Family Planning

I was advised after my delivery that I should not get pregnant for 18 months. Now, my husband and I were initially planning to have our kids be 3 years apart anyway. I had no desire to get pregnant before 24 months...until someone told me I couldn't.

I have never taken kindly to being told what to do. I'm a Taurus! I'm stubborn. I'm also spiteful and dramatic and have these terrific martyr fantasies where I blame my birth experience for the structure of my family.

Only, if you think about it, it's not so dramatic. I know lots and lots of people who want their children to be one or two years apart. There are practical explanations for this: the kids will be good friends, close together in school, the time away from working will be compressed. There are moral or just preferential reasons for this, too: folks like big, close families. There are millions of reasons behind people's family structure choices.

Cesarean sections impose regulations on when or how often we can reproduce. Isn't that terrible? My son is 10 months old now. When he was first born, I couldn't imagine ever becoming pregnant again or replicating the experience of parenting a newborn baby. Now that he's super cute and cuddly and (dare I tempt fate to say) easier, I can have serious conversations about expanding our family.

Except my damaged body puts those plans on a necessary hold for 8 more months.

I've looked around on the internet and read a bunch of magazines and literature. I think this is an issue that is often overlooked.

Was anyone else out there advised to postpone pregnancy due to surgery complications? What did you think about the "spacing"of your kiddos?