who was 32 weeks along . After asking my questions , I went to measure the fundal height and listen to the heart tones . I explained to the mother what I was doing and said the baby sounded perfect with a heart rate of 154 . The mother looked at me confused , so I asked if everything was alright . She then told me that I must have taken the heart beat wrong , because that is too fast as she was having a little boy . Again , I went to my attending with this information , and I learned about an old wives ’ tale that a slower heart rate indicates a baby boy , and a faster heart rate indicated a baby girl .
I saw another patient in clinic for her first pregnancy visit . We were talking about her struggle with morning sickness , and despite this discomfort , she still seemed excited by the topic . She then informed me that because of the morning sickness , she knew she was having a little girl . She told us how she did not experience this severe of morning sickness with her first child , a son , so it had to be a little girl this time . I was very surprised to learn that another old wives ’ tale about gender correlates morning sickness with having a baby girl .
Toward the end of my OB-GYN rotation , I was seeing a postpartum patient who just had a beautiful baby boy two weeks prior . After asking our postpartum questions and removing the dressing , the mother asked how long she had to wait until she could get pregnant again . We explained it was hard on a woman ’ s body to have babies back to back and the risks associated with short interval pregnancies . The mother went on to explain that she had to get pregnant during the following year so that she could finally have a baby girl . She must have seen the question in my eyes , so she went on to explain . She said she had looked into the Chinese calendar , and since she would be 29 next year , she had to conceive so both the year and her age would be odd , and that would cause her to have a girl . I learned thus the old wives ’ tale that Chinese and Mayan calendars can predict gender based on the mother ’ s age during conception and the year . If the mother ’ s age and year are both even or odd , then you will have a girl ; and if one is even and the other is odd , then you will have a little boy .
This is just a handful of memorable patients from whom I learned old pregnancy wives ’ tales , but I now know they are just a drop in the ocean of the tall tales in OB-GYN . I had never heard any of these tales before my two months on my OB-GYN rotation , and now I incorporate them anytime I can . Initially when I heard my attendings discuss these tales with their patients , I was confused and genuinely taken back . I was surprised to learn how my attendings used these folklore tales to comfort their patients in labor and in the office , giving me excellent examples of humanism in medicine . I look forward to adding more of these tales to my repertoire as I continue on my path as an OB-GYN and incorporate them into caring for my patients .
E . Paige Hart is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and is a Trover Scholar doing her clerkships in rural Madisonville , Kentucky .
URBAN LEGENDS IN MEDICINE
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