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Pregnancy / Contraception / Birth Control: Fact vs. Fiction

Mama_Kitty

Mama_Kitty

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Apr 4, 2002
Messages
352
There are so many ULs, superstitions and ridiculous stories relating to pregnancy (a delicate state in which not a few members of the board seem to have found themselves). I thought it might be handy to put them here.

Off the top of my head, if we start at the beginning:

Preventing pregnancy:
A Coke 'douche'
Having a very hot bath and drinking a bottle of vodka
Doing it standing up
If it's your first time
(from Snopes:)
Jumping up and down immediately after intercourse will prevent conception.
It's impossible to get pregnant if you have sex during your period.
As long as neither party takes off their underpants, no babies will result.
Taking 20 Aspirin right after will halt conception from taking place.
As long as he pulls out before he ejaculates, no sperm will be loosed inside the girl.
Sneezing after sex prevents pregnancy.

Maintaining pregnancy:
No oral sex, given or received
No baby items in the house before the baby
'Wanting' the baby 'enough'
'Not getting your hopes up' until after the 12 week danger period

Things not to do during pregnancy:
Put your arms over your head, it'll wrap the umbilical cord around the baby's neck (ta Escargot!)
Eat spicy food (what do pregnant women in India eat?!)

Boy or Girl?
Doing 'the deed' a few days before ovulation can get you a baby girl because 'female' sperm survive longer

Bringing on an overdue labour:
Sex
Castor oil (not recommended as it can be carcinogenic)
Pineapple (I think this one is true, but you'd need to eat 8 pineapples to get a clinical dose of whatever enzyme it contains)
Hot curry
Walking
Flipping a double mattress
Raspberry leaf tea

Anyone heard any others?

What about the idea that things which happen to you in pregnancy can affect the baby? I went to the Hellfire Caves when I was very pregnant, about 1 week overdue and hoping to get spooked into labour, but sadly it just wasn't spooky enough. I did wonder if she'd have any weird birth marks because of it, but nope. Although she is a little devil at times . . .

And as for cravings, I didn't really have any weird ones, apart from suddenly having a voracious appetite for chocolate. Izzie likes chocolate now, but I don't think that's very surprising. She does prefer things which I eat a lot of though, like pasta and other stodgy things, I don't know if that's because apparently the taste can get into the amniotic fluid or because it passes into my milk when she's breastfed.
 
A little bump, (scuse the pun!) because I've had a major edit to make it a bit more interesting and hopefully reply-provoking . . .
 
Some of them aren't myths though. Sex can bring on an over due labour as sperm contains the same stuff that they use in hospitals to induce you. I know it works although it bought on labout 2 weeks early :D

When you do the deed can influence the sex as male sperm swims faster but dies sooner. So if you copulate as you are ovulating or just after it is more likely you will have a boy. If you do it a few days before ovulation then all the males willhave dies and you will be more likley to have a girl.
 
I have read that statiscally, the father being under 25 increases the chances of having a boy.

My partner and I had a baby recently and she had no weirdness much at all really. She fancied sugar in her tea a bit, bu that was about it. She got heartburn a bit but nmore linked to physical location of the baby more than anything else I think.


I heard the raspberry leaf thing too, but she was tend ays over and bugger all use the so called remedies were. Including more of the same!

All well now and mother and boy are both well (I am not under 25 BTW).

LD
 
I tried most of the labour-inducing ones too, I was 2 weeks overdue! I'm sure the pineapple helped though. My midwife said I was close and if they'd left me to it I probably would have popped of my own accord but our hospital is a bit regimented when it comes to recalcitrant babies. Turns our that a syntocin drip works quite well for ending an overdue pregnancy . . .
 
The local girl's school used to have a very weird twist to the 'avoid pregnancy by standing up' theme by making it specifically standing on a Yellow Pages! God knows what was going through their hormone addled minds when they came up with that!
 
