Doctors believe a woman's body needs time to recover after pregnancy

It follows a study which shows short intervals between pregnancies increase the risks of complications.

These include premature deliveries, giving birth to underweight babies and even the death of the infant.

It would be good advice to take just a little bit more time to let your body get over birth before you try again Professor Bill Ledger

Doctors said that while the risks of these complications happening were small, women should be made aware of them.

Professor Gordon Smith of Cambridge University and colleagues based their findings on a study of 89,000 women in Scotland between 1992 and 1998.

Tracking

The women were tracked during their second pregnancy. They had all been pregnant before, at most five years ago.

One in 20 had become pregnant within six months of their last pregnancy.

They found these women were more likely to have a complicated second birth.

They were twice as likely to give birth early or see their child die.

These risks applied to women who had complicated first births and those who did not.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the doctors said: "The main finding of this study is that in women having a second birth, a short preceding interpregnancy interval was an independent risk factor for extremely preterm birth, moderately preterm birth, and neonatal death."

The doctors suggested these complications may have occurred because the women did not give their bodies enough time to recover after their previous pregnancy.

The study also found many of the women who got pregnant again quite quickly were teenagers from socially deprived backgrounds.

Many had also suffered complications during their first pregnancy.

They suggested that doctors should warn all women about the risks of getting pregnant again too quickly, paying particular focus to teenagers and women who have just lost a baby.

"Women should be informed of a small but significantly elevated risk of preterm birth and perinatal death when they conceive shortly after a birth," the doctors said.

Socially disadvantaged

Professor Bill Ledger, head of head obstetrics and gynaecology at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Sheffield, said: "It would be good advice to take just a little bit more time to let your body get over birth before you try again.

"I have to say I would be surprised if many people were desperately ken to get pregnant so fast as the first six months following birth can be exhausting."

But Prof Ledger said the majority of women who got pregnant quickly after giving birth were young and from the poorer social classes, who did not have good access to contraceptive advice.

He said the NHS was good at treating people who asked for help, but poor at disseminating good advice into the community.

He also warned that family planning clinics - often the first port of call for socially disadvantaged women - were under threat as funding was tight, and in some cases being withdrawn.

"There is a message for the government here. They need to put more money into the care of the disadvantaged, and this is just another example of where it goes wrong," he said.