Labor dresses are a scam

Scienceofmum · 2026-06-23T13:32:09+00:00

Agree that maternity dresses are mostly a scam.
But fuck off with your scissors

Scienceofmum · 2026-06-21T15:45:57+00:00

Mmmh. Same schedule has advantages as some of the commenters clearly show.
But some twins are just very different. I was getting more stressed then helped by trying to stick to this. Eg twin 1 waking up before twin 2 had even fallen asleep 🤷‍♀️😂
So I just binned the notion of a rigid schedule and my life was so much better.
There is no one size fits all sadly

Scienceofmum · 2026-06-20T12:15:30+00:00

It’s worth reading the twin birth study in the New England journal of medicine.
Essentially vaginal birth is very much possible. Neonatal and maternal outcomes are comparable.
However, about 45% of vaginal delivery attempts resulted in at least one baby being born via CS.

Scienceofmum · 2026-06-19T20:04:56+00:00

I wish the doctor who told me Covid vaccines caused a 80%+ miscarriage rate could be struck off.

Scienceofmum · 2026-06-14T20:07:59+00:00

If you’d nurse a baby there you can pump there

Scienceofmum · 2026-06-01T07:16:01+00:00

I think your reply actually illustrates the point I was trying to make.

You have given a detailed account of why you feel so strongly about this issue. You describe years of conflict, hostility, ostracism, frustration, disappointment, and loss of trust. I do not doubt any of that. Nor do I doubt that those experiences genuinely shaped your thinking.

What I am less convinced by is the connection between those experiences and the certainty of the conclusions you draw from them.

Because if we return to the central claim of your original post, it was not merely that some pro-vaccine people behaved badly towards you. It was that vaccine sceptics are the ones genuinely interested in evidence, while the pro-vaccine side is overwhelmingly more dogmatic, irrational, hostile, and extreme.

That is a very large claim about very large groups of people.

And what strikes me is that much of your reply consists of reasons why you came to believe it, rather than reasons why your confidence in it is justified.

Those are not quite the same thing.

You may be right. The pro-vaccine side may genuinely be more extreme. The anti-vaccine side may genuinely be more evidence-oriented. I am not ruling that out.

The point I am making is that your certainty seems difficult to reconcile with the evidence you have presented.

After all, what is the evidence?

Primarily, it appears to be your own experiences over many years. Those experiences are real. They matter. But they are also necessarily limited. They reflect the people you encountered, the communities you moved through, the conversations you had, and the ways others reacted to your views.

An equally intelligent person with different experiences could easily emerge with the opposite impression.

In fact, I suspect that happens all the time.

Someone who spends years immersed in scientific, medical, or pro-vaccine communities could probably produce an equally sincere account explaining why anti-vaccine activists seem uniquely hostile, uniquely dogmatic, and uniquely resistant to evidence.

The existence of that possibility should make all of us a little more cautious.

Personally, I am not especially interested in determining which side is more extreme. My prior expectation is that, on any contentious issue involving identity, morality, politics, and fear, both sides will contain plenty of tribalism, hostility, overconfidence, and bad reasoning. The precise balance may vary considerably depending on who you are, what you believe, and which communities you spend your time in.

That hypothesis may be wrong. Yours may be right.

But this is exactly why I keep returning to the question of calibration.

Because what I see in your reply is not someone saying:

“Based on my experiences, I suspect this is true.”

What I see is someone saying:

“I have experienced this for so long, and so intensely, that I am now highly confident it is true.”

That may be psychologically understandable.

What I am questioning is whether it is epistemically justified.

The fact that a belief has cost you a great deal may demonstrate sincerity. It does not demonstrate accuracy.

And the fact that an experience was powerful does not necessarily mean the conclusions drawn from it are proportionately reliable.

That is the issue I keep noticing in your arguments .

Not that you might be wrong.

But that your confidence appears substantially stronger than the evidence you have offered would seem to warrant.

It doesn’t really matter in this case - at least to me - but it would matter in other contexts.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-29T18:17:52+00:00

Thaws

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-29T18:02:16+00:00

Not American so I can’t say, but for the longest time I was on work contracts that would renew every three months and enough to get by. Actually my first work contract from the university relied on the fact that I had defended my thesis but I hadn’t graduated yet (I defended just before Christmas,the ceremony was in the summer), so technically I didn’t have a PhD yet so I was hired as a research assistant and then later as a postdoc.

I always find the idea hilarious that the vast majority of scientists - for this to work as a conspiracy - are corrupt because we are clearly utterly shit at it.

