by Maggie Downs posted in Life

?Just keep a few cloves of raw garlic in your panties throughout your pregnancy to make sure the baby stays healthy.?
That bit of witchcraft is actual advice that a pregnant friend of mine received. Recently, I mean. Not in the seventeenth century.
I don?t even want to know how that?s supposed to work, since the health-boosting properties of garlic generally come from ingesting it. (I also can?t believe that would be comfortable, but maybe that's just me.)
Zero garlic in my panties.
Alas, that kind of wild advice is part and parcel of being a pregnant woman. If you haven?t already learned this as a parent, you soon will: Opinions are like armpits -- everyone has them, and a lot of them stink.
So I was howling when I read this BabyCenter community thread about crazy, unsolicited advice. Rainbow606 posted, ?My mother-in-law suggested I give up showering so I wouldn?t get too hot or too cold. My old boss told me to stop wearing pants because I was trapping heat in my uterus. An aunt told me not to look at the moon or the baby would be deformed.?
Some of the other eye-roll-worthy advice in the thread includes, ?If a black cat touches you while you are pregnant, your child will be evil? and ?To help labor come sooner, watch porn.? There's also this gem: Rub a urine-soaked diaper on your baby?s face to cure eczema.
You guys, nobody wants pee on their face. I can promise you that.
You can take this advice: Don't do anything with your baby's urine ...