Old Wives' Tales: Truth or Myth?

In my experience, truth. Definitely truth. Especially the ones about babies and childrearing. Because, as recently as a hundred years ago, who was caring for the babies and children while the parents were out in the fields? The old wives!

Here are just a few examples from my own life:

Determining baby gender. Unlike some parents, my husband Alex and I wanted to know our child's gender as soon as possible. We wanted to start calling him or her by name before birth, if we could. But none of the old wives' tales about dangling the object tied onto the string over the mom's stomach seemed to work. Then a relatively senior Hispanic lady asked me how often I'd had to shave my legs while I was pregnant. I said, "what?" She explained that if I had enough hair growth that I could shave my legs every day or so, it was a girl. If not, it was a boy. According to my legs, it was a girl! Sure enough, we have a daughter :)

Baby hair and acid reflux. The more hair on the baby's head, the old wives' tale goes, the more acid reflux or heartburn the mother will have. Yup. My daughter was born with a full head of black hair (compliments of her daddy's father) and I was snacking on Tums like you would not believe while I was pregnant. I had a bottle of the damn things everywhere: both bathrooms, next to "my" chair in the living room, near my place at the dining room table, next to my computer, on my nightstand, and even in the kitchen!

Introducing "solid" foods to get newborns to sleep. Although this is against current pediatric "wisdom", my German mother-in-law (who raised 7 of her own, plus several grandchildren) would "spike" her childrens' bedtime bottles with cereal or baby rice to get them to sleep through the night. After one particularly trying night when my daughter was about a month old and getting me up every twenty minutes (I was not breastfeeding), I made an 11 p.m. run to the 24-hour Wal-Mart and bought some baby rice. I added it to her formula. She slept 4 hours straight -- and so did I. Yes, my pediatrician threw a fit. I told him he could come to my house and get up with her every twenty minutes. He shut up.

Garden wisdom. Another old wives' tale says to plant above-ground plants (tomatoes or melons, for instance) when the moon is between new and full (i.e.waxing) and below-ground plants (like potatoes or onions) when the moon is between full and dark (i.e. waning). My husband Alex planted his tomatoes when the moon was waxing this year. We spent most of last evening and this morning driving around town giving the surplus away -- and we still have more!

Laundry. Especially if you have children, dogs, and/or a spouse who gets stuff super-dirty and likes whites super-clean. My mother-in-law, again, says that instead of pouring a lot of bleach into a load of whites, just put in a little bleach and the stop the washer so the clothes soak in the bleachy water for half an hour to an hour or so. Less bleach used means less irritation to the skin, and less wear and tear on the fabric.

Old wives' tales, by and large, are around for a reason. They've survived the test of time and the test of several generations' worth of adherents. I look forward to the day when I can pass the ones I know on to my daughter, so that someday she can be an "old wife," too!