Pregnancy Myths

[Persephone]

Share the ones you've heard, be they BS or not. Anyone hear a myth, discount it, then have it happen to them? I want to hear those. Especially the funny ones. I'm in my last month, and pretty darned sick of it. I need a laugh.

Here's my two, that I never believed, until they happened to me:

1) Your butt gets bigger when you're carrying a boy. I never believed this one, but then, my first two were girls. My butt is so huge now it's as if I'm actually carrying the kid back there, and the front is just for show. And this one's a boy.

2)Chronic heartburn means your baby will be born with a lot of hair. Never believed this one, either. My first was born bald as a cue ball, and didn't have any hair to speak of until she was about two, and I never had heartburn. I ate Tums like after-dinner mints with my second, though. Water gave me heartburn. When she was born, she had a full head of hair. I'm having a lot of heartburn with this one, too.

Tell me the stuff that's happened to you! I'd love to hear it

[Gaudere]

My Grandma truly believed that if you raised you arms above your head the umbilical cord would strangle the baby. She was very upset that my mom would play badminton, with all those overhead shots. I suspect this myth was originally created by a pregnant woman who just didn't want to have to get stuff down from high shelves anymore.

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"Eppur, si muove!" - Galileo Galilei

[vanillanice]

When I was pregnant,I carried low,and it was a boy. My friend also did,and hers was a boy too.Any corroboration?

[cmkeller]

The operative myth around my house was that morning sickness is worse with a girl than with a boy.

That one was easily punctured when our second son was born after nine months of almost constant morning sickness (our first son and our daughter, who was born most recently, both gave my wife morning sickness for only three or four months).

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Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

"Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks."
-- Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

[cher3]

My daughter's babysitter, who's from the Azores, told me that she knew our second baby was a boy because my face didn't change. Apparently, if it's a girl your face is supposed to get puffy or something. She was right.

[No Me Ayudes Compadre]

If a pregnant woman doesn't satisfy a craving to eat something, the child will be born resembling the object of the unmet need.

So if she has a taste for a banana and doesn't find one, Junior will spend his life with a banana face.


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"Where there is clarity, there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?"

[Sonic]

I heard this a long time ago from someone but it was so stupid I can still remember it. They said that if you swallow a seed, the baby dosen't have the right kind of stomach acids to digest the seed or something, so the baby will sprout leaves. Maybe that's where we get the jolly green giant, eh?

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Remember- If you're angry it takes 42 muscles to frown, and only a few muscles to smack the idiot that mad you angry in the first place.

Well in these days of near universal ultrasounds, a lot of the mystique has worn off of trying to predict sex ahead of time, but:

cravings Girls make you eat salads and veggies (health food). Boys make you crave pizza and nachos (junk food).

tummy shape Girls ride high; boys ride low.

pendulum With mom lying down, dad holds a pendant over her belly. If it swings head-to-toe, the baby will be one sex; if it swings side-to-side, the opposite sex.

Unrelated, but from personal experience, playing basketball at 41 1/2 weeks does not shake a kid loose.



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Sue from El Paso
members.aol.com/majormd/index.html

Oops - I guess u (underline) is not a valid UBB code...

[Persephone]

Sue, I think you might be right about the boys making you crave junk food. Now that I think about it, maybe THAT'S why your butt gets bigger when you're pregnant with a boy?

Another one I just remembered: When I was pregnant with my first, I didn't have many cravings, but the one thing I could not get through the day without was tomatoes. Not tomato products, but actual tomatoes. I mentioned this to a lady I worked with, and she got this look of horror on her face, and told me I'd better be careful. Tomatoes have a high acid content, and my baby would be born with a birthmark because of it. This falls under the "hey, that sounds plausible" myth category, so I asked my doctor about it. He laughed at me. LAUGHED at me. When he got done laughing, he told me to go ahead and eat all the tomatoes I wanted, because they have Vitamin C, and that's good for me and the baby. Then he said "this is probably a woman who believes that raising your arms over your head will wrap the umbilical cord around the baby's neck and strangle it, too." Oddly enough, she had said this to me when she saw me reaching for something.

[jens]

Another boy/girl one I heard:

You run a credit card over the abdomen. If the baby gets wildly agitated, it is a girl.

This may be more of a joke than a myth, though.

[Shirley Ujest]

You lose a tooth with each baby.

This is a falsehood. If you do not consume enough calcium during your pregnancy, the fetus will take what it needs from your bones.This is why older women have such a problem with osteoprosis in later years due to lack of calcium.

( I'm on vacation, but found internet access...)