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No need to wait
WHO advice to wait two years before next pregnancy questioned .
New research has challenged the conventional wisdom that women must wait at least 24 months after giving birth to become pregnant again .
Curtin University-led research found that the WHO recommendation that women wait two years , in order to reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes like preterm and small-for-gestational age births , may be unnecessary for mothers in high income countries .
Lead researcher Dr Gizachew Tessema from the Curtin School of Population Health said the 15-year-old WHO advice is based on limited evidence from resourcelimited countries .
His team looked at approximately 3 million births from 1.2 million women with at least three children , and found that the risk of adverse birth outcomes after an interpregnancy interval of less than six months was no greater than for those born after an 18-23 month interval .
They also found that siblings born after a wait of 60-months or more had an increased risk of adverse birth outcomes .
“ Given that the current recommendations on birth spacing is for a waiting time of at least 18 months to two years after live births , our findings are reassuring for families who conceive sooner than this ,” he said .
Dr Tessema said just as the current WHO recommendations are not age specific , the study ’ s results 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 ,” he said . ■
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