When you’re pregnant there are so many questions that you want answered.
You’re curious about everything that you have to go through – from pregnancy to labour to after the baby’s born.
How do you calm nausea? What should you do to bring on labour if the baby is late? How do you have a pain-free childbirth?
And, of course you’re desperate to know any information at all about what your little one will be like when they do finally arrive – principally will you have a boy or a girl?
And of course, that’s where old wives tales come in.
Generations worth of yarn for you to indulge yourself in and predict anything you can about what the experience will be like.
And now women have spoken out about the wildest superstitions and advice they have been offered while they’ve been pregnant. And you won’t believe what you’re reading.
Taking to Reddit to tell their stories, former and current mums-to-be have expressed their disbelief at some of the advice that they were given during pregnancy.
‘I was told that I need to shave down there or the baby will get carpet burn,’ wrote one bemused mum. ‘Like.. Wut?’
‘But I can’t even see “down there”!’ responded another. ‘I feel like shredding my junk would be worse for me than a having a plush carpet to welcome the baby.’
‘When I was pregnant past my due date a co-worker advised me to drink cod liver oil mixed with vodka,’ wrote another horrified mum. ‘Apparently this mixture would upset my digestive system, give me horrible diarrhea and thus trigger labor contractions.’
Another commented on this unusual advice, writing: ‘Because having a hangover and diarrhea is exactly what you need while you’re in labor.’
‘Someone told my SO [Significant Other] not to bathe because the baby would drown,’ wrote one Reddit user, explaining that ‘the reasoning for this advice was that the umbilical cord acted as a sort of snorkel from the baby to the mothers navel. If the navel was submerged the baby wouldn’t be able to get air.’
Other mums were also falsely warned not to raise their arms above their head because ‘it will tangle the baby’s cord and the baby will die’ and that sitting on the stairs would cause a miscarriage.
And when it came to what you should consume, mothers had been given some wildly incorrect advice, with one mum being told not to drink hot tea as she would ‘boil the baby’ and another adding that she was told not to drink water because it would cause nausea.
And possibly the most out there advice we’ve ever heard? ‘Oh I’ve got this,’ wrote one aghast mum, ‘the lady at the counter in the village bakery told me that I should smear my face with SEMEN to counter pregnancy acne.
‘It was the first time I’d ever met her,’ she added.
We think we’ll be sticking to the doctor’s advice on these ones!
