What age gap do you have and why?

[Ihatewinter321]

I have an 18 month gap between my girls. It is hard but I want to get the newborn stage out of the way as I find it so hard. We want three children and I am deciding when to try for a third. What age gap do you have and why?

Three years due to following factors

1. Horrific HG pregnancy with DS1. Took a long time before I could face doing it again. Also needed DS1 to be older to cope with mummy being so ill for 9 months.

1. I find the baby stage hard. Having DS1 older, fully potty trained, able to dress himself, able to converse/reason with/understand why he has to wait etc has been really helpful. He was a handful as a 2yr old, I could not have coped with a baby on top.

1. Equally, I didn’t want the age gap to be too big. I hope they are still close enough in age to play together and share some interests.

1. Couldn’t afford two in nursery on full fees at the same time. DS1 had his 30 hours funding which will really help and they’ll only overlap for 8 months before DS1 starts school.

1. It took 6 months to conceive DS2, so the gap could have been slightly smaller.

There’s no way I could have managed anything less than a full 2.5 years absolute minimum between them. NCT friends announcing they were pregnant again when their first baby was 13/14 months left me amazed. I was in no way ready to consider another pregnancy and baby when DS1 was that small. It was only when he had his second birthday, I could even think about it.

I have three DC and they are all 21 months apart. I wanted them to be close enough in age to play together and be happy doing similar activities on holidays etc.

Had my oldest son Obsidian in 2016, then Onyx came as a little surprise in 2017 ! Blaise was born in September of last year, we chose to wait until the older tots were a bit more mature so they could help with the baby a bit at home and make things easier on myself and the hubby Xx

25 months between them, close enough to be friends and at similar stages, far enough apart dc1 was toilet trained before dc2 was born so much easier that way.
They are adults now, and still best friends

I have 5 children with varying age gaps. 2 years between 1 & 2, then I was on my own for a while, met husband and had dd2 6 years after dd1.
Then 7 years later we had dd3 and 11 months later dd4!
Dd4 was a surprise 🤣

16 months. We wanted them close in age and things happened sooner than we thought. My youngest is now 10 weeks and it’s hard but lovely.

2 and a bit years. I don't think I could have hacked 2 under 2 but too long and I'd have refused to return to the baby stage and had an only.

We have a 4.5 year gap between ours. Wanted a 3.5 ish year gap but stressful life events meant waiting another year. They are almost 2 and 6 now.

2 years 6 months. We had planned a much smaller age gap but had two miscarriages in between. But it's a lovely gap actually. They are the best of friends (almost always!)

2y3m, my eldest was potty trained and sleeping well, but still napping (which was very helpful when I was very pregnant and nurseries closed for lockdown 1!). When DS2 starts nursery, the 30 free hours for DS1 will kick in so the overall cost will remain similar. I was also keen to get another pregnancy over again, lose the baby weight and get back to normal.

But it's quite hard!

2 3 years we chatted about trying for dc2 came off pill and bfp first month. Took 6 the first time round so took us a bit by surprise. They are the best of friends and it's a great age gap.