Old Wives Tales About: Pregnancy

Were any of these Old Wives’ Tales true for you?  How to tell the sex […]

Were any of these Old Wives’ Tales true for you? 

How to tell the sex of the baby: 

1) If you’re carrying high or expanding horizontally, it’s a girl. If you’re carrying low or have a basket ball belly, it’s a boy.

2) Baby girls will ‘steal your beauty’.

3)Dry hands and cold feet mean ‘boy’.

4) The answer is in the heartbeat:  under 140 beats per minute, you’re having a little boy. If it’s over, get ready for your little girl!

5) What are you craving? Sweets indicate a girl where as salty and sour indicate a boy.

6) Morning Sickness: if you don’t have any, you’re having a boy.

Other Stuff

7) If you have bad heartburn, your baby will have. lots of hair.

8) Walking will induce labour.

9) Sex induces labour.*

10)  Drinking dark beer helps the milk come in.

All of theses are myths.

When it comes to the sex of the baby and the heartburn/hair thing, they persist because there is a 50/50 chance of being right. 

With my daughter, my belly was very small and didn’t pop out. Check one off for the myth! But, I didn’t “lose my beauty”. In fact, except for my sleepy eyes, my skin was great!

I had terrible heartburn and she came out with thick black hair.

But, I had no cravings: I had food aversion and I couldn’t stand the smell of meat cooking or coffee being brewed. Near the beginning of the pregnancy, the only thing that would ease the ALL DAY nausea was cheese, pickles and some crackers.

So what, other than an ultrasound, can tell you the sex of your unborn baby? 
Well, in 1999, a study was done by Johns Hopkins School of Public Health researchers. they asked women to predict their baby’s sex any way they wanted to and they found the women were right 55%  of the time. So, basically, it was chance.

They found, though, that women with higher education levels (12 years or more of school) were more accurate (71% correct) even though they based their predictions on dreams and intuition! ha!

Did I say all 10 things above were false? 

I lied. #9 is actually backed up by science. Sex will help induce labour. Have fun!