BBC SERIES
THINKING ABOUT HAVING A BABY?

Can tight boxer shorts really affect baby making?
Can cough medicine aid conception?
Can a handstand after sex really help a women get pregnant?

For the first time on television, a brand new series will be exploding the myths to provide every prospective Mum and Dad with the un-missable scientific guide to having a baby.

If you are thinking about starting a family, have just begun or have been trying for a while, and would like to take part in our series, please contact us:

Tel: 0141 204 6620 or email: baby@mentorn.tv

I really do wish that TV companies would ask me before they go ahead and post these sort of things on my forum...

Well, Mentorn are a repectable company so I'll leave this up for anyone interested. The proposal certainly sounds better than that one about sexuality made by the Trisha people!

While I'm at it, Mentorn, do you need an animator to make a title sequence for you? I've worked with MTV2, Trouble TV (Flextech), and I've done work for Channel 4's website. If you're interested then drop me an email mata {at] matazone (dot) co (dot} uk.

Aw, I thought this could be a proper thread then. Can we turn it into one anyway? Like, the morals of these programmes, the nerve of calling it 'science' and the work ethic of advertising like this?

umm...I think that the members here are well aware of how to...'have a baby'

Even if they pay it'd never be enough!!!!

Hmmm.... almost hitting 30 and still no maternal feeling. Any one think I should be worried yet?

*sorry spammy kind of*

Naaaah Cath. I don't EVER want kids, personally. I just can't see myself being a good mother...so I'm leaving that sort of stuff up to other people. I think I'd like to be an aunt...I want my sisters to have babies so I can bounce them around and buy them toys and stuff. I just want to be able to hand them back to their parents when they start screaming!

I know being a parent has immense rewards and all that...but in the end I just don't think it's for me.

I would like to be a father someday, but not now. If it works out for me, I'd like to have a kid in my mid- to late twenties.

Too many kids nowadays. Hate the buggers.

Despite feeling very nervous about the idea of lumbering someone else with my genetics (the poor things) I think I would probably be a good father should the need arise. This said, I've got other things that are a far higher priority at the moment than fatherhood.

No kids. I barely trust myself with my own life - I wouldn't dare do that to someone else's.

There are other circumstances, too, but yeah.

I think it's better to spare the world from more of me. Not to mention my body is suffering from technical difficulties. Besides--we already have too many carbon units sucking in oxygen. I think it's worthwhile to adopt, if you really, really want to join the Pushcart Terrorist Club.

Only if the tax breaks are good enough.

And even then only if I can designate them by number. And work them like the pitiful slaves they are.

Hell yes I'll be a responsible dad!

I agree, aprt from the genetics bit. I'm beutiful, me. Any fruit I bare will be beutiful too

I've been adament for years and years that I don't want any sprogs at all. Butt after a long think, I realised it's more a case that I want lots more me time. I don't want to be lumbered with a child and have to bring it up on my own. I want to sort out my life and be sponaneous and selfish without having to be a responsible parent to a child I gave birth to. By giving birth, I see myself making an agreement with that baby, to look after them, and certainly for the first few years devote ALOT of attention towards them. And even after that I am expected to keep a child for 18 years? That's a long time, trust me, I'm 22.

Now if my partner were to tell me that s/he wanted to be a stay at home parent, well then, that's fine. They can be the primary carer, so that I have plenty of time to do me own thing. And if that's the agrement we both come to then that's cool. I'm not saying I'd be an absent mother, far from it. I just will not be left holding the baby at the end of the day.

My step father's partner had a baby a while back, and I think she got angry/upset with me that I didn't coo over it constantly. I know how to look after a baby, I have three younger siblings. Just beciause I'm a woman, doesn't mean to say I have to be all attentive and voulenteer to not just feed the kid, but change it's nappy. No thanks, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. I had to explain to my step father that it wasn't the case that I didn't want to play/clean/feed his child because I resented it, No. It was because it just didnt interest me. A bit like people's pets. Fisr t time a cat comes over to you ata friends house for a pet, that's fine. But I want it to leace me alone so I can get on with drinking my cuppa.

