Finland, Norway and the United States.
The principal investigator, Dr. Gizachew Tessema, of the Curtin School for Population Health, said that since WHO’s advice was based on limited evidence from countries with limited resources, it was necessary to investigate whether the 15-year recommendation was relevant to higher income environments.
“We compared approximately 3 million births of 1.2 million women with at least three children and found the risk of adverse birth outcomes after a pregnancy interval less than six months old was no older than for those born after an interval of 18 to 23 months, ”Dr. Tessema said.
“Given that the current recommendations on birth spacing are for a waiting time of at least 18 months two years after live births, our findings are reassuring for families conceiving before that.
“However, we found that siblings born after an interval of more than 60 months had an increased risk of adverse birth outcomes.”
Dr Tessema said that, just as the current WHO recommendations are not age-specific, the results of the study were not necessarily equally applicable to parents of all ages.
“Our next step with this research is to identify whether intervals between pregnancies affect the risk of adverse birth outcomes among women of different ages,” Dr. Tessema said.
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Citation: Study Challenges Recommend Waiting Time Between Pregnancies (2021, July 19) Retrieved July 19, 2021 at https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-pregnancies.html
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