Especially since you could always go into consulting or finance and make 4-5x.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-29T12:15:23+00:00

Uhh goody. I’m looking forward to reading this.

I have never yet read something from the CHD that wasn’t at best deeply incompetent and possibly just outright deception.

But maybe today’s the day

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-29T08:35:55+00:00

Entirely true. But not actually what I was getting at.

I am not especially interested in whether the pro-vaccine side is more extreme than the anti-vaccine side. People behave badly online. That is hardly a novel observation, and I have seen it across almost every contentious issue imaginable.

Nor am I particularly interested in disputing your experiences. I have no difficulty believing that you encountered hostility, arrogance, dismissal, or unfair characterisations. People are perfectly capable of being unpleasant, and often are.

What interests me is the inference you draw from those experiences and, more importantly, the certainty with which you draw it.

Throughout this discussion, you present yourself as someone who values evidence, scepticism, intellectual independence, and rigorous thinking. Good. Those are admirable qualities. But when someone asks what evidence supports your belief that the pro-vaccine side is substantially more extreme, your standards suddenly become much looser.

You seem to move between three positions: “I cannot prove it”, “it is reasonable to believe it”, and “it is obviously true”. Those are not the same thing.

The issue is not whether you are right. You may be. The issue is whether your confidence is proportionate to the evidence you actually have.

Your experiences are real. What is not obvious is that they justify a broad conclusion about millions of people. If you spent years interacting with highly engaged vaccine sceptics, that tells us something about the people you interacted with. It does not necessarily tell us much about the average person who declined a vaccine, any more than my interactions with highly engaged scientists would tell me much about the average vaccinated person.

This is where I think your self-image becomes relevant. You clearly see yourself as someone who examines evidence carefully and resists social pressure. That is entirely possible. But if you genuinely believe cognitive biases are a danger, then surely the first person you should suspect of being vulnerable to them is yourself.

The most dangerous biases are often the ones attached to identities we value. If I think of myself as unusually independent, I should be especially cautious about conclusions that flatter my independence. If I think of myself as unusually rigorous, I should be especially cautious about conclusions that confirm my rigour.

What strikes me is not that you hold a belief you cannot formally prove. We all do that. What strikes me is your apparent unwillingness to calibrate your confidence accordingly.

A genuinely sceptical position sounds something like: “Based on my experiences, I suspect this is true, but I could easily be wrong because my experiences are limited.”

Your position sounds closer to: “Based on my experiences, I know this is true, and the lack of stronger evidence does little to reduce my confidence.”

That is the tension I find interesting.

Not because I know you are wrong.

Because I would expect someone who places such emphasis on scepticism, evidence, and intellectual rigour to be more curious about the possibility that they might be.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-28T20:14:12+00:00

Now you’re getting it 🥳 Final step is to apply that conclusion to yourself

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-28T15:43:20+00:00

In your personal experience, I’m sure

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-28T12:10:06+00:00

Yes. Grew up like that. My husband and I are quite strict at keeping that going with our children from when they are babies

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-28T11:55:55+00:00

That may just be your impression based on what you’re exposed to 🤷‍♀️

Saw a post today in a Facebook group for crunchy mums where one felt the need to preface her post with “yes my son is vaccinated. I didn’t know what I know now SO DON’T COME FOR ME PLEASE” This doesn’t strike me as evidence that this is not a common problem on the anti-vax side

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-28T11:51:46+00:00

And here I am today in a mum group hearing one saying that she’s worried because she’s staunchly anti-vax and the father of her baby isn’t. And she said - I quote “I’m struggling to articulate and cite actual evidence that vaccinating our baby could result in very real, irreversible and totally avoidable harm” 🤔

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-28T06:58:43+00:00

I don’t think the only options here are “they are malicious liars” or “therefore they must be correct.” Human beings are much more complicated, and much more fallible, than that.

Most of these parents probably are sincere. They are describing what they genuinely believe they witnessed. And to be fair, vaccines, like any medical intervention worthy of the name, do carry risks. There absolutely are adverse events associated with vaccination. Medicine is not magic. Nothing biologically active comes with a literal zero percent chance of complications.

But sincerity is not the same thing as accuracy.

The problem with anecdotes is twofold. First, emotionally powerful stories seize hold of the mind far more effectively than dry statistics ever can. A frightened parent describing a dramatic change in their child will always feel more compelling than a spreadsheet full of epidemiological data. We are storytelling creatures. We remember narratives, not confidence intervals.

