In less rational times, when science understood less about the miracle of pregnancy than we do today, old wives’ tales abounded – what is OK to do in pregnancy and what is strictly off limits, how to perform strange rituals to select or detect the gender of the child and much else beside.
There are literally hundreds or supposed ways to tell if it’s a girl or a boy; we look at some of the other strange old wives tales that surround pregnancy and try to sort the fact from fiction:
1. Don’t tell too many people about your pregnancy, it could cause a miscarriage
Obviously this is nothing but superstition, but a lot of women are more comfortable telling about their pregnancy only after the third trimester when the pregnancy is well established and the chances of a miscarriage are much reduced. As for this, do what feels right but that doesn’t mean you hide the news from your doctor!
2. No exercise during pregnancy
We now know that exercise is very good during pregnancy and unless there are medical reasons not to exercise or a woman really feels uncomfortable from the exercising, exercise all through pregnancy is a great idea. Just be careful to lower the impact because of the possible damage to loosened ligaments and joints, and be careful about falls or hurting yourself.
3. Solar/Lunar Eclipses can negatively impact a pregnancy
This again is nothing but superstition because eclipses cannot cause any problems for a pregnant mother or her baby. These beliefs stem from a fear in lack of understanding about eclipses; when people believed that they were the work of the devil and so on. Pregnant women need to exercise the same caution as everyone else, about protecting the eyes and not looking directly at the sun during a solar eclipse, because this can damage the eyes – any eyes not just pregnant ones!
4. Pregnancy heartburn means a hairy baby
This one may not be such a myth or superstition since at least one study has examined the relationship between heartburn and hairy babies to find that there is indeed some connection. It is thought that the hormones that control heartburn also have something to do with the growth of hair in the womb. So if women find that they have a lot of heartburn during one pregnancy only to produce a hair baby and then suffer little or no heart burn in their next pregnancy and go on to birth a relatively hairless baby, there is a causal link there.
