> >We all know about the gestation period being about 266 days or 38 weeks or >about 9 months. I obviously thought there must be a period of time for the >mother to recover. But when I asked my wife about it, I was surprised to >learn (males just don't think about these things) that at least 6 months was >required. Making enquiries on the Net I found that this is because whether >the mother breast feeds the baby or not, the very act of giving birth means >that there is a lactation period which acts as a contraceptive. For the >first 6 months it is 98% effective, after 6 months the risk of getting >pregnant gradually increases. I gather it was never safe to rely on this - a healthy woman recovered fast. The 'norm' in so far as there was one, for unregulated births for a normally fertile couple, is that the first two babies are often one year apart, then it will settle down to a pattern of almost exactly two years apart, with the last one perhaps 3-4 years behind the next last. Some couples where the wife is better fed and has servants may produce one a year (not recommended, even for the idle rich, and there is an example in the Cavendish family where the mother had 8 in succession a year apart; the husband was warned she would not be able to cope physically with another so quickly. But he had to have his rights; she died of the next one. A few families with lower fertility may settle into a 2 years; then 2 1/2 to 3 years, then perhaps a final 5. > >This is important information for genealogists. Assuming that baptisms take >place a few days after births, This is really only true in towns, or in the earlier centuries. Country folk more often tended to wait 3 or later 4 weeks. After the period when failure to baptise could attract a fine or legal reprimand (C17, early C18), the time scale either lengthened or became more irregular. >(Children baptised, time between this child's baptism and the next baptism >in years, months and days) >Between A and B, 2y 5m 0d >Between B and C, 3y 1m 23d >Between C and D, 2y 0m 19d >between D and E, 1y 4m 15d >Between E and F, 3y 3m 3d >Between F and G, 1y 2m 3d - query >Between G and H, 1y 10m 1d >Between H and I, 1y 3m 20d >Between I and J, 2y 1m 8d >Between J and K, 1y 7m 3d >Between K and L, 3y 0m 24d >Between L and M, 1y 2m 19d - query I suspect that there is either late miscarriage, where the interval lengthens out, or late baptism intermittently - so the actual interval is different. You don't mention the name involved. It is wise to be able to rule out two families with the same pair of names, baptising more or less alternately in the same parish. -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society