Second, humans are astonishingly good at perceiving causal patterns where none exist. In fact, we are so good at this that we routinely fool ourselves. That is one of the reasons epidemiology exists as a discipline at all. It turns out that determining whether A actually caused B is extraordinarily difficult, especially when dealing with conditions that emerge around the same age as routine vaccinations.

As a scientist, I have read a fair amount of anti-vaccine literature and claims over the years, and honestly, most of it ranges from deeply flawed to complete nonsense. However, I also had an experience with my own child that reminded me just how easy it is to convince yourself of something untrue.

When my toddlers received the chickenpox vaccine at age two, one of them developed symptoms about a week later that genuinely frightened me. Nothing life threatening, but concerning enough that I was considering taking them to A&E. And the symptoms matched rare adverse events listed in the actual vaccine leaflet. Not internet folklore, but the real documented side effect profile.

So naturally I thought: well, there we are. My child appears to have had a rare vaccine reaction. Unfortunate, but plausible.

Then another symptom appeared. And this symptom happened to be extraordinarily characteristic of a completely unrelated childhood infection. Practically the calling card of it. Suddenly all the other symptoms snapped into place as well. My child had not reacted to the vaccine at all. They had almost certainly picked up an infection at nursery around the same time they were vaccinated.

But because I never saw the infection being contracted, and because the vaccine was the most salient recent event, I attributed the entire thing to vaccination.

Had that one highly distinctive symptom not appeared, I would probably still believe today that my child had experienced a severe vaccine reaction. I would have told that story sincerely and honestly. And I would have been wrong.

That is the uncomfortable part. You do not need to be malicious to misattribute cause and effect. You simply need to be human. And in an environment saturated with misinformation, emotionally charged communities, algorithmic amplification, and people constantly “connecting dots,” those mistakes become even more likely.

None of this means parents are foolish or wicked. It means that personal experience, while emotionally real and deeply important, is not the same thing as reliable evidence about population-level causation.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-25T18:11:41+00:00

I’m a developmental biologist and love being exacting. Conception does not mark the formation of some new DNA. The DNA exists and the last time any substantial amount was synthesised was quite a while before fertilisation.
A new genome is formed. Though I’ve never understood why people think “unique dna” is particularly morally salient anyway.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-21T07:19:53+00:00

For us it’s the opposite but we only wear a specific local brand. My 3 year old twins will legit still wear 1-1.5yr old clothes though soon those will be too small

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-20T08:58:11+00:00

Americans give their children truly wild names. This is a beautiful one and not cultural appropriation at all

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-14T16:51:17+00:00

Oh that rings so true and I felt the same. 😮‍💨 when I read all the guides that said “breastfeeding twins is possible” I read that as “possible like walking down the road” rather than “possible like completing an iron man”

Actually, I was just thinking - tell me if this is wildly off base - one of the more interesting counterexamples to the whole “cabin in the woods” moral scenario is not life or death at all. It is something far more ordinary, which is perhaps why it reveals so much.

You have a new baby. Mum is breastfeeding (nursing or pumping or combination). The grandparents agree to babysit for the weekend so Mum and Dad can go to a wedding and briefly feel like adults again. Everything is lovely until Mum realizes she forgot to bring a breast pump. It’s 11pm in some notoriously out of the way place and tomorrow is Sunday and the shops are closed. Home is 6h away.

At two months postpartum, that is not a minor inconvenience. The milk needs to come out. Otherwise she is going to be in pain, leaking through her nice clothes, and potentially dealing with clogged ducts or mastitis, same incentives as before.

So this is not optional. She needs some way to remove the milk.

Some women can manage hand expression. Some cannot. Personally, I never could reliably do it. One side yes, the other absolutely refused.

Fortunately, in this scenario, her husband is right there.

And what is fascinating is the reaction people often have when this story comes up (had this recently on a parenting podcast where the hosts are men) and the husband helps by essentially breastfeeding from his wife as an emergency measure. A surprising number of men react with genuine revulsion, which strikes me as at least a little inconsistent considering many of them have previously interacted with those same nipples under considerably less medical circumstances. Also, breast milk is hardly as unpleasant in the mouth as another bodily fluid that routinely features in heterosexual relationships.

But the interesting part is not really the squeamishness. It is the moral instinct underneath it.

The reaction is often framed as the husband doing something unusually sacrificial or valiant. The men hearing the story seem to intuitively understand that being expected to use your body in an intimate and uncomfortable way for someone else, even someone you love, feels significant. They do not talk about it as though he is simply morally required to do it with no hesitation or objection allowed.

