THE SECOND BABY – INTRODUCTION
Many couples who have had problems conceiving their first baby have found no trouble in becoming pregnant for a second or subsequent time. But what about the agony of those whose second baby does not materialize? The women themselves often say, ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be making such a fuss because I am so lucky to have one baby.’ For those setting up infertility self-help groups, one of the first questions always seems to be, ‘Do we have separate groups for those with and without children?’ Couples with trouble conceiving a second child are certainly not recognized in the statistic which says that only 4% of women remain involuntarily childless at the menopause, but fortunately they have been included in Hull’s figures of one in six couples seeking help for infertility at some stage in their lives (Hull, Glazener, Kelly et al., 1985).
The reliance on the efficacy of birth control is so great that a woman’s expectation of control over her own reproductive capacity is equally high. When contraception, pregnancy and contraception again have followed in an easy sequence, the non-occurrence of the expected pregnancy comes as a great shock.
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