New mothers put their health at risk by falling pregnant less than a year after childbirth, study finds

According to a study, mothers who become pregnant less than a year after giving birth risk putting their health and that of their child at risk.

The researchers studied nearly 150,000 births in Canada and found that a short interval between pregnancies affected mothers over 35 years of age.

However, women of the same age who waited 12 to 18 months to conceive again after having a baby reduced the risk of damage to health in the short and long term.

A short pregnancy gap also poses risks for the infant in mothers of all ages, especially those aged 20 to 34 years.

The project was carried out by researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

"Our study found an increased risk for the mother and baby when pregnancies are widely spaced, including for women over 35," said Laura Schummers, a postdoctoral fellow at UBC.

"The findings regarding older women are particularly important because they tend to space their pregnancies further and often do so intentionally."

The authors of the study say it is "the most comprehensive badessment of how maternal age could affect the role of pregnancy spacing".

They added that it was also the first study on the spacing of pregnancies and the mortality or severe morbidity in a high-income country.

Severe morbidity includes the deadly complications of pregnancy, labor, and childbirth.

The researchers found a risk of maternal mortality or severe morbidity of 1.2% among women over 35 who gave birth six months after a previous birth.

But when new mothers waited 18 months between pregnancies, the risk dropped to 0.5%.

The study found that younger women leaving an interval of six months between two pregnancies had a risk of 8.5% spontaneous premature birth

It is at this time that the delivery takes place before 37 weeks of pregnancy, after the start of work.

For women in the same age group who waited 18 months between deliveries, the risk dropped to 3.7%.

"Reaching this optimal interval of one year should be achievable for many women and is clearly worth reducing the risk of complications," said Dr. Wendy Norman, Associate Professor at UBC.

Additional reports by agencies