I'm a big fan of pregnancy-related old wives' tales - and a bigger fan of studies that try to determine their validity. I was thrilled (and somewhat amazed) a few years ago, for example, when Johns Hopkins researchers explored the "myth" that women who have heartburn during pregnancy give birth to babies with full heads of hair. (As it turns out, and much to the researchers' surprise, there really is an association between heartburn severity during pregnancy and newborn hair! "I've had to eat a lot of crow," the lead researcher said at the time.)
New Scientist writer Linda Geddes apparently likes this stuff, too, and she recently did a round-up of the science behind old wives' tales on gender prediction. Her short piece, which explores such things as weird food cravings (do aversions mean you're having a boy?) and mom's intuition (do women just know?), is a fun read.
Photo by Emery Co
