Nevertheless the rule is subject to
exceptions.
Women in pregnancy are a prey to all sorts of longings and to
rapid changes of mood, and some folks call this the 'ivy-sickness';
and with the mothers of female infants the longings are more acute,
and they are less contented when they have got what they desired.
In a certain few cases the patient feels unusually well during
pregnancy. The worst time of all is just when the child's hair is
beginning to grow.
In pregnant women their own natural hair is inclined to grow
thin and fall out, but on the other hand hair tends to grow on parts
of the body where it was not wont to be. As a general rule, a
man-child is more prone to movement within its mother's womb than a
female child, and it is usually born sooner. And labour in the case of
female children is apt to be protracted and sluggish, while in the
case of male children it is acute and by a long way more difficult.
Women who have connexion with their husbands shortly before childbirth
are delivered all the more quickly. Occasionally women seem to be in
the pains of labour though labour has not in fact commenced, what
seemed like the commencement of labour being really the result of
the foetus turning its head.
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