I forgot to mention this last week, but thought I'd put it down for the record.

The day after the total eclipse I asked my co-worker if she saw it on TV. She said while growing up her mother and others always believed that pregnant women should not go outside during an eclipse, and should fasten a safety pin under their shirt above their belly, so that their child would not be born with a cleft lip.

I said to her, "You know that's not true, right?" She replied, "Yeah, I know, but we still do it anyway."

I asked her if this old wive's tale applied only to total eclipses or partial eclipses as well. She wasn't sure, just that pregnant women should stay indoors. The reasoning was, "Well, I don't really believe it, but just in case, we still do it." I won't bother mentioning a similar corrollary to this. I like my co-worker very much, but she is embedded with all these old customs and alot of "just in case" thinking.

I had never heard this. She grew up in Texas, and I don't know why this idea of a cleft lip came about. I'll search for some info. Her family is Hispanic, so I don't know if this occurs just in Hispanic circles in a cultural sense. All I can say is that these pregnant women have missed out on some good eclipses!

Is anyone familiar with this?

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Sunset

Suntrack2 brought up the idea of keeping pregnant women during inside about halfway through this thread. I'd never heard of it before, and I'd never heard of the safety-pin thing before you mentioned it. What about all of the cleft lips that happen when the mother WASN'T exposed to an eclipse? Maybe she should have worn a safety pin all the while she was pregnant, "just in case." And what about all of the children who were born without cleft lips, whose mothers were exposed to an eclipse and didn't wear a safety pin?

Just being rhetorical.

Fred

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Nope...this is a "new one" for me...

This sounds vaguely familiar. It seems to fall into the category of farfetched influences on the pregnant female having an effect on the infant.

The main version of this in Waterbury, CT, where my ex grew up and my in-laws lived, was the old "frightened by a mouse" tale. This said that if the pregnant woman was, for example, frightened by a mouse, the child would have a birthmark shaped like a mouse somewhere on its body. This mindset was found mainly among the Italian and Polish communities, but that didn't keep it from being adopted by the German and Irish groups, of which my in-laws were members.

Strange stuff.

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When my mother was pregnant with my elder sister, she spilt some boiling water from a kettle on her forearm. A friend who was with her at the time told her that when the child was born it would have a birthmark on its arm in the same spot.

A few days after the birth this friend visited my mother and the first thing she did was ask to see the baby's forearm. My mother had forgotten all about the incident with the boiling water, but when she rolled back the baby's sleeve there was the birthmark!

It's still there, and my mother swears to the accuracy of this old-wive's tale.

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- There must be a new moon out, she said. He's always bad then.

When my mom was pregnant, she and my grandmother were watching a documentary about voodoo practices. A scene came up where they slit the neck of a chicken and sprayed the blood around, and my grandmother slapped her hand over my mom's eyes declaring, "Don't look. It will mark the baby."

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"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

If I remember right, the whole eclipse myth stared with an ancient civilization, I'm thinking Eqypt or the middle east.

I think my co-worker is annoyed that I keep asking her about this. She doesn't know the significance of the safety pin - it was just passed down to her.

Safety pin ---> cleft lip? Why would someone think a safety pin would work, or is it just a handy thing around the house?

OK, let's assume you all are at least 40 years old--that's not that long ago that your mothers would believe this. I haven't read Michael Shermer's book "Why People Believe Weird Things", but I have it saved on Amazon. I am really surprised that she/they still do this and advise others to do it as well. I need to get his book now.

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Sunset

Here's a different tidbit I got today. Somebody asked how I was doing and I said, "Oh, things have been a bit strange lately." And with all seriousness, he said, "It's because Mercury is in retrograde."

I almost burst out in laughter--he was so serious about it. He's a nice guy, sells crystal lamps and such, but very nice.

So, THAT's the problem...Mercury is in retrograde. Oh, it all makes sense now!

(Actually I Googled it and it's "no longer in retrograde," plus the astrology site got ACCESS DENIED)

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Sunset

And what did people do before the safety pin was invented?

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I LOVE Things Like This ...

This Is Actually, One of The Few Times When Being Jewish, Simplifies Life ...

Instead of Psuedoscientific Parables, we Tell Each Other This, Instead!

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

I did a search on "pregnant women solar eclipse safety pins," and this is first one up (a pathetically slow-cached link on DSL):

Then on the first page, too, there's a forum for pregnant women to chat. I know Bestskeptical would have a field day with this, her being in the health industry and all! Some comments:

We are in 2006, right? Is there anyone here, especially someone who has been pregnant, that thinks a solar eclipse or lunar eclipse affects pregnancy?

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Sunset

I Would Expect a SMALL Effect ...

Ya' Know, Like When a Pregnant Woman Does Anything Fun and Exciting ...

Her Whole Body Fills Up With Endorphins, And The Resulting Baby Is All The Better for it!

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

I'd seen an odd collection of eclipse superstitions in this article from last week. However, since the Beeb's been singing the praises of utter quackery in the form of "alternative medicines" (e.g. homeopathy) for a while now and pandering to its supporters, I just can't put too much stock in their "science" reporting any longer.

In India on solar eclipse people don't eat anything while sun is behind the eclipse shadow. After solar eclipse it is nessesary to take a bath at any cost.

I am lucky that my mom didn't tell me to do this ever. I enjoy watching eclipse while having my meal or snack.

People say eclipses are the shadow of an evil which is cut in two peices: head and body
and the name of two peices are Rahu Ketu.

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I am sweeeety.
My granny calls me tweeeety.
I can break anything but can't break rules.

I had never heard this one. The only pregnancy prjudices I know about around here are (apart from the labour at full moon one) that the shape of the belly indicates if its a boy or a girl (and this one is correct in half the cases, so there must be something to it), and that if a pregnant women reaches above her (stretches her arms above the head), the umbilical cord will be around the neck of the baby.

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

I thought that only planets farther from the sun then Earth can be in retrograde?

Per the Columbia Encyclopedia any planet as seen from Earth can be in retrograde, which is defined as an apparent east-to-west motion against the background stars. The inferior planets Mercury and Venus will display this motion between greatest eastern elongation and greatest western elongation, when they are close to inferior conjunction. For the superior planets, retrograde is around the time of opposition.

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It is all wrapped up in "heuristics" and how we "learn."

For example, there isn't any scientist out there who will admit that concepts like the Big-Bang, dark matter, or black-holes are anything but established fact -- or "true!"

Red-shift is an absolute measure of distance, Temple1 is full of H2O and generates more x-rays <b>mechanically</b> than our moon and the strong electric force on works "locally" and can't produce gigantic dust devils on Mars -- only the mechanical radiation from the Sun can do so . . . ad nauseam . . .

Tadowe, how has your post anything at all to do with this thread?

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