when is the best time

[colabottle]

to have a second baby??? my dd is 7months old and dh wants to start trying again for number 2!! my friends have differing opinions.

My friend had a 16 month gap and found it hugely tiring! Having said that, I would have thought it would depend on the parents though, as there can't be a 'right' and 'wrong' time to do it.

16m age gap here (deliberate). DS2 is now 18 months and its been very hard, but getting easier as they play together now and can entertain each other in the mornings instead of DS1 just coming in our room.
Also we will only have 1 school year of one at nursery and one at school which will be a pain with the drop offs and pick ups.
They are so close already, can play with the same toys, enjoy a lot of the same activities.
I had horrible pregnancies and difficult first birth so it was a case of getting the 2nd one over with sooner rather than later.

month age gap in the Goatlegs house. tbh i wish i had left it a little longer as ds has been seriously put out by the arrival of his sister and they are only just beginning to entertain each other 2.5 years down the line.
saying that, maybe a smaller age gap could be a good thing , if you're the energetic type!

I had a 2.8m gap.

Was ok, and is absolutely lovely now, but on reflection rocked dd1's world quite a bit.

Dd1 was quite hard work from 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 yr old.

Think a 2yr gap would have been good (dd1 was easy at that age) or a slightly bigger one (say, if she was about 3 1/2) then she would have handled dd2's arrival better.

But having said all that, they are fab together now so am glad it happened when it did. (After all, there are no guarantees you will conceive when you plan it to happen).

They say the best age gap is less than 2 yrs and more than 5yrs, from the child's point of view. Less than 2 yrs and the elder on forgets very quickly that it was ever an only child and will more easily accept the baby. More than 5 yrs and the elder is out of the house with more of a life of its own and less dependent for practical purposes on the parents. I suppose that makes some sense.

That said, I have a 3 yrs 2mth gap and DS1 pretty much ignored DS2 until he was beginning to talk. They get on OK now and can play together for a while before they both go off and down their own thing. However maybe they would have done that anyway, even if they had been closer in age, as they just have different interests.

I had an 18month age gap with my first two and now I have number three ( a little later...) I feel really sad that I missed so much of their baby-ness as I was so busy (being pg, looking after tiny babies, bf, etc)

thanks eveyone. think we need a little more thinking time on this one.especially after the week we have just had with dd.

2.3 age gap, and it was perfect!!! Couldn't have planned it better. And I didn't

I agree with purpleduck - we have a 2.5yr gap and its working great.