My wife quit smoking, drank one or two cups of coffee a day and one or two glasses of champagne over the course of each of her three pregnancies, and with a sky high antibodies count ate kilos of cured meats, rare steak, and raw cheeses.
Our three kids turned out absolutely fine.
My sister followed the recommendations to the letter for her three kids, and they also turned out totally fine.
Similarly - my wife was heavily pushed by doctors, nurses etc to prioritise 100 percent breastfeeding, as even one drop of bottle feeding would ruin everything. It didn't work. They prescribed a drug that might help. It didn't help.
Eventually after 3 weeks of the newborn slowly losing weight we ignored their still definitive advice to never bottle feed and did some bottle feeding. This was completely fine, and my daughter and later son both happily had a mix of food sources in their early months.
Hey I hope it works out for you. Love having kids. Only regret is not starting earlier and having more. It's so much less work and more fun than either of us imagined.
Thanks for your comment, Simon! I’m just reading about breastfeeding now but I feel like everything I’ve heard points to going with what works for you and the baby and not stressing out so much. And amazing to hear a perspective that it is less work than expected (!) I have a feeling people who feel this way just tend not to share
Though the "pregnant question" is, of course, are you? Congratulations, I guess, are in order. Though I guess that depends on the circumstances of that event. Reminds me of a joke -- of sorts, probably from my misspent youth of reading my father's Playboy magazine -- that pregnancy is evidence of taking seriously what was poked in fun. So to speak.
But kind of an awesome responsibility, a major undertaking, so to speak, so I wish you and your husband well in that project.
Biological male here so no expert on this subject but I think as with many things in life there’s a tendency to overthink and overationslise. Completely understandable of course but even with modern science there are things we don’t understand about how human reproduction works.
I have to wonder how many of these "beliefs" stem from creative abuse of the thing (caffeine, alcohol, whatever) for storytelling purposes in various media that results in shame-based peer pressure and perhaps that's exacerbated by the outsized-seeming impact of "for the children" on cultural mythology. We humans seem to want to learn things once and then for them to never change, but since "journalism" abuses scientific inquiry with unwarranted levels of certainty and credulity, rarely do the future results of "Oh, it turns out it really isn't a big deal. Never mind." don't make it into the common cultural conversation. Primates only pay attention to things that terrify us, things we can copulate with, or things we can eat … usually in that order. Once a fear-based misbelief is cemented, it's tough to root out.
Love Emily Oster. Also, is this a pregnancy announcement? 👀
Haha no, but hopefully on the horizon
My wife quit smoking, drank one or two cups of coffee a day and one or two glasses of champagne over the course of each of her three pregnancies, and with a sky high antibodies count ate kilos of cured meats, rare steak, and raw cheeses.
Our three kids turned out absolutely fine.
My sister followed the recommendations to the letter for her three kids, and they also turned out totally fine.
Similarly - my wife was heavily pushed by doctors, nurses etc to prioritise 100 percent breastfeeding, as even one drop of bottle feeding would ruin everything. It didn't work. They prescribed a drug that might help. It didn't help.
Eventually after 3 weeks of the newborn slowly losing weight we ignored their still definitive advice to never bottle feed and did some bottle feeding. This was completely fine, and my daughter and later son both happily had a mix of food sources in their early months.
Hey I hope it works out for you. Love having kids. Only regret is not starting earlier and having more. It's so much less work and more fun than either of us imagined.
Thanks for your comment, Simon! I’m just reading about breastfeeding now but I feel like everything I’ve heard points to going with what works for you and the baby and not stressing out so much. And amazing to hear a perspective that it is less work than expected (!) I have a feeling people who feel this way just tend not to share
TLDR, at least not all of it ... 😉🙂
Though the "pregnant question" is, of course, are you? Congratulations, I guess, are in order. Though I guess that depends on the circumstances of that event. Reminds me of a joke -- of sorts, probably from my misspent youth of reading my father's Playboy magazine -- that pregnancy is evidence of taking seriously what was poked in fun. So to speak.
But kind of an awesome responsibility, a major undertaking, so to speak, so I wish you and your husband well in that project.
Biological male here so no expert on this subject but I think as with many things in life there’s a tendency to overthink and overationslise. Completely understandable of course but even with modern science there are things we don’t understand about how human reproduction works.
I have to wonder how many of these "beliefs" stem from creative abuse of the thing (caffeine, alcohol, whatever) for storytelling purposes in various media that results in shame-based peer pressure and perhaps that's exacerbated by the outsized-seeming impact of "for the children" on cultural mythology. We humans seem to want to learn things once and then for them to never change, but since "journalism" abuses scientific inquiry with unwarranted levels of certainty and credulity, rarely do the future results of "Oh, it turns out it really isn't a big deal. Never mind." don't make it into the common cultural conversation. Primates only pay attention to things that terrify us, things we can copulate with, or things we can eat … usually in that order. Once a fear-based misbelief is cemented, it's tough to root out.