Folk Wisdom in Pregnancy Module 1 Writing Assignme Essays (1139 words)

Folk Wisdom in Pregnancy Module 1 Writing Assignme Essays (1139 words) Folk Wisdom in Pregnancy Module 1 Writing Assignment PSY 241-N02 Shianne Buie When it comes to pregnancy there is no shortage of the curiosity and uncertainty that surround the birth and delivery of a child. For centuries people have held superstitions and beliefs about pregnancy that many still trust in today. People may believe in wives' tales due to personal experience, supporting facts or plain fear, but either way folk wisdom does seem to hold some insight into the mysteries surrounding pregnancy. I personally come from a family who are no strangers to wives' tales, my own mother actually decided to put one to the test when pregnant with me. When I asked her why she would do that she stated, " I was just really tired of being pregnant and wanted to hurry things along " (Northcutt, 2017). You see I was her firstborn and since she didn ' t necessarily consider patience a virtue in the first place, she was dying to get me out as soon as possible. Tho ugh I ' m guessing that carrying around a baby in her belly with swollen ankles probably had something to do with it as well. The youngest of eight, she ' d grown up listening to my grandmother talk about her own pregnancies and the truth of all the wives' tales she ' d heard throughout the years. One of these tales was that if a woman drinks a spoonful of castor oil near the end of her pregnancy, it will induce the labor. Naturally my mom came to the conclusion that this particular idea was brilliant and she would try it out, despite not knowing a thing about what might really happen. That being said the method was indeed effective, just half a day later I entered the world and needless to say my mother couldn ' t have been more relived. Even with that being said I ' m still pretty skeptical when it comes to placing too much trust into things like that, I just can ' t believe something that is not completely proven like my mother is able to. At least not something that can affect a human life, although I must say some wives' tales might be little easier to put faith in if they had some scientific proof to back them up. While there are individuals who can merely believe in something without confirming that it exists, there are also those who rely on facts and physical evidence to convince them. I myself belong to the latter group and so to really believe that something is true, I have to see the facts to support it. There ' s one wives' tale in particular that does have just that. It suggests that if woman experiences particularly bad heartburn during pregnancy, then her baby will be born will a full head of hair. This occurrence is often found to be correct as according to Robinson (2015), " In a 2006 study involving 64 participants, researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital found that women who reported moderate levels of heartburn throughout pregnancy gave birth to babies with hair on 82 per cent of occasions , while most expectant mothers who did not show signs of digestive discomfort had children that were bald at birth . Now being a person who naturally places more trust in science that century old superstition, I have no problem admitting that this folk wisdom is indeed highly plausible. However, there are also some folk wisdoms that I ' d rather not put any trust in at all and I know I ' m alone in this. While most are centered on harmless ideals, there are some wives ' tales which carry more fear than fact for any expecting mother. Perhaps one of the more terrifying of these is that if pregnant woman lifts her hands above her head, the umbilical cord will be wrapped around the baby. This particular tale probably scares more expecting mothers into believing it due to the known consequences of an umbilical cord actually causing harm to a child. As it is a fact that when the cord becomes wrapped around a child ' s neck, it cuts