As some of you may be aware, I went for a small gap between my kids, five years ten months between number one and number five!
A girl I went to school has just had her second child, 27 years after her first!
do you have, or know anyone with small or very large gaps between their kids?

Queenie xx

I have a friend from high school who gave birth to her son at 21. Less than three months later she was pregnant with her second child, a daughter. I'm under the impression that they were accidental babies, though. She and her boyfriend got engaged after she found out she was pregnant with her son and they planned the wedding for after he was born, but they had to push it back when she became pregnant again. Her daughter is now three months old and there's no wedding in sight.

I am friends with a Mormon family with ten children. Mom gave birth to the last child when the eldest child was 22.

When I was in nursing school, I cared for a mom who was pregnant with child #9, and her oldest child was 11. She was going to name this child "Love" regardless of gender. I wonder how they are doing now, if she's pregnant again.

When I have kids, I think I want about a year between when I give birth and when I am pregnant again. Who knows how it will actually pan out, though!

I'm the second of five, and there's 10 years between the first one and the last. Of course, there was a divorce and remarriage in here that caused most of that age gap, but even still.

In my dads family, there's 21 years between the first and last kid. The oldest kid was actually mistaken for the dad of the youngest one, when they got to the hospital.

My mother in law is the second of two kids, there's 16 years between them. She says basically, her brother didn't speak to her until she was of age.

At this point, I'm super uncomfortable with the age gap that I'd have in my family, if I added a second kid. I think if there's a life circumstance change, a big gap between kids is one thing. Like my mom, who got divorced and remarried. A gap in kids is understandable in that case.

If here's just...a gap, then I don't think you're having a second kid - you're having your second first kid. If I were to get pregnant tomorrow, James would be almost six before the kid would be born, and almost 12 before the kid would be old enough to really play with him. And when you're 12, you're not especially interested in hanging out with your kid brother!

There's 12 years between my sister and me. Same parents.

Helen

On two ends of the spectrum, I have friends who had their first child in January of 2009 (a very planned baby.) Then they had twins the following March- so three babies in thirteen months. The twins were an accident, though...when the dad was telling us that his wife was pregnant at Christmas, he was drunk in a hot tub and kept yelling "It was ONE TIME!!!", hahaha. Fortunately, they both have great jobs and were in an okay position to have that many kids.

On the other end of the spectrum, my mom has friends who had a 14 and a 16 year old when they had another baby (and then another one a year later.) In that case, the dad worked up in a rural mining camp and they didn't see each other that often, and...oops.

I was an "oops" child. My oldest brother is 11 years older and my other brother is 9 years older. It was hard because my parents were the oldest ones when I was growing up...but looking back that really didn't matter at all because my parents were far more active than almost any other parents I knew. They still are as a matter of fact.

My cousins are ten months apart. The girl was born and five months later, my aunt noticed a difference in her breast milk production. Sure enough, she was pregnant! They should have been eleven months apart, but boy cousin came a few weeks early.

Same story with a good friend of my grandma's. She had a baby, and when she went in for her six week checkup, she was pregnant again. Even crazier, she was pregnant with twins. So she had three babies within ten months. They became birth-control using Catholics after that

Personally, i want my children to be only a few years apart from each other. There's 3 years between my older brother and me and 4 years between the younger brother and me. I don't find that bad but I'd love for a year or two between my children.

Now my one cousin can't seem to stop knocking his girlfriend up...she had a five year old when they got together, then she got pregnant soon after hooking up...then a few months after having the baby she got pregnant again and when the youngest was a year or so old she got knocked up again...and she has no idea how to parent. Man, she's horrible. And she BRAGS about how all her babies were premature (don't know how premature all of them were, but the third child was a few MONTHS premature and only weighed about 3 pounds) because they were small babies and "easier to birth"...yeah...honestly I wouldn't care how much easier it is to shove a small baby through my hoohah is, I'd rather have a HEALTHY baby. But either way all four of her children have been premature...and I know the oldest has a few disabilities and I think the second oldest does but she's so young it's hard to tell...but anyway...yeah.

