Pregnancy Tales: Facts for Overcoming Fear

By Lewis Bakkero

Pregnancy is a wonderful time for every couple: enthusiasm and emotion mix in with fear and hesitation in a magical cocktail that takes 9 months to drink. The question: "Am I doing the right thing?" will pop up in your head many times. Pregnancy tales have been there for a while, trying to reduce the uncertainty and anxiety that this new experience generates in all of us. They are an attempt to respond many of the questions pregnant couples face on a daily basis.
"Do you remember what grandma said about the effect of the moon on delivery date? Can I eat sardines while pregnant? Is it right that first babies tend to be overdue?" Some of these tales are based on the excellent observational skills of our elders and have been ratified by modern science. Others have a more uncertain foundation and have been refuted by the available data. The veracity of a few others remains inconclusive.
This book builds on the solid foundations of science to explain in plain English what science has added/removed from the wisdom of our ancestors. This is likely the most comprehensive guide to pregnancy tales up to date. After going through the book you will have first hand knowledge of some of the most pressing questions every pregnant couple faces in this wonderful period of their lives.
The book is organised in several main categories of tales that help locate items of interest. This does not mean you should read the book in any specific order: let your curiosity (or the comments of your in-laws) drive you through it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lewis Bakkero
• Release date: May 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311414991

Lewis Bakkero

Dr. Bakkero holds a M.Sc. in Pharmacology and Human Therapeutics, a M.Sc. in Computer Science, a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Medicine and Surgery from the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain, EU) alma mater of the Medicine Nobel laureates Prof. Ramon y Cajal and Prof. Severo Ochoa. After graduating he has been full time researcher and lecturer in several industrial and academic research institutions.

Book preview

Pregnancy Tales:

facts for overcoming fear

Medical Disclaimer: Certain sections of this book deal with health and medical related issues. Always seek the advice of a trained health professional with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition and before seeking any treatment. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking medical treatment due to information obtained from this book. Any information received from this book is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure. This book is for information purposes only. The information on this book is not intended to replace proper medical care.

All rights reserved. Copyright 2014 Lewis M. Bakkero. Smashwords Edition. Layout and Cover by Martha Branch.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

To my beloved family.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Predicting the Gender of the Baby

Tales Related To Miscarriage

Danger for the Baby

Eating and Digestion

Mum's Appearance

Labour

Epilogue

About the Author

Connect with Me

Foreword

Parenthood means becoming another link in the chain of social evolution. As such, we transmit the knowledge and beliefs from our parents to our children. Knowledge and beliefs often take the form of tales to ease transmission from older to younger generations; tales form an essential part of who we are and how our ancestors perceived the world they lived in.

Pregnancy has always been one of the major milestones in the lives of many couples. This expecting period is full of excitement, curiosity and also a pinch of preoccupation and fear.

This mix of emotions is a healthy and normal one as long as it does not end up in an obsessive behaviour. I have a medical background and have spend many years of my life working on medical research. During our first pregnancy, all this formal education did not save me from digging online and coming back to old medical school books to determine if the last nugget of wisdom of my neighbour was actually true. The book summarises most of the results of my personal research in trying to shed some light onto the shadows that lay at the intersection of tales and actual knowledge.

Folk tales are just an ancient mechanism for reducing the uncertainty associated with pregnancy; a tool for transmitting what is known from parents to children.

As such, these techniques should be preserved and refined. In this book, we do not aim to dismiss all these elements of our culture by ruthlessly applying the rules of science.

As you will see some of the folk tales contain a very good deal of wisdom in them. The truth behind some of these may be either coincidental or based on the solid observational skills of our elders. Some other cases have not been confirmed or scoffed yet.

The key point is that if our ancestors taught us what they thought was right to the best of their knowledge, it is our obligation to do the same for future generations. Let's then honour their memories by complementing their work with whatever it is modern science has taught us; this way our children will benefit from this blend of knowledge from day one (or minus nine months in the case of this book).

This book does not intend to be a comprehensive medical advice guide. The books is for those who wonder what is behind all the traditional folk tales our parents passed to us. Has science backed them? Is science not quite there yet? Why are there contradictory results to explain something our ancestors could spot so clearly? What is the origin of some of the most ubiquitous tales? Is my neighbour or in-law right I should not be eating sardines while pregnant?

The best way to read the book is driven by your curiosity; you can just jump to the topics that most interest or concern you at the time. After a while you may very well run across them all and discover/recall a bit more on how complex we are and what a miracle life is.

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Introduction

Tales around birth and fertility have been used to explain how humans were born as a species. In the Western world the book of Genesis in the Bible describes Adam and Eve as tenants of the garden of Eden and parents of the human race.

There are also plenty of myths that link a deity with Earth's fertility and plentiful harvests, which are classically associated with fertility and childbirth. For instance, Aramazd was the main goddess in pre-Christian Armenia. The first two letters in his name - AR - are the Indo-European root for sun, light, and life; as such she was source of Earth’s fertility, making it fruitful. Similarly, Laima (or Lama in Latvian) is a Baltic goddess of fate. She was associated with childbirth, marriage, and she is the patron of the pregnant women. In Latvia, birth rituals at the end of the 19th century included offerings of hen, sheep, towels or other woven materials to Laima. Laima and her attributed powers are the same than those of the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. Also associated with childbirth is Haumea, the goddess of fertility and childbirth in Hawaiian mythology.

