Friday, March 21, 2008

For Jaena

I was just reading comments on Kim's blog about what she's having. Of course, I say she's having a BABY; therefore, I win the contest and get to hold my neicephew first!

Jaena commented that the "Are you having heartburn?" questions really don't mean anything about the baby's gender - they're just old wives' tales. That's a good thing, since I had heartburn with all three of mine, and I have two girls and a boy! Toward the end of my last pregnancy, I read an article in one of those baby magazines that are always in abundance at the doctor's office. The article said that Johns Hopkins University had done a study to disprove the "old wives' tale" that having heartburn means that the baby will have hair. I was particularly interested in this topic, since all of my babies had significant amounts of hair and I had significant amounts of heartburn (what is the maximum dose of Tums allowed, anyway?). I never quite understood how the baby's hair could cause heartburn since the baby has a separate sack and doesn't come into contact with my digestive system at all.

Side note: My very caring mother asked me one day what I was doing in my medicine closet (yes, we have enough medicine for a closet), and I replied that I was getting Tums. She asked very sweetly if I was having heartburn. When I said that I was, she said, "Good!" because I gave her lots of heartburn. I was the only baby who gave her heartburn and I was the only baby with hair (which means I was also the most beautiful baby, Kevin).

Back to the article... This study was begun to disprove the link between heartburn and babies' hair, but it actually proved it! Evidently, the hormone that causes hair growth in babies, also causes heartburn in mothers. How cool. Or would that be hot, since it's heartburn?

4 comments:

Amy said...

Funny, I never thought about it. I didn't have much heartburn with Syd until the end, and she had a teeny bit of hair. But the boys--ALL OF THEM--popped out with full heads of red hair. And my heartburn was much worse with them than with Syd. (Bryan, BTW, is the only full-headed boy who lost his hair. The other 2 kept all of it. Don't know what that means, but I find it interesting.)

Anonymous said...

well i must be having a gorilla!

Keri said...

Wow how interesting!!!! I like how they set out to disprove it and ended up proving it! LOL!

It must be another of those pregnancy things that varies by person because Mackinley had a good head of hair and I didn't suffer from heartburn at all.

Jaena said...

That is interesting...and accurate for me. Elisha was a baldie and I don't recall having too much heartburn. It was worse with Madelyn, and she had hair. This baby will have hair too, it seems.

I think the gender predictions of people are always interesting too. I carried both Maddie and Elisha the same, and they were different genders. But people give their evaluations like it's scientific fact or something ("Oh, it a boy because you're carrying all out in front.") pretty funny!