Background: Birth spacing is the time interval between two successive live births. Optimal birth spacing
improves the health status of women and also under-five child survival in developing countries.
Objective: To investigate birth spacing practices and its’ determinants in a Tertiary centre in Bayelsa state.
Methodology:This is a descriptive cross sectional study of women attending Antenatal Clinic at the Federal
Medical Centre, Yenagoa, Bayelsa state, Nigeria. 216 self-administered structured questionnaires were
distributed to respondents. One hundred and ninety-eight (198) were returned and additional 21 questionnaires
were removed from the analysis because of incomplete filling. Hence, the respondent rate of this study was
81.5% (176 respondents). The results were analyzed with SPSS windows version 20.
Results: Overwhelming majority of respondents, 84 % were within the age range of 21-35 years and a mean
age of 29.4 ±2.2 years. The mean interpregnancy interval was 32 months.The mean child per woman was 2.
Our contraceptive prevalence was 12.5%. 84 (42.6%) think ideal family size should be four children, 28
(15.9%) think it should be three children and 31 (17.6) ideal family size can be as many as God gives. There
was no statistical significance between education, religion, parity, family income and family planning.
Conclusion: By WHO criteria, the birth spacing practices in this study was good, however, it coincided with a
very low contraceptive prevalence. Therefore, more advocacies by Healthcare providers on contraceptives will
increase uptake and also erode erroneous cultural and religious beliefs about child bearing.