By Dr. Janet Matthews
In honor of Labor Day just past, I’d like to turn our attention to the topic that comes to most women's minds with the word “labor.”
Childbirth is a process we all experience in one way or another, since we all arrive in this world in roughly the same way.
I have probably heard most of the pregnancy myths from patients in my office.
The number one subject I hear about is the variety of ways to supposedly tell a boy from a girl.
Some of these myths have actually been the subject of serious research, such as the widespread belief that the rate of the fetal heartbeat differs between boys and girls.
Someone actually did a study of fetal heart rates, and found no consistent difference between boys and girls. The fetal heart rate tends to drop slightly as the pregnancy progresses, and in later pregnancy will vary depending on the activity level of the fetus.
My own mother would argue strongly with me on this, but you also can’t tell the sex of the baby by the way it’s carried or by any other ingenious methods invented through the centuries. Some of these involve tricks such as swinging objects over the pregnant belly, and even something involving Drano which sounds a little dangerous.
How about the belief that links heartburn in the mother with the amount of hair on the baby’s head? Sorry, I can refute this one from personal experience. My most memorable feature from three pregnancies is the heartburn from hell I endured, and all three babies were bald as billiard balls.
Another persistent set of beliefs centers on activities considered dangerous for the mother. I think that the most interesting of these is the belief that if the mother raises her arms over her head it can cause the umbilical cord to wrap around the baby’s neck.
Since about a third of babies are born with this condition anyway and most suffer no ill effects, the anxiety is unnecessary. There's no connection between the mother’s activity and the position of the umbilical cord.
Also, a cord wrapped around a neck is no more dangerous before birth than a cord wrapped around an arm or leg. The baby isn’t breathing before birth, and after birth the cord can usually be easily released.
Many activity restrictions for pregnant women that were once thought to be important have been loosened in the last few years. We now know that, in a normal and healthy pregnancy, almost any activity the mother was used to before pregnancy can be safely continued. That goes for anything other than skydiving or deep-sea diving.
Don't believe me? Stop by my office sometime and take a look at the photos I recently posted on our bulletin board of myself taken two days before my son’s birth, running a five kilometer race.
How about that widely-held belief that that more babies are born during a full moon? Sorry, once again the answer is no, despite what most labor and delivery nurses will tell you. There actually was a study on this one, also, and there was no connection.
There is, however, a slight increase in the rate of spontaneous rupture of membranes when the barometric pressure drops. That’s the “water breaking” which sometimes happens at the beginning of labor or even before labor starts.
Are there other pregnancy beliefs you’ve heard? I would be interested in hearing them. Who knows, maybe a few of them could be true. Send them to me care of the Phoenix, and I’ll take a look at them in a future column.
Dr. Janet Matthews is the OBGYN physician at The Women’s Center, a service of Muskogee Regional Medical Center, 687-3050. Send questions, comments or suggestions for future columns to janet.matthews@capellahealth.com.