My dad comes from a family of 12 children and I'm not exact on how far apart they are but there's maybe 20 years between the youngest and the oldest.

My message is too old for me to edit, so I have to make a new one to talk about my own preference for spacing. I don't want big age gaps, but I don't want small ones either. It's important to me to follow WHO standards and breastfeed each child for two years, and I wouldn't want to risk my milk drying up before that two year mark. In my perfect world, I'd start trying for the second as soon as my first hits 23-24 months, with no more than a 3 year age gap. I'm only hoping to have two, so we'll see.

Most people I went to school with had a fairly average gap between each child, usually two/three years or so. I'm the youngest of three - my brother is three years older than me and my sister is two years older than him. So roughly five years between three kids. Although my mom has always been open that I wasn't planned and she would have waited another year or so, as my brother was such a handful! lol!

My sister has three boys. The eldest is just four (July) The middle will be three in December, the youngest will be two next May. So they're pretty close. The first and second were planned but the third was a little sooner than expected. My sister said it is hard having three boys so close in some ways but at least she's getting the toddler years over quite quickly! lol!


I did have a friend at school who was an only child until she was 17 when her parents had another child. She found it quite a hard adjustment to start with but now they're pretty close.

Just remembered there was another kid at school who when we were 15 his older brother and sister were 33 and 36, I think his mom or dad had been married before, and his mom had retired already.


Personally I'd like to have my kids reasonably close but not too close. Maybe two years or so between each child. But then again I only want two kids so I'm not that fussy.

MOOM

My mom is the 5 out of 16. And between the first born and the youngest there is a 22 year gap. All have the same mom and dad.

I have aunts and uncles who have nieces and nephews who are older then they are. haha

There are 16 or 17 years between my mom and her younger sister. She was an accident baby. My grandmother had my mom when she was 19 though, so she wasn't old when she had my aunt.

My family has both small and large gaps. The smallest is 2 years, and the largest is 21. My mom didn't have all of us (9) kids though. Most (7) of us are adopted.

I'm the eldest of four, my first brother was born 13 months after me, the next was born 10 months after him. My mum swears this was her one planned pregnancy, this meant she had three children all under the age of three.

My youngest brother was born when I was five years and seven months if I've done my sums correctly.

I also have four children but I didn't have them as close together as my mum, thank God. My eldest was six when my daughter was born, she was 20 months when her next brother came and he was 26 months when my youngest was born.

Ok I was almost as mad as my mum, I did have three under school age and I ended up with one girl and three boys too.

My two are almost six years apart. I like it in many ways because they each got a lot of one on one from me. The boy had just started school right after little sis was born. They were not terribly close growing up but they are as close as many of my sibs and I are. And the oldest was old enough to help me with his sister. And I never had two in diapers.

Now, growing up, my mom had 7. The second was born just shy of a year after the first, then came me 15 months later and then my younger brother 15 months after me. Another brother came four years later, then another girl five years later and another boy two years after her. Throw in a couple of steps, one only three months younger than me and we had a houseful.

With the oldest four, she had four kids under the age of four and she was only 21. For years, she used to have a recurring dream where she was driving with us all in the car and she would come to a bridge and as she crossed it a flood came and washed the car away and she would be faced with the choice of which two chldren she could save. She always woke up in tears after that dream.

You know the Herdman's in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever? That was us. Wild, undersupervised and a mom completely overwhelmed. She said when she was growing up she wanted enough kids to drive a school bus. Well, she got 'em. Then she didn't know what to do with us. It took a lot of crowd control. When she put her foot down, she could straighten us up pretty quick but she often was too busy to do so.

After all that chaos, two was plenty for me.

kk~

My siblings are 12,9 and 6 years older than me. I didn't really know my oldest two siblings very well growing up because they were so far ahead of me. College and High School age boys with a Kindergarten sister. My sister and I were close, and still are. She was my babysitter almost all of the time. We got along for the most part, and we are still close to this day. We never had sibling rivalry or anything, because we were far enough apart that we were not really ever compared.

