How Soon Can I Get Pregnant After Giving Birth?

The ability to choose when to have kids — family planning and birth spacing — has been hailed as one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century. While you might assume that family planning is confined to birth control, that’s not at all the case.

Educating yourself about your fertility, especially after pregnancy, also falls under family planning, and that’s exactly what Dr. Fernando Otero and the team here at Women’s Clinic of the Rio Grande Valley want to focus on here.

Ovulation and pregnancy

The reproductive hormones in your body fluctuate considerably throughout your life and control a good deal of your fertility.

During your reproductive years, these hormones create menstrual cycles that are centered around ovulation. Each month, your body prepares for conception by releasing an egg and then sheds the egg during your period if there’s no fertilization.

When you do become pregnant, your hormones shift into a different mode. They support fetal growth and suspend ovulation, which is why you can’t get pregnant when you’re already pregnant.

Ovulation after you give birth

While it makes sense that you can’t get pregnant during a pregnancy, how about after you give birth? Believe it or not, women can get pregnant in as little as three weeks after childbirth, especially if they aren’t breastfeeding.

Just as your hormones suppress ovulation while you’re pregnant, they continue doing this after you give birth, as long as you’re breastfeeding. Medically known as lactational amenorrhea, if you breastfeed every 4 hours during the day and every 6 hours at night, and you don’t feed anything other than breast milk, you shouldn’t ovulate or have any periods during this time. And this natural form of birth control can go on for about 6 months.

We want to emphasize that if you’re relying on breastfeeding as birth control, you need to be vigilant about your breastfeeding and stick to the schedule we outlined above. Any deviation can change your hormones and kick them into fertility mode again.

Family planning your way

If you’re reading this because you want to avoid getting pregnant too soon after giving birth, then we do suggest that you use some form of birth control, especially if you aren’t breastfeeding 100% of the time.

If you’re reading this because you want to get pregnant as quickly as possible after giving birth, then do know that breastfeeding might delay your fertility for up to 6 months.

While the common recommendation is to wait 18 months after childbirth to get pregnant again, how you space out your births is entirely up to you. For our part, we’re here to help with whatever family planning goal you have in mind, and we can weigh in medically if there’s any benefit to waiting.

If you have more questions about family planning or how soon you can become pregnant after giving birth, please don’t hesitate to contact one of our offices in McAllen or Edinburg, Texas, to schedule an appointment.