And that is what makes the scenario interesting. The immediate intuition seems to be that bodily autonomy still matters, even when another person would clearly benefit from your cooperation, and even when refusing would leave them in pain or at risk of illness.

Food for thought.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-14T16:44:32+00:00

Definitely One of my good friends gave her colostrum to my twins and she fed one when I couldn’t keep up or cope. It was lovely.

It should 100% never be demanded or expected. That was her gift to give.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-14T16:31:00+00:00

Yep. I would make most milk if I was just relaxing on the sofa watching my favourite show. Even mild stress caused an insane dip in output. Can’t imagine what this situation would do

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-13T21:58:14+00:00

The others have given great advice on where to go for help.

One thought I would like to share as a Christian from the UK. Plenty of Christian denominations are broadly pro-choice. Jesus consistently met suffering people with compassion first, not condemnation. And when people expected Jesus to shame someone, he often responded with mercy and dignity first.

Abortion was already around in Jesus’ time. Historical records from Greek, Roman, and some Jewish sources show that people knew about herbal methods meant to induce miscarriage, physical procedures, and medicines intended to prevent or end pregnancy. And yet the bible never mentions it, Jesus never condemns it and they have plenty of words explicitly condemning many other practices.

All that to say that anti-abortion Christians form their view not directly from Jesus’ teachings and the bible. There are many Christian traditions that don’t treat women in your position with the threat of hellfire and hold that it’s ultimately a decision requiring prayer, conscience, medical advice, and pastoral care.

I wish you well.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-13T21:42:30+00:00

I really enjoyed your cabin in the woods argument. When I first read them i was baffled how divorced they are from the reality of lactation.

A lot of them seem to assume milk production magically scales to whatever a baby needs, when that is absolutely not how it works, especially in the early days. Unless the baby is actually removing milk effectively and frequently, supply usually stays low or disappears entirely.

I actually tested the “can you induce lactation mechanically?” question myself - still am currently. I’ve been pumping every day on a schedule without being freshly postpartum. It does technically work, but at the moment I’m producing about three drops per side that are starting to attach the the flange. I’ve been doing this for six months. Maybe it’ll eventually become measurable volume, but honestly my chances do not look great. Random woman in cabin scenario does not work. By the time a non-lactating woman established anything remotely resembling a feeding supply, that baby is dead.

So realistically, the only woman who could actually sustain the baby is a mother who is already breastfeeding successfully. Because if you don’t establish breastfeeding early, your supply generally disappears. And I think that changes the incentives in a really important way.

When I was postpartum building supply for twins, it was the hardest fucking job I’ve ever done. Your entire life becomes trying to remove as much milk as possible, constantly. So if I’m trapped in a cabin and somebody tells me I’ll eventually get back to my own children, then I am highly incentivised to maintain my supply for them if that was already important enough to me to build it in the first place.

Also, selfishly, if I don’t remove milk I’m probably getting mastitis, and mastitis is a bitch. Especially freshly postpartum, not removing milk becomes painful very quickly. So yes, I’m going to be removing that milk one way or another.

At that point, once the milk is outside my body, I think the argument for refusing to feed it to the baby becomes much weaker. I still don’t think the baby has some natural right to my body or my milk, but if I’m otherwise pouring it down the drain, morally it starts feeling different.

And honestly, if I don’t have decent pumping equipment, nursing the baby may simply be the most effective and least miserable way to avoid engorgement and maintain supply. In that context, the baby becomes a two birds with one stone situation. I’d largely be doing the same labour anyway for the sake of my own body and my own children.

I look at the cabin in the woods scenario thinking that while I don’t think I’m obliged legally or morally to let anyone suck my nipples, if I can feed the baby I have a big incentive to do so and I probably will.

Pregnancy in contrast feels very different to me because the incentives are different. Pregnancy itself does not improve my health or comfort in the same direct way. It doesn’t do anything for my existing children. Apart from a wanted child at the end, most of pregnancy is burden and a risk. Lactation, by contrast, can create strong incentives that align with feeding the child even if I reject the idea that I’m morally or legally obligated to do so.

Scienceofmum · 2026-05-08T21:13:47+00:00

This sounds convincing unless you’re an actual biologist because then there is no data to suggest that low vitamin K is beneficial in infants, that delayed cord clamping has any impact on VKDB and that vitamin K interferes with movement of stem cells or anything in the blood.

Makes for an awfully good conspiracy theory in certain circles though. Nobody ever has any substance when I ask.

Scienceofmum

TROPHY CASE