It’s a Girl!

Written in Uncategorized
22 Comments - Leave a comment!

By Holly Tucker

This has been a week of book giveaways…lots of them.  So I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to add my own book on fairy tales into the mix.  Though it does feel a little weird to do such self-promotion, particularly for a book that’s been out for awhile.  (Don’t worry, I won’t be so self-effacing when my next one, Blood Work:  A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, comes out with W.W. Norton next year!)

Anyway…here goes…

Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France looks at the intersection of medicine, midwifery, and tale-telling in the earliest European fairy tales.  It turns out that fairy tale writers (mostly all women) knew a lot about what was being cooked up in the (mostly all male) medical community when it came to theories on where babies came from.

Did you ever notice that fairy tale mothers are either infertile and/or give birth to daughters?  Ever wonder why that might be?  In the meantime, share a “wives’ tale” about pregnancy in the comments for a chance to win a copy of Pregnant Fictions. What tales did your mother, her mother, her mothers-mother tell about making, carrying, and birthing babies that you think might date back centuries?

Here’s one to get us started:  When I was pregnant, I craved fruit smoothies.  One early morning, I even paced outside of the door of a nearby Smoothie King waiting for them to open.  I had a girl.  I should have known it, 17th century midwives sure did.  Crave fruit, it’s a girl.  Crave steak, it’s a boy.

Related Posts:

22 Comments - Leave a comment!
  • http://www.punctualityrules.com –Deb

    No stories to tell, but congratulations! You must be so excited!

  • http://www.livelearnlove226.blogspot.com Annette W

    Carry low for a boy and high for a girl?? Or the other way around? I carried lower for my son.

  • http://www.wondersandmarvels.com Editor

    About the baby or the upcoming book? The baby is…well…not really a baby anymore. (But don’t get me started on how proud I am of her!)

    And about the book, I CANNOT WAIT for it to come out! I spent almost two years working on it, tons of research in 4 different countries, but it was so fun/fascinating/interesting to write!

  • http://www.surlalunefairytales.com Heidi

    When I lived in California, I often heard the tale that eating hot peppers while pregnant will produce a child with a headful of hair.

    Then I heard the opposite, too, that eating hot peppers would produce a hairless baby. One story I heard about “a friend of a friend” was that her baby was born with a headful of hair despite being warned that her baby would be bald if she kept eating so many peppers. Then she gave birth to a baby with a headful of hair and claimed that if she hadn’t eaten as many peppers as she had, her baby would have been covered in hair.

    I found this tale was more Hispanic in popularity, probably explaining why it was so much more common in California than during my childhood in TN.

  • http://giveawayroundup.blogspot.com/ Sheila

    If you crave salty foods you will have a boy, if you crave sweets you will have a girl.

  • http://www.aartichapati.blogspot.com Aarti

    What a great-sounding book! And a great-sounding upcoming book, too. Congratulations on your upcoming publication :-)

    I have never been pregnant, so I don’t know too many old wives’ tales, unfortunately. My mother never told me about where babies come from, but I’ve always wondered where the whole STORK concept comes from. Do I get entered in the giveaway for asking a question instead of suggesting a tale?

  • Anne

    Morning sickness means a girl; no morning sickness means a boy. I never had any morning sickness with either of my pregnancies (one each girl AND boy) so…who knows?

  • http://bibliofreakblog.com J.T. Oldfield

    When I give birth some day (2 years? 4 years? I don’t know, I’m married, but not in a hurry), I refuse to do it lying down. That was invented by male doctors in the 19th century so that they could see better, but your perineum is far more likely to tear as well as other complications/pain if you are lying down.

    Also, baby chimps (or is it monkeys, now I don’t recall) help themselves get born by actually pulling themselves out a little bit.

    Also, I have this thing about 100 Fridays before I have kids. I want to go out (or have ppl over) 100 Fridays. But there’s rules. It has to be Friday. I can’t just go see a movie. I started this over a year ago and I still have 72 to go.

    Sorry, I couldn’t decide on just one thing to say.

  • http://fairytalenewsblog.blogspot.com/ Gypsy Thornton

    No need to enter me for this one as I already have this book (love it by the way – I sought out tales about pregnancy and birth while pregnant with my son, now 2, and found your book. Wonderful! Couldn’t believe there was hardly anything else available on the subject. Thanks so much for writing.)

    I always heard being pregnant affects your thinking/cognitive processes/brain. Never truly believed it till I got pregnant (always thought it was just over-tiredness) and couldn’t even write a grocery list, let alone a short story. Turns out babies DO eat your brain – the brain of a pregnant woman actually decreases size up to 8%! (Zombie babies anyone?) Apparently it returns to its normal size soon after the birthing but I’m not sure I believe that…

  • http://none Joyce S

    Two sayings in my family. If the woman looks pregnant from behind, it’s a girl. Also, semi related to eating hot peppers, if the woman has lots of heart-burn the baby will have a full head of hair. Interestingly, this latter proved true for my sister and I who were pregnant at the same time. I was plagued with heart-burn: my daughter was born with a full head of hair. My sister had no heart-burn at all: her daughter was bald till she was a year old.

