Randall-- "...a pregnant woman should not go to a cemetary/funeral."

Alla-- "This one I really came close to breaking, I don't think it's strictly a Jewish thing but definitely a folk superstition. You are not allowed to cut your hair during permanency. I've heard different reasons for this one, and the major ones are that if you cut your hair your child will not be very smart, you are taking away from their brain, and the second one is that if you cut your hair your child will have either very thin hair or none at all.......so if you want a thick head of hair don't cut yours. I figured that if by not cutting my hair for an extra few months my kid will be a genius with beautiful hair.......what do I have to lose."

Joshua-- "Then there is the other tradition of keeping a piece of the afikoman from the passover meal to releave the pain of childbirth. I have tried to find out the logic of this tradition, but all I can figure is that the afikoman sometimes is given messianic overtones and thus has great power."

Marcie-- "I do remember my mother telling me that I shouldn't eat twin cherries, because that meant I would have twins...same went for 2 almonds in a shell..."

Sophie-- "[My friends] gave me a grapefruit tree to plant underwhich I planted the placenta and my son's foreskin. We intended on cutting my son's hair next to that tree for his _upsherin_ but he had other ideas :-)

"For my second pregnancy we did something similar but also did a belly-cast. I added some prayers from the Nina Cardin book relating to pregnacy and easy birth. I didn't have 'Lilly's List' yet but we named people we knew who wanted to get pregnant, were pregnant or had suffered miscarriages and prayed for them. We probably did a general healing circle as well. My friends didn't give me a tree, but I got a tree from my neighbor as a birthday present so we used that one for my second son's placenta and foreskin.

"There's a custom by some to bite the pitom off of the etrog after sukkoth for an 'easy birth' and there are tekhinnes for that. I recently came across a 'modernized' version of this ritual, though I can't remember where it was."

Marilyn-- "I had a repeated dream about me losing my teeth while I was preg. I heard a rabbi in a lecture say that if you dream that you lose your teeth it is a very bad sign. If you dream it more than once it means it can come true (but he never said what it symbolizes) and if you dream it while you are preg. it is really bad news! Marilyn freaked out when she heard this in her 6th month! I went home and dreamed it again!

"In the morning I called the rabbi but got his secretary who took the details and told me to get back to him later. It took a day to get thru to them again and the news was spooky. I was instructed to give 18 shekels (18 stands for *chai* the Hebrew word for LIFE) to charity and to say the entire book of Psalms as soon as possible. Being as the book of Psalms holds 150 chapters and being that I was then a mom of 6 - that task took me 5 days! Having done that I wrote the rabbi a long letter asking just what this teeth falling out means. I finally got his response today - nearly 2 mos. later and 2 wks. after my baby was born! He never says what exactly what the dream symbolizes but wishes me an easy labor and tells me not to worry!

"Baby was indeed in fetal distress during labor but was born healthy, thank G-d. Was it the Psalms??"