Pregnant women shouldn't reach their arms into the air

[snopes]

Comment: I was talking with my friend and she asked me if it is true that
a pregnant woman risks choking her unborn baby with it's umbilical cord
when she is constantly reaching her arms in the air?

[kia]

Holding Your Hands Above Your Head Can Hurt The Baby
The truth is that the positioning of your hands has nothing to do with your baby’s positioning in the uterus or the umbilical cord becoming wrapped around him. Babies born with the umbilical cord wrapped around them is actually quite common as it happens in about 1/3 of all pregnancies and is actually caused by the early movements your baby makes in utero, while they are still small enough to make them.

from http://www.babiesonline.com/articles...wivestales.asp

2. The umbilical cord strangulation myth
If a pregnant woman lifts her hands above her head, she will choke the baby. Give us a break. People used to think (and, alas, some still believe) that the mother's movement could cause the baby to become tangled in the umbilical cord, but that's just not true.

from http://www.ivillage.co.uk/pregnancya...667469,00.html

Myth: You shouldn't hold your hands above your head or the baby will become wrapped up in the cord and die.
Truth: This is not true. The incidence of the baby's cord being around the neck, called a nuchal cord, is about one third of all births. It has to do with the twists and turns your little gymnast makes rather than whether or not you've held your hands up over head. -- Robin Weiss
Comments: This particular myth actually sounds sensible compared to the Hawaiian superstition that if a pregnant woman wears a lei her child may be choked by the umbilical cord. The latter definitely has a more supernatural flavor to it, but by the same token it's hard to imagine how anyone could think that raising one's arms would physically affect the positioning of the umbilical cord. Thus, both supersitions might be similarly based in supernatural beliefs. We can conjecture, for example, that the arm movements were thought to mimic the act of strangulation, and affect the unborn child in the manner of a magic spell.

Ain't google just fine? So quickly debunked. I do wonder why people persist with thinking these weird things when a google search can give you the answers in a matter of seconds.

[snopes]

I do wonder why people persist with thinking these weird things when a google search can give you the answers in a matter of seconds.

Because those answers might be misinformation spread on sites run by untrustworthy liberal democrats.

[kia]

Originally Posted by snopes

Because those answers might be misinformation spread on sites run by untrustworthy liberal democrats.

Yep. Much better to trust what a friend's grandmother's aunt's cousin said thirty years ago. Or something. None of this fancy book learnin'.