Hmmm, just discovered another pregnancy myth in th emaking! Hubbles seems to feel sick at the thought of certain foods and has suddenly started having to get up 4 times a night for a wee :roll:
 
My nan told me, that her husband, was in agony with sympathtic labour pains when she gave birth to her first. And so the men shoud be! ;)
 
Lethe said:
My nan told me, that her husband, was in agony with sympathtic labour pains when she gave birth to her first. And so the men shoud be! ;)
Click to expand...

I was told that's called 'couvade' (spelling?) and it's a psychological reaction on the part of some husbands/fathers.
When our first was born, my ex husband was in Germany in the army. His aunt sent word through the Red Cross and due to a mix up he didn't receive the message until our daughter was 48 hours old. Turns out he was in bed and wracked with back pain the day she was born, but he didn't even know I was in labor.

He was utterly mystified that he'd fathered a girl. From his reaction you'd have thought I'd given birth to a litter of kittens... :roll:
 
I learned much cra- erm, folk knowledge - from my ex mother in law.

It was she who warned me not to raise my arms above my head, as in washing windows, or stoop to pick up something from the floor, both of which actions would snap the u. cord.
As Kitty was obviously horrorstruck enough to recall!

Heartburn means Baby's hair is growing.

You can have 'dry' labour, when all the fluid falls out and yer insides turn to sandpaper......... :shock:

I have been told by a midwife that sex is no good as a stimulant to labour because the amount of the useful hormone delivered is too small.

I did laugh myself into labour once, which anyone who knows me won't find surprising.

Wasn't laughing for long though. :?
 
as far as i am concerned there are quite enough things about pregnancy that are frightening without having to make stuff up. i'm scared enough about what could happen to *me*, let alone the sodding baby.
 
Sex to induce labour - not to do with the sperm it's to do with the female orgasm. During orgasm the body produces prostaglandins (sp?) A hormone produced all through pregnancy but which peaks in the run up to labour. If you're almost ready to pop the slight increase might push you over the line.

Cujo
 
Orgasm? During sex? In pregnancy? :confused:


Don't you mean, 'at the pickled onion flavoured ice cream counter'? :lol:
 
Mrs Batleyboy tried most of the things to induce pregnancy, except pineapple. She was even jogging around the park at 6am when over two weeks over, nothing worked Batleyboy jnr was 3 weeks overdue, and even then was reluctant to leave Mummy.
 
Has anyone ever tried the various methods of divination to determine the baby's sex? There are always people on my horsey lists who swear they can tell by swinging a nail on a string; the movement (circular vs. back and forth) is supposed to tell you what you've got cooking in there (in this case, they were talking about mares, obviously).
 
One of my highschool teachers once told us that the longer a woman go without sex, the bigger the chanse of a boy once she DOES do the deed. The idea was that the body would interpret the lack of sex as a lack of men and try to make up for it. According to my teacher, this effect can be seen it times after wars, then all the men comes back home after having been away some a longer period of time, and many more than usual of the resulting children are male.

I'm not sure of that I think of this...

I also remember another story from the board; according to dutch folklore, a woman will give birth to a monster if she spends too much time during her pregnancy slaving away by a hot stove. That's some clever woman to come with that one.
 
Yup Elf, you and me too. :lol:

I thought 'The Big 'O'' stood for 'oh, that was quick!' :roll:
 
another story from the board; according to dutch folklore...
Click to expand...

Sooterkins! (Related to slurs about, um, intimate cleanliness, if I recall).
 
One thing I didn't see on this thread was the nesting instict kicking in... and telling the prospective mum that labor is going to start soon. I got that in spades, I cleaned the whole darn house, then sat down for lunch and BAM, labor pains. Had a clean house when I got home from the hospital though. :D
 
