The Hysterical Pregnancy: Internet Panic

So last night I went out to eat and ordered steamed greens, topped with a mountain of sweet potatoes. Lots of colorful, vitamin-y food. I get home and start wondering "I wonder how much Folic acid kale has? I bet it's really healthy!" so I Google it. Pretty soon I am linking to all these sites about what (not) to eat during pregnancy. Then I stumble on this site, which theorizes that eating sweet potatoes may cause Vitamin A toxicity and lead to miscarriage.

In fact, according to this site, eating just one sweet potato can cause a TOXIC vitamin overload, your baby will DIE, it's all your fault and if only you had chosen Tater Tots instead of sweet potato fries you would be a truly fulfilled woman. http://prenatal-health.suite101.com/article.cfm/nutrition_for_the_first_trimester and:
http://prenatal-health.suite101.com/article.cfm/sweet_potatoes_may_be_harmful_during_pregnancy

Ok, you know what? Our women's studies professors were right. Pregnancy has been over-medicalized and scrutinized in order to take our reproductive power away from us and put it in the hands of the patriarchy. Not much has changed in the last 50 years, except that nowadays the patriarchy uses pink backdrops and hires a lot of female writers. Women's magazines and websites are whipping us into a panic about our relationships, pregnancy and parenthood … so much that we are unable to listen to our own bodies and make reasonable decisions without second-guessing ourselves. We've got to stop the hysteria!