A tale of myths

“If you stay mad at someone while pregnant, your baby will resemble that person.” TRUE OR FALSE?

I was having an interesting conversation with my mother concerning her pregnant days-the highs and the lows. But what struck me was the bit concerning her aversions. Just as pregnant women get cravings so do they experience certain aversions. She had me in stitches when she told me that her biggest aversion while expecting my elder sister was that she could not stand the sight of meat hanging from those hooks in a butchery.

All the same, it got me thinking of myths surrounding pregnancy. How cravings and aversions towards certain foods or things can serve as indicators of the eventual outcome of your baby, be it the sex or even more dramatic how your baby will look like. Many people call them myths but I prefer the term old wives tales as this takes me back to the medieval times when women would wear their corsets tight if only to draw emphasis on their ample bosoms and gossip about their pregnant neighbour who, if she looked beautiful, had to be expecting a boy as girls tend to steal their mothers’ looks’.

Pregnancy myths are a dime a dozen and so are the people willing to share their pregnancy wisdom. Some of the stuff you will hear may have an iota of merit, like the following: ‘pregnant women shouldn’t take out cat poop due to a virus in the poop called Toxoplasmosis.’ Some other myths are own right absurd, consider this one: ‘if a pregnant woman sees something ugly during her pregnancy, she will have an ugly baby.’

Here are some other myths:

It’s the way you carry
I can bet it’s not the first time you’ve heard this. It is always assumed that if you are carrying low then it’s a boy and if it’s high then it’s a girl. Science rubbishes that myth, arguing how your belly looks during pregnancy is purely physiological. That the way you carry is determined by muscle and uterine tone as well as the position of your baby.

Cravings
There has been a notion that what a woman craves is as a result of the sex of her baby. Females have often been found to have a natural tendency to like sweet things. It therefore goes without saying that should your cravings lean towards the sweet things, then you are more than likely to be carrying a girl whilst if all you want to do is drink bitter lemon, then a boy it is. Could it be that it’s simply because men are from Mars and women Venus, the differences start that early on?

Weight gain
The myths are not restricted to the woman alone. Here’s one for the father- to-be. So they say that if your partner gains weight when you are pregnant, then you are most likely carrying a girl. If he stays the same, it is a boy.

And now to highlight the ones that are bizarre:

• If you stay mad at someone while pregnant, your baby will resemble that person
• If a pregnant woman asks you to get her something that she craves, whatever it is, you better do it otherwise you get an affliction-stye-in your eye.
• If your baby cries a lot, he/she will grow up to be smart (I believe this was created just to make mums feel better)
• If your right breast is larger, it will be a boy. If it is your left breast, then it is a girl.

With regards to their legitimacy, I prefer to live it to the superstitious type. After all, superstitions have been the mystical underpinnings that have constantly defined what tradition is.

END: PG 36 /20