- Joined
- Jun 13, 2016
It’s actually more common because there’s a lot more knowledge about birth defects/genetics, just google birth defects or birth injury for nightmare fuel. There’s also a lot more testing done during pregnancy so every ultrasound is a bit of a litmus test if there is something going wrong with the baby, something that is a modern phenomenon. Add to the fact that some majorly horribly things may only be discovered towards the third trimester or at birth.Was any of it ever psychosomatic? I did a small search on this if you could call it a "phenomenon" and I'll just post the findings here, in particular just one:
"stress hormones like Corticotrophin particularly Cortisol and androgens which induce anxiety could lead to cognitive changes, changes in language development, ability to classify the contents and speech in girls"
Source: A Review of the Effects of Anxiety During Pregnancy on Children’s Health
The stories of women who spend months preparing a perfect nursery and buying lots of clothes only to have a stillbirth and coming home to have to pack it all up? It’s like the most famous one sentence story: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.)
Besides Jews traditionally didn’t give any baby gifts or prepare till after the baby was born and I think that’s a wise move, but it was esp practical decades ago when infants and mothers regularly died in childbirth. They felt assuming god was going to give you a healthy baby was a good way to piss him off with your hubris and thinking you know what the future holds.