Pregnancy updates, a la China

In my Chinese studies the last few weeks, I've read a few articles from a pregnancy website. I figured if I'm reading these little weekly updates anyway, I might as well read them in Chinese and learn something I don't already know.

Like how to say "sensory organs," "kidneys," and "vernix." Somehow my college courses, thorough as they were, never covered this.

My favorite part this week is that the Chinese pregnancy updates also compare your unborn baby's size to that of a fruit or vegetable. In the English articles, you start at a grain of rice, move up through a pea, strawberry, avacado, and up through the larger vegetables. This week, according to the Chinese article, my baby is the size of a 番瓜 (fanggua). Since I don't know what a fanggua is, I consulted a google image search. Turns out, a fanggua is this:

Or this:

Or maybe this, poor child:

Or hopefully not this:

Or perhaps a naked woman (which, now that I think about it, might be the most accurate representation).

So I have no idea how big my baby is this week. Thank you, google images.

But I did read another article telling me not to endanger my health by following old wives' tales and superstitions. For example, I shouldn't go overboard postpartum with Chinese medicine containing ginger. Apparently ginger has a "warming" effect and is used to counteract something cold happening in your body (I didn't read it very carefully), but if you eat ginger in everything and wash it down with strong ginger tea, and basically spend most of your day munching ginger, it actually causes you to bleed more. But ginger in a normal diet is fine.

I'd never have known that if I stuck to all-English pregnancy websites.