3 Weirdest Things I’ve Been Told About Pregnancy (So Far)

Flequi / <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/83085326@N00/4925358935/sizes/l/in/photostream/">Flickr</a>

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


When I first started reading pregnancy books and web sites, I felt like everyone was yelling at me. “You must eat 3-5 servings of vegetables, and 70g of protein, EVERY DAY!” “You must work out for 30 minutes daily, but not too hard!” “If you look at a black cat’s reflection in a mirror, your baby will grow horns!” The last one I made up but seriously, there is a lot of information out there for the prego set, a LOT of it alarmist or condescending. My most recent pregnancy book told me that I should wear a seatbelt while driving: besides being obvious, this is the law in most states. Some things I’ve heard/read have just been too weird to be believed. My top three, below.

1. If you exercise on an elliptical machine at the gym, you should stop every 20 minutes and take your temperature. Rectally.

2. “You have to see our alcohol and drug interventionist.” Kaiser told me this, because I wrote on a prenatal screening form that I had around 1 drink a month before pregnancy, and half a cocktail around the time of conception. That’s right, I had a drink BEFORE I knew I was pregnant, and for this, Kaiser thinks I’m at risk for abusing alcohol during pregnancy. This is because Kaiser’s “Early Start” screening program mandates that ALL women who admit to consuming ANY amount of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, cocaine, meth, and other drugs be referred to their drug/alcohol interventionist for a sit-down. Even if the patient (read: me) informs the doctor that she hasn’t had a drink since she knew she was pregnant, and doesn’t intend to drink at all during pregnancy. “No amount of alcohol is known to be safe,” I was told by a very serious, very sober counselor. “Yeah, I know,” I said, despite having read studies to the contrary. “And that’s why I’m NOT DRINKING during pregnancy. Which I already told you.” Jesus. Next time I’ll just lie on the form.

3. “Walking doesn’t count as exercise.” Another gem from Kaiser, which I dispute. I live in San Francisco and the hills around my home are very steep. If you walked to the top of the nearest hill, you’d climb 300 feet in elevation in about half a mile. When you get to the top, it’s about the same elevation as the top of a 40-story office building. In my opinion, if you walk so far uphill that you can see entire bodies of water, two bridges, and neighboring cities, it’s freakin’ exercise.

It’s hard for me to take a lot of these recommendations seriously, especially considering there are 6 billion of us on this planet, and it didn’t happen because the world’s mothers were obsessively complying with USDA nutritional guidelines or taking their temperature every 20 minutes. If you’ve gotten extreme or just plain faulty advice while pregnant, please post in comments.

 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate