Part 1: When Does Chinuch Begin? There is a direct connection between the type of parenting and child spacing. When the baby stays with his mother day and night, nurses on cue without bottles and pacifiers, starts solids gradually at about six months, and spends a good deal of his time either nursing or in close physical contact with his mother, the mother's natural postpartum infertility generally lasts longer. Six to twelve months is fairly common, but a year or two is also quite possible. When you hear of mothers who exclusively breastfed and still had a return to fertility or a pregnancy at three months postpartum, it's often ( but not always) related to scheduled nursings, … [Read more...]
Child Spacing, Part 1: When Does Chinuch Begin?
January 12, 2007 by 7 Comments
I believe that mothers need at least a year, if not two, between pregnancies to recover from birth. Both the toddler and baby are also shortchanged with closer spacing. Each family is different and with a lot of help and support, along with an understanding of attachment and infant development, it's possible overcome this challenge. I am colored by my own experience: My oldest two, now teenagers, were born 18 months apart. I would never willingly repeat that experiment, and I am still not sure whether we came out of it okay. Many Orthodox couples have their first two (or three) very close together. They are reluctant to use birth control at such an early stage, and because they haven't … [Read more...]
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