Yes, baby books are evil, although I did and still do highly recomment The Mother's Almanac. It was written by two smart, funny and, above all, realistic women and is full of sound, totally reassuring advice.
My OB/GYN told me during the first visit of my first pregnancy "I forbid you to listen to any horror stories. Your mother, your grandmother, strangers on the street, they will all try to tell you what you are doing wrong or that the baby will come out tied in knots if you lift your arms over your head. Do not listen to anyone outside of this examining room about your pregnancy." Great advice, Dr. G...and the first time I visited my grandmother, she whipped out the trope about not lifting my arms over my head. Heh.
My mom saved everything from my baby days, and I was horrified to learn that I was fed a combination of sweetened, condensed milk, kayro (corn syrup) and water. Gak! My delivery was a difficult one, and the conventional wisdom during the late 1950's was that breastfeeding would have been too stressful for me. She was actively discouraged from even trying.
Oh so true! I made a benign comment on a Yahoo! story about the positive effect of exercise for fibromyalgia suffers, saying that yoga helped enormously with my symptoms. The responses to comment were so incredibly annoying that I have never clicked over to read a Yahoo! news story again.
Thought I was the only one who noticed this, based on all the raves about how she looked...there was something way wonky about the side/under boob created by J Hud's dress.
His obvious disdain for AA (and similar 12-step programs) is what made me shrug & say 'Eh. Good luck. I'm through.' I have an addict son in rehab and he is doing incredibly hard work to maintain his sobriety, which makes him a winner in my book. Overpaid sitcom actor who was born on third base & thinks he hit a triple? Not such a winner. Buh-bye...it will be difficult to avoid the media coverage but I am going to do my utmost to ignore this guy.