  • http://moziesme.blogspot.com Mozi Esme

    Lovely book. We heard the ring trick – dangle a ring on a string, and if it spins, is one gender; if it swings back and forth, it’s another, or something like that…

    janemaritz at yahoo dot com

  • http://theviewfromsarisworld.blogspot.com sari

    I too was told to look at how I carried the child. My son ended up being carried low on my back, don’t know what that means, but I was very uncomfortable during the last part of my pregnancy because of it.
    I also remember having a ring swung over my belly during my baby shower. I was told this was an old practice that would tell me what sex my baby would be by the way the ring swung. I was told I would have a boy, and guess what.. I did.

  • http://twitter.com/ipopic ipopic

    When my mother was pregnant with my brother my grandmother came for a visit. She noticed grandmother is observing her carefully so she made a pose, turned sideways against her and asked – so grandma, what is it? Grandmother said she was unsure as she was large at front and at the back.
    I think that could be really old and really unreliable way of guessing the sex of the baby – by the body shape of the pregnant woman.

  • Breiab

    I heard that you shouldn’t get upset with anyone or your baby will look like them.

  • Vicky Alvear Shecter

    I learned something new–I did not know that most fairy tale writers were women. Your book sounds fascinating. I was told in one restaurant here in Atlanta, not to order their eggplant dish because it guaranteed delivery that night–unless I was ready, of course.

  • Lindsey

    I was always told that carrying low means you’re having a boy.

  • http://www.wondersandmarvels.com Editor

    Thanks for all the great comments, everyone! And Gypsy, so glad you liked the book. I loved writing it–lots of fun. Who knew that medicine and the fairy tales were so tightly linked together…I sure didn’t until I got to work researching it!

  • http://beyondbeige.blogspot.com mhwillia

    When I was pregnant an Iranian female Dr. pronounced it was a boy because she said boys don’t need their mother’s life source ( hormones?) Girls on the other hand suck the female life out of the mother and therefore the mother doesn’t look vibrant and is often ill when carrying a girl.

    By the way, I did have a boy.

  • http://startingfresh-gaby317.blogspot.com/ Gaby @ Starting Fresh

    I heard that if when the mother is glowing – good skin, etc – it means that she’s carrying a girl and if she doesn’t look that pretty, it means that she’s carrying a boy. Which usually means that if she looks good, you tell her that she must be carrying a girl, but if not it’s best to keep silent.

    It might be that the male hormones make the mother’s pores look bigger and skin not as nice?

    They used to say in my home country that if you crave a particular food, the baby will share some of the food’s physical characteristics. For instance, you crave red apples, the baby will have rosy cheeks. If you crave sour food (green mangoes, limes, etc) your baby will be sour and a complainer.

    gaby317nyc at gmail dot com

  • Everett

    What a terrific idea for a book. I love old folklore/wives tales, sometimes shockingly accurate.

    My wife and I just found out that we are pregnant (7 week U/S Jan 3) and of course my mother told her right away that if it is a boy, it will wind up being roughly the size of the father. Well, I was a 10lb 13oz baby, and while my mother had the (to be polite) german robustness to accomidate this, my petitie 5’2 wife was less then thrilled at the prospect of giving birth something the size of a Christmas ham. I dont know if that is true, the the baby size is predicated on the parent size, but for for wifes sake and sanity, I sure hope mom is wrong.

    Either way, great concept for a book. Ill write you in August and let you know how it went.

    ET

  • Rachel W.

    I was born with pneumonia because my mother had a cold when she was pregnant with me and my first few weeks of life were a mess. My father lovingly referred to my birthday as “the worst day of my life.” So I’ve heard that story quite a few times.

    Thanks for the giveaway!

  • Amanda Nellist

    When I was pregnant with my first child, nearly everyone told me I was having a girl. They would say it was the way I was carrying, I had little morning sickness, or that my skin was looking good. Well…I had a boy! There is also the Chinese Lunar chart that predicts the baby’s sex dependant on the month of conception and mother’s age at conception. A friend and I worked retrospectively with this one and got a pretty good result for it being correct (over 70% with about 30 people calculated). Though both my children were supposed to be girls according to this. I have also heard that if you have cravings, you should follow them or the child will be marked by that craving in some way, like a birthmark. I craved lemon gelato with the first child and chocolate ice cream with my second. I wonder what sort of birthmark my kids might have gotten if I didn’t fully indulge! An ice cream cone maybe!