The average spacing between American babies is 2-3 years apart, 30 months to pin it down to the month, so the data is on my side regardless of what someone's pediatrician says. In the UK it's even longer at 36-41 months on average. in a study of 51 other countries the average was 32 months.
It is NOT common to TTC when a baby is 4 months old and yet this is something I am seeing again and again amongst my blue swayers. In fact we just had several newbies show up since the start of the year who were TTC with very tiny babies. It's unusual. Not something I see IRL or among pink swayers as a general rule. Hence, my question. The purpose of my question was not "I have a theory and I am in search of data to prove it correct." The purpose of my question is, "this seems to be happening again and again and so I am curious about what the reasoning is."
I will reiterate that I have some pretty serious, well thought out and important reasons why I think you guys should wait past 12 months to TTC if you want a boy. Yes, some people can still conceive boys close together, and I have never said otherwise. I believe it is due to maternal condition and improved fertility enabling a majority of women who are in the best condition and the most fertile to be able to get pregnant again. Many of us are not even seeing our periods return till at least 9-12-18 months, and so people who are able to ovulate and conceive sooner than this, are by default, in better condition and/or eating better than women whose cycles are not coming back that soon. We are also seeing a very, very strong trend where women who are inexplicably taking months/years to get pregnant (reduced fertility) are having girls even with otherwise great blue sways. Reduced fertility probably sways pink. Do I have a study proving this, not yet. But based on the data that I have seen, it's shaking out that way.
Since it's probable that better condition and higher fertility sway blue, we cannot view child spacing thru the same sort of cause and effect lens that we do other sway tactics. Blue Irish Twins do NOT debunk the idea. Women who are able to ovulate and get pregnant within X number of months are NOT a randomly selected sample of the population as a whole. They may be coming in more set for blue, and if something (like close child spacing) takes a person who is 80% likely to have a boy, to 60% likely to have a boy, that is a huge pink sway but would still yield more boys. And then if a person who was coming in at 50-50 did that exact same thing, they'd possibly drop their odds from 50-50 b/g to 30% likely to have a boy.
What we are trying to do here is OPTIMIZE odds of success. You may not personally want optimal odds of success and you may personally have the luxury of TTC many times without any real consequences of that. Other people are not so lucky and are in a position of having ONE chance at another baby. Other people are even less lucky and are in a position where they will probably have to have an abortion if they get pregnant with a girl. Sorry, straight talk here, but entirely true. We have people here from around the world including some women who are in pretty extreme situations and MUST have a boy.
Ladies, I cannot stress it to you strongly enough, that with 9 years of experience on these two boards and 46 years of experience on the Planet Earth the majority of which has been immersed in baby-related bizness (first my mom's pregnancies and then my own), with every fiber of my being, if you want the BEST chance at a boy, you should wait between kiddos. Disregard if you would like, and I will still be happy to help you have the best sway you can, but I do not and will not ever think you are giving yourself the best chance at a boy.
This question was not intended to be about swaying. It wasn't meant to be an opportunity for people to sound off on why I'm completely wrong on the subject and then for me to have to derail the entire thing going off on it. It was meant because when I see a trend, I want to know why that trend is happening. I NEVER forget that we are a self-selected group of people on here, but I am still pretty capable of spotting a trend when I see one, and that is a definite trend. The reason why I ask these type of questions is not to prove swaying true, it is to enable me to help you guys to have better sways. If you have sway questions or want to debate about swaying, let's do that in a DIFFERENT thread if you don't mind.
Now, I would still love to hear from people about why they wanted to have their kids really close together. It's very helpful to me to be able to understand people's reasoning choosing particular things vs. the other. I really appreciate the effort that people put into answering these kind of largely hypothetical and personal questions.
Bump
Not sure where to ask not TTC