I really, honestly thought I’d heard them all when i was pregnant, and in the months following the birth when I was still reading websites and books about the new little gal. I heard all about the spicy food making redheads and the girl babies stealing your beauty and putting your hands above your head would make your baby strangle on the umbilical cord.
But today, I spoke to a friend of mine that is due in a month or so and she asked me if after the baby was born, did I lick her.
I’m sorry, I must be losing my mind. What?
She explained that her very close friend made it a point to take her newborn baby, not yet cut from the cord, and lick her just once on the forehead, to ‘build up her antibodies’.
Antibodies for what dear? I asked, quietly dialing the local nuthouse.
You know, she said, the antibodies…to make her healthy.
Let’s put our medical knowledge aside here, and just assure me that I’m not alone in thinking this is John Waters Level Bizarre. Have you heard anything stranger?
I don’t think that’s an Old Wives Tale, I think it’s just one nut. Let’s hope it doesn’t catch on. It seems to be a wild overreach of the idea that babies should be exposed to some germs so they’ll develop better immune systems. But yeah, it’s truly weird.
As she explained, it stems from the animal kingdom, when mothers stimulate newborn mammals by cleaning them immediately with their tongue. I told her that they also eat the amniotic sac, and perhaps she could enjoy that with some fresh greens?
Tell her the warm wet washclothes serve that purpose. Yech! ETA: What do you think you do when fostering young kittens or puppies after they are done eating? You take a warm wet washcloth, and wipe their little bottoms so they will poo/pee. This is what their mothers do, they must be stimulated to poo or pee if they are very young, and as they get a little older it is still better to wipe them and stimulate them to poo so you can clean them up now instead of later when it can get everywhere. Then they finally reach litterbox/paper training age.
I was told by several people that if I licked my baby and he tasted especially salty, it’s a sign of cystic fibrosis. I didn’t try it when he was a newborn, because he was a little too slimy, but since then I’ve heard that babies with CF smell odd, so I did spend a few minutes sniffing him.
Then he was tested, and thank goodness, doesn’t have it.
Hooo boy, try having a Chinese mother in law. She’ll tell you that the wife:
(1) of course can’t raise her arms above her head, but also
(2) can’t use scissors or needles, it will somehow snip the baby’s life away,
(3) can’t have furniture rearranged in her house without warning the baby’s spirit, otherwise he’ll be scared away
(4) can’t wash her hair for a whole month after the baby’s born
(5) can’t leave the HOUSE for a whole month after the baby’s born
(6) shouldn’t drink anything cold during pregnancy and at least one month after
(7) should avoid a variety of people, places things and activities to prevent the baby from being possessed by a ghost.
I once heard that if you get scared and touch your face, you’ll put a port wine stain on the baby’s face. :eek:
Also, don’t buy any baby stuff until the mother is into the 2nd trimester. It’s supposed to be bad luck. Personally, I don’t believe in bad luck, but it’s probably a good idea to get through the “iffiest” part of the pregnancy before you start buying stuff anyway. However, a neighbor lady of mine feels that it’s the reason her daughter miscarried.
I heard someone tell a new mother that the mother should not allow any woman who was menstruating to hold the new baby because this would cause the baby to have colic.
Heh, while licking your baby wouldn’t tell you anything, there is a glimmer of reasoning for this myth. The test for CF in newborns is a sweat test. Babies with CF an abnormal means means of transporting sodium and chloride through the cell membrane. Wikipedia:
I read somewhere in the last month (somewhere highly reputable) that portwine stains and the like are now thought to be caused by a lack of oxygen(?) in that section of the uterus. It was really interesting, and naturally, I didn’t save the article.
Well, babies do get their intestinal flora from Mom during a normal vaginal birth. But if being slowly squeezed out the vagina (which itself has bacteria) and passing next to the anus isn’t enough to properly colonize your little darling, licking him on the forehead isn’t going to contribute much!
For me, the weirdest tale is the one about raising your arms over your head. I can understand this persisting in a primitive society, but come on people! If someone tells me this, I ask them to explain the mechanics. Oh, and a corollary: it’s something of an old wives’ tale that having the cord around the neck is a dire emergency. From what I’ve read, it’s not preferred, but it’s much less dangerous than, say, having the cord compressed between the baby’s head and the cervix. It’s not like Junior is using his windpipe to breathe during birth.
People haven’t bugged me much with this stuff this time around. One acquaintance got all excited and said we should look at, erm, Chinese astrological charts or something to see if it would be a boy or a girl. Then she kind of backpedalled and said, “I’m not sure exactly how accurate they are . . .” and I replied, “I think they’re right about fifty percent of the time.” Yes, I’m a bitch.
Well, this same friend of mine is Jewish and she told me that it’s Jewish tradition that you can’t have ANYTHING in the house relating to baby until the baby is born. Kind of a ‘don’t count your chickens’ attitude. So there were no showers, she can’t set up her nursery. They bought the carseat but are ‘hiding’ it in their basement storage locker.
I can’t imagine going to the hospital to give birth knowing I have nOTHING prepared at home. Yikes.
I worked with a Jewish woman who told me “baby showers are against my religion”. Which always tickled me because I’m pretty sure that during the time when the Torah was written there weren’t many celebrations of that type to even think about forbidding them. I mean, life was pretty nomadic at that time. Where would you rent your wishing well?