Other myths relate fertility and sexual pleasure. For instance, Qetesh (also Kadesh) is an Egyptian goddess of fertility, sacred ecstasy and sexual pleasure. Some other myths call for an easy birth like, for instance, Sinivali who is a Vedic goddess described as broad-hipped, fair-armed, fair-fingered, presiding over fecundity and easy birth.

While the list of fertility deities is ubiquitous across human cultures (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fertility_deities), the rituals that had to be followed if the favour of the goddess was actually wanted are less known. The advance of globalisation, the conversion of rural into suburban land and the diffusion of scientific work are factors that contribute to the disappearance of many of our folk practices.

However, the fact that that many of these rituals have impregnated our cultures worldwide is undeniable. Some highly representative examples of those remain in the form of traditions, places with the power of getting women pregnant and folk tales. New Orleans Voodoo and Cuban Santeria are examples of how ancient African beliefs have been adapted to the new world and survive with strong roots in our societies.

In a 2007 study including 200 U.S. women (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00737-007-0201-0), the persistence of myths and fears about miscarriage and its relation to maternal thoughts and actions was analysed. The results indicated that an important fraction of the population still believes the mother's thoughts and anecdotal actions can contribute to adverse foetal outcomes. It may be hard to believe 5% of the people in the survey still believe in 18th century superstitions. For instance, this 5% believe that if a pregnant woman sees something frightening, that could cause damage to her unborn baby. The most relevant conclusion is:

Health care providers can reassure patients that these ‘old wives' tales' should not contribute to any feelings of personal responsibility.

This book tries to place the available evidence on top of the most frequently used folk tales today. We believe complementing the tales with whatever it is that science has contributed on the topic is an important element to reassure most women. Indeed, the reader will find that:

Some of the tales have no physiological support whatsoever.

Others have been supported by years of scientific enquiry on the matter.

Many of the tales have not been proven yet and there is contradictory evidence.

The Internet has contributed to the propagation of this folk culture and the merge of myths coming from different cultures. Unfortunately, we tend to give online authors more credit that they actually deserve. We often read scientific sources with poor statistical/medical knowledge to understand the data or with headline making intentions adding more confusion to the overall picture. This book explains the proven facts behind each tale in an accessible manner, but it refers interested readers to the scientific source so that they can dig deeper, exactly as Sherlock Holmes would do.

In the case inconclusive data have been collected by researchers, we describe the evidence that supports and refutes the tale. This way readers can be informed about the current state and can engage in any discussion on the matter with unbiased information.

In most cases the link between our folk tales and the ancient tales that originated them has faded away with time. As a pregnant woman you will probably get bits and pieces of folk wisdom and myths from your own mother, a neighbour, your relatives or even from strangers at the restaurant!!

I remember the looks of some strangers and comments of neighbours when my wife went out jogging while pregnant. It felt like your life was under everyone's radar and that everyone had the right to comment on it. Questions like Am I doing the right thing?, Is my neighbour right and I should quit jogging?, What type of parent will I be? etc. have crossed the mind of every pregnant couple at least a few dozen times per pregnancy.

We believe the book is a wonderful shield to increase your trust in yourself as a parent to be. This will definitely reduce the pressure that well intentioned, but often under informed, people around us may inadvertently exert on us. We added a few symbols at the end of each tale that we believe are a great help in summarising whether or not the tale has been validated (tick icon in a box), refuted (red cross in a box) or contradictory evidence exists in the medical records (approximate symbol in a box).

Finally, the book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date compilation of folk tales around pregnancy. While we tried to add data on top of these tales, we also believe it is a fun game to play along and see how each tale applies to you individually.

Back to Table of Contents

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Predicting the Gender of the Baby

The gender of the baby is fixed at the moment of conception, depending on the chromosome carried by the sperm that reaches the egg.

Chromosomes are like rods built by twisting two strands of DNA and proteins stored in the nucleus of our cells. Human cells contain 23 pairs of chromosomes for a total of 46 chromosomes per cell; 23 come from your mother and 23 from your father.

One chromosome of these 23 is a sex chromosome that differs from an ordinary chromosome in form, size, and behaviour. Depending on these characteristics, sex chromosomes can be of two types: X and Y.

Females have two copies of the X chromosome, while males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome. The X chromosome is present in the ovum, while either X or Y chromosomes can be present in sperm.

Therefore, it is sperm that determines the gender of your baby and that happens from the very moment sperm fertilises the egg. If we could record the whole development process of the baby in the womb, we could see that all embryos start out with the same appearance and it's not until the end of the eighth week of pregnancy that a baby's gender starts to be noticeable in a physical sense. At this point the embryo's gonads will evolve. They will either remain inside the body and evolve into ovaries in the case of a girl, or they will descend and turn into testicles in the case of a boy.

The moment you find out about the gender of a baby is perhaps one of the most exciting points in a pregnancy. Some couples decide to find out before the baby is born while others prefer to wait until birth.

Ultrasound/sonogram technology has given us the choice to decide whether or not we want to know the gender of our baby in advance. Before this milestone pregnant parents had to wait out for the whole 40 weeks gestation period. This created a wide variety of folk tales around determining the gender of the baby that persist to our day.

In this Chapter we will run