Falling pregnant

Over the centuries, countless notions sought to explain how and why women became pregnant and offered advice to those who wanted to conceive. These ranged from having sex while the tide was coming in or at the time of the full moon to encouraging nature by eating special diets:

Fen handywomen distilled a mandrake tea which they dispensed to childless wives who longed to become mothers.
Cambridgeshire, 1969

“Catching” a pregnancy

Many childbirth beliefs involve a strong element of “contagious magic”, whereby pregnancy is treated as if it is catching. It is often said that women of child-bearing age should avoid sitting on a chair just vacated by someone who is pregnant, and there have been many variations on the same idea.

Many women believed that if you sat down on a mother’s bed to look at the new baby, you would be the next woman in the street to have one.
Lincoln, 1930s

A barren woman is often told chaffingly to ‘tak’ a rub’ against a pregnant woman and “get some o’ her luck”.
Fife fishing community, 1912

With so many opportunities to fall pregnant by accident, it’s not hard to see why measures were sometimes required to prevent it happening:

If you are in the company of two pregnant women slap your backside three times or you too will become pregnant.
County Tyrone, 1972

Sometimes the pregnancy was thought to be transmitted by more indirect means:

Should two women pour tea from the same brewing, one of them would have a baby within the year, or a member of that woman’s family would have a new arrival. The same is said should your apron drop from your waist.
Wiltshire, 1975

And it wasn’t just a mother who was able to transmit pregnancy to other young women. Babies too were thought to have certain powers:

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