By Anino Aganbi

READY for your next baby…. Timing for your next pregnancy is purely up to you but in most cases, you have no control over when it happens.    Sometimes, no matter how careful you are or no matter the type of family planning you do, when its time, it’s just time. A lot of women who start having their children late really do not have the luxury of spacing their children too far apart for risk of complications during pregnancies.

Child Spacing

Some risks that can be found with spacing pregnancies too far apart are:

Ž  High blood pressure and excess protein in your urine after 20 weeks of pregnancy (preeclampsia)

Ž  Preterm birth

Ž  Low birth weight

Ž  Small size for gestational age

But in spite of all these, do women still not have the right it space their children? A lot of medical practitioners might keep preaching child spacing but what methods are safe when it comes to family planning or spacing out your children? There have been instances where women take pills or other types of family planning precautions and end up being sterile after one or two children. How does medical science resolve such issues?

In Nigeria today, it is recommended that women space their children between three –five years, but there are risks involved in giving so much space on the part of the mother and her baby. Talking to Woman’s Own, a generasl practitioner, Dr Niyi Osamiluyi states that “In the past, the recommended time for spacing your children was two years, but now it is three to five years.

You can look at child spacing from two angles, in terms of physiological changes ( the body of the woman) and you can also look at it from the social factor. The woman’s body after child bearing needs time to come back into shape. That is the physical and physiological aspect, on the other hand, we also need to talk about the socio-economic factor, in terms of bringing up children, sending them to school e.t.c.

He further disclosed that “Although it is not a crime if you do not space out your children but it is what’s recommended now.    In medicine, let me if you an illustration if you step on a nail you would need to take TT. Now that is what is recommended. It does not mean that everybody that steps on the nail contacts tetanus. Eventually, the output is recommendation.

This illustration also applies to child spacing.    It doesn’t mean that because some women space their children, it would work for others. There are some women who are grand multifarious. So when the mother tries giving birth, there could be issues of blood being stuck in the uterus during child birth. It does not mean it will happen to everybody”.

He also added that “There are related occurrences where women have problems conceiving after the first child, we call them secondary infertility. They would have to see their doctors to look at what is happening, depending on what type of family planning was used. There are different injectibles and other things so you try to investigate and look at what could have caused it.

You would realize that as women age, there is an increased possibility on issues when they want to give birth. There are potential issues even with the baby they have. When the recommendation is three to five years, the question is how many children do you want to have? If you want two years or more spacing between your children, it would depend on how many you want to have and how early you started rearing children. If you start having children in your twenties, at least by the time you get to your thirties, you are closing shop. The older you get, there are issues physically and there are potential issues with the pregnancy.”