In saying that though, I do believe I would make a good parent as long as I can devote the amount of time and money, and ME as I see nessacery. One thing I'm not sure about though, is if I would home educate my child. I guess I'll see what the state school system is like, if and when.

The problem I have with kids is that I rather like them up until they turn about 5, then for the next ten years I cannot understand them at all. I don't want children because I wouldn't be able to relate to them and I think I'd probably be a bit scared of them (scared of the ankle biters at school atleast), and those people I know who have no relationship with their parents are rather messed up. I'm also to vague to be a mother, I'd probably forget to feed the thing or leave it outside a supermarket.

Also selfish. I love being able to give my god daughter back to her mother the minute she gets sticky/crabby.

Did you know a kid's record is wiped clean at 10 years?

If I'm going to have kids at all, it'll be so I can breed an army of drug dealers. Then at ten years old they can have their record wiped clean and go about their day (by this point I'd have disowned them).

Mans is gonna be rich.

In what country/state/municipality?

Maybe I'm just neurotic, but besides not trusting myself with another human life and wanting autonomy, I'm afraid of raw genetics. Like, what if I passed on the autism gene? I don't think I could care for an autistic child like my mum does my sister. Or they could be all sickly like me. Or what if you just don't get on with each other? It's such an act of daring to bring a kid into the world when so much could go wrong.

I don't think they've found an autism gene. One of my brothers has autism and my other brothers kids are bright little sprogs. They do complain a bit that Uncle doesn't talk to them. Fragile x syndrome is linked to autism and is caused by a faulty gene so that could have an effect. My brother was tested for that though and doesn't have fragile x.

As for having kids - I probably would if I had a long term partner who was keen to have them also. Single parenthood is a very, very and I do mean very hard job. I have nothing but respect for those who are and do a good job of it. I don't want to work that hard though and like the idea of tag team parenting. On a hard day I want to have a partner around to dissuade me of the notion that I could probably make some $$ selling junior on the black market.

I want kids at some time, and I get broody over other people's, but I'm well aware I'm not ready for 'em just yet. Although I think there are times when everyone thinks that, cand

Edit : Having bothered to read Froggy's post now, I agree. My mother always had this big thing that she desperately doesn't want her girls to make the same mistakes she did and end up being lumbered with 2 kids, no jobs, and no recent experience, so she was all for the independant women thing. I don't want to end up being a housewife and mother, but that doesn't mean I never want kids. Just when I'm ready, and with the right person

It would, obviously, be a terrible tragedy for my genes not to be passed on. But I'm selfish as well as egotistical, so I think I'll just donate sperm.

I have so much crap in my genes that I know my theoredical kids would be majorly screwed up. How am I supposed to tell my short bipolar kid that he or she may develop diabetes or cancer and has a predisposition to alcoholism and addiction? That said, I look foreward to being a father someday.

I do know for a fact, though, that I am not a father. I have about a million reasons why that is, but many of them include a bit too much information. I am probably going to help a friend of mine raise her kid in some form or fasion, which will probably consist of being "Uncle James" and stealing the toys out of cereal boxes as an excuse to leave a hundred bucks every once in a while (I'd leave a note saying, "I took the decoder ring; here's a hundred bucks to cover it").


Um, not to get too off-topic, but that's not funny. That almost happened to a friend of mine because his former stepdad owed a lot of people a lot of drug money.

I want to have kids, and lots of animals, and a big house and lots of land.

I also want to have a career in marine biology.

I haven't the foggiest where either of these things will merge, but when they do, I would like to be at home to be there with the children- to teach them how to sew and cook and paint and draw and do all the things my mother did with me and my two older siblings. And after typing that, it has now hit me how "'50's" that sounds, but I want the father to be around too. Perhaps it would be possible for us to both work from home?

I doubt it very much, and actually none of this will probably ever materialise.
And I wonder if it would be less selfish of me to adopt shildren and raise them as my own instead of putting more people onto this over-populated planet...

I apologize. It was meant with humour. It was also to express the positive aspect of having two parents. There's a better chance that at least one will keep their head during stressful child raising times. I think any primary caregiver has to have some de-stress time and a parent doesn't always get that time as they're there for the kids 24/7.