by Nora Carver

Created on: June 03, 2010   Last Updated: June 05, 2010

As a mother of 10, count ‘em, 10 children, I can share a wealth of stories about all the misconceptions of pregnancy and conception that believe it or not, people still swear by despite all our modern technologies, scientific research and advanced knowledge which has proven otherwise.

Some of the more common myths about pregnancy include things like, don’t reach over your head or your baby will get the umbilical cord wrapped around it’s neck. Completely false folks. Your arms are in no way connected to your uterus. It can be dangerous to just about anyone who is trying to reach something heavy and pull it down.

Many women believe that wearing anything around your neck will cause the umbilical cord to get wrapped around the babies neck. This is also false. Wearing something around your neck has no effect on your baby whatsoever, unless of course it constricts your own air flow.

Most statistical sites show that as many as 1/3 of all babies are born with the cord around their neck regardless of what a woman did during pregnancy and it seems to be a very common occurrence.

One of my favorite pregnancy myths is “avoid seeing anything scary while your pregnant, ie horror movies, haunted houses on Halloween etc. or your baby will be marked” usually by a grotesque birth defect or white hair or something like that.

Although made quite popular with films like “elephant man”, this is completely false. Come on people, you cannot give your child a birth defect by watching Freddy chow down on the prom queen. While its true, a good scare can raise your heart rate and stress level, it is hardly worth being worried about giving your child a cleft pallet or a third eye ball.

I can personally attest that I watched horror movies all the time while pregnant, being a huge fan, and none of my children are deformed or psychologically scarred for life from it.

Not to mention women in war torn areas of the world give birth all the time after being exposed to horrendous real life horror that most of us would faint at and tend to have perfectly normal children. Extended stress however, can be detrimental to the pregnancy in general and should be avoided.

A wives tale that does have some merit is to not take a bath while your pregnant. While baths are perfectly fine for the first few trimesters, they are discouraged during the last few weeks of pregnancy by most physicians, especially for first time moms.

This is not because there is any serious

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