On the Reading of Parenting Magazines

There is more than one pregnant lady in my life right now, which means that I've been doing more baby-related reading than one might consider normal for... me. I was hanging out over at my pregnant sister-in-law's tonight, flipping through a magazine while my laundry dried (in all fairness I'd just helped put another coat of paint on her nursery- we barter), and I found myself becoming more and more appalled.

Do you know how many things can go wrong with babies? No you don't! Because however many things you think you know of, I guarantee you that one perusal of a parenting magazine later, you will be aware of approximately fifty new horrible things that could afflict your child. Or you. Did you know that getting pregnant can friggin' give you cancer?! Well I wish that I didn't know that, thank you very much, but apparently it's true. I also could have done without the full-page scare-ads regarding giving my child whooping cough or what have you just by holding them. And there was a blurb which very seriously lectured me on the fact that eight whole children have died since 2003 by strangling themselves on a blinds' cord! That's barely even one child per frickin' year- why do nascent mothers need to be terrorized by this so-called probability? Why not say, "Oh, by the way- when you're child-proofing your home, you might want to loop any dangling cords up out of reach," and leave it at that? Sheesh.

"But Jenny O, you were the one choosing to read the magazine," you might say. And that's true... but man, I think if I ever turn up pregnant I will put out a restraining order on those things, because I'd imagine that you're plenty stressed out enough without articles screaming at you that walking underneath a ladder while pregnant gives your child a(n infintisimal) chance of being born without knees. Or rhythm. Or whatever.