My kids are 7 years apart. I like it.

When James started dancing, he danced with a little girl named Aaliyah. Aaliyah had two older sisters - one was a freshman in college, the other was a freshman in high school. Aaliyah was THREE, and made it very apparent, very early that she'd never been told the word "no" before. See what a striking impression she made, that I still remember her? Oy vey, that one...

My dad is the youngest of five and there are fifteen years between him and the next youngest brother. His oldest brother is twenty years older. My dad was definitely an "oops" baby, too. As a result, he was mostly raised by his oldest brother and his only sister (she was the middle child) since his mom had started working once she thought she was done having babies!

There were about six years between my brother and me. I think this was a pretty good gap and if I have kids, I would like to stick to a four to six year gap. Two years would be nice but I would hate to be trying to handle a two year old and an infant at the same time. Oi.

Thought I'd add that me friend had her first child at 14 and her next at 41!
Hubby and his sister have a 12 year age gap.

KeepOnSingin I love your Mom and Dad. Adopting a child can be hatd, but your parents are amazing people to adopt seven.

Queenie xx

^27 years is still alot of a gap, but when you have your first at 14, I'm not hating on you taking a few years off. You go ahead and sit this next one out. :/

One of my preschool students comes from a family of four children. He is three, he has a 9 year old sister, a sister in her college (probably 20ish), and a sister who is late 20's/early 30's. They have the same mom and dad. I know mom had the first one young but took a pretty extended break between each child.

My godfather had his first child before his mom gave birth to his brother. So his child's uncle is younger than she is! Is remember being at a bonfire at their house when I was probably 8 and just thought it was hysterical that this girl was calling this younger kid uncle. My parents had to explain it to me because I thought they were trying to trick me.

My sister and I were two years apart. We had so much sibling rivalry growing up. We were completely different personalities so we never really played together and were really mean to each other. We are close now that we are both out of the house but hated each other growing up.

I'm an only...most likely a consequence of WW II when dad was away shortly after I was born.

My own two kids, both now in their mid-40's are ten months three weeks apart in age. Both kids were about a month early. The older one was the boy the younger a girl. They do not particularly look alike he is fair and blond, she is brunnette and a fairly dark complexion. This reflects sort of the mix between my wife and myself. When they grew up, she was somewhat taller until the early teen years. He was a bit of a runt until that time. He grew up to be six feet tall even. She's about 5'8".

They were and are a great brother-sister act. They always looked out for one another, had mutual friends to a large degree. They went to college together and lived together all through college in a condo. (Each had a roommate of the same gender.) Even in things like dating and ultimately marriage, a prospective suitor or spouse had to meet the "sibling" test. Each is married, my son at 26, my daughter at 37. Both had kids late, each has two boys, now age 8, 5,5, (nearly 6) and 3. The two five year olds are but six weeks apart in age. The cousins are very close as well. My son lives about 12 driving miles from us, my daughter about 35 miles, but she teaches in our county only 15 miles away.
We see both kids and their families frequently and individually see our son and daughter almost ever week. While we don't (and won't) act as regular sitters for the grandkids, we get to participate in their lives to a large extent often by filling in logistic challeges when kids have to be at different places at the same time (my son's wife is often on the road for her job, my son-in-law is a part owner of the company he works for.)

The age closeness didn't seem all that funny at the time, but we managed pretty well and in the end actually seemed to provide many advantages.

Jon

i have three daughters , there is a gap of 18 yrs between the oldest and the youngest, they are still very much like sisters fighting over the remote when ever they are together nitemare but i would not change the age gap for any thing

My girls were 9 and 11 when I found out I was expecting my first son.
Then last year I discovered I was expecting again !! very much in shock lol
my eldest daughter is 15 and my baby boy is 6 months no where near as big of gap as 27 years though !

Angie x

There's 21 years between me and my sister (different mums) what is a little strange is my sister is 3 and my own daughter is 1 so its a little weird for my dad with them been close in age.
My dad was 16 when I was born and 38 when sister was born.