This is going back to when my Mum got pregnant with my brother. We lived in the country then and my grandmother was told, by one of the cowmen at the farm, that he added Cider Vinegar to his cattle cake when the cows were in calf, he said the births were always fast and the afterbirth always came away clean. Nan used cider vinegar for join pain, and so she passed this tip on to Mum, who is a ' try anything ' sort of person. My birth had been a pretty hard one. She gave birth to my brother very fast, and after, my sister. She passed this on herself when my sis was pregnant, and my sis is a thin little thing, she looks as if it would be pretty hard for her to give birth ( although whether this childbearing hips stuff is also a UL I don't know ) . So my sister copied it, two teaspons of cider vinegar , honey to taste, three times a day, in water, all through her pregnancies, and all her four births were an hour or less in ' intensive ' labour, like shelling peas, even her first one. So now she swears by it, maybe it's coincidence, and maybe not, but it's a hard ' tip ' to pass on, peoples faces when you say ' try this ' are a picture. :shock:
 
escargot said:
Orgasm? During sex? In pregnancy? :confused:


Don't you mean, 'at the pickled onion flavoured ice cream counter'? :lol:
Click to expand...

But surely a woman blooms during pregnancy? I know I'm soooooooo lucky. And you're not getting him off me.
 
Leaferne said:
Has anyone ever tried the various methods of divination to determine the baby's sex? There are always people on my horsey lists who swear they can tell by swinging a nail on a string; the movement (circular vs. back and forth) is supposed to tell you what you've got cooking in there (in this case, they were talking about mares, obviously).
Click to expand...
I've hard that it's possible to tell the baby's sex by the shape of the mother's 'bump'. If mum-to-be has a wide and low bump, it's a girl, but if it's narrow and high, it's a boy.
(Sorry, dunno if "bump" is a right word, but you'll know what I mean. I lost my dictionary)
 
Veruca Salt said:
I've hard that it's possible to tell the baby's sex by the shape of the mother's 'bump'. If mum-to-be has a wide and low bump, it's a girl, but if it's narrow and high, it's a boy.
(Sorry, dunno if "bump" is a right word, but you'll know what I mean. I lost my dictionary)
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's a common one round where I live. When my SIL was pregnant with her first, everybody including my own mother told her she was expecting a boy due to the position of her bump.

Our local Health Authority at the time (early '90's) refused to let mothers know what sex their babies were, although since 2000+ their policy has changed and expectant mothers can ask to be told their babies sex.

Anyway, my SIL painted the nursery blue, bought blue baby clothes and only had one name picked out for the child, Thomas.

She was very upset when she gave birth to a girl. Some of the earliest photos of my neice show her in blue baby-grows. :)

On the divination angle, my friend had a FOAF hold a needle on a length of cotton above her stomach when she first found out she was pregnant last year.

The woman told her that the way the needle had swung meant that she was expecting a boy. She did ask to be told what sex her baby is and the scan has indicated it will be a boy (due within the next two weeks actually). I don't hold much weight in the needle divining but it pleased my friend as she was desperate for a boy so she can have *one of each*. Having it confirmed has made her ecstatic although knowing her as well as I do, I know she would have been just as happy with a healthy baby girl.
 
one of my great-grandmothers was reputedly absolutely certain that my grandfather was going to be a girl. she was very disappointed when he wasn't. i don't know what method she used to determine that he was going to be female, though, i'll have to ask my mother.

when i was born (i'm the eldest child) all of my greek relatives were disappointed. "oh well, never mind, maybe the next one will be a boy." :x
 
My nan did something with a gold ring suspended on cotton over a passage in the Bible, I can't remember what it was, I'll have to ask my Mum. She certainly did it when mum was expecting me, anyway.
 
When I was growing up it was always the mother's wedding ring used as apendulem over the bump to determine the sex.

See this thread: Slaving over a hot stove?
Click to expand...

I miss the notes and queries forum. *sob*
 
clarrie said:
When I was growing up it was always the mother's wedding ring used as apendulem over the bump to determine the sex.
Click to expand...

I've read about that one before but my friend said she had it done with a needle. I'm not sure if there would be a cultural difference or not but both she and the woman who did the divining are of Afro-Carribean origin.

My friend reckoned her friend had also had it done this way by the same woman a year previously and had the sex of her baby correctly divined so that is why she went to her.
 
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