Superstitions about Pregnancy and Newborn Babies I recently read an article about “Motherhood. Russian-style” by Tanja Maier. She is American, and the book takes her look at modern Russian mothers. Among other things, there are mentioned superstitions about pregnancy and newborn babies. This is so true. There are a lot of the superstitions in Russia. In early May, I gave a birth to a son, and I had to face a bunch of the superstitions. For instance, my mother-in-low, who lives 300 meters from us, still has not seen her newborn grandson. She considers that her eyes are “dark”, so she could jinx* my baby. My mother asks me to do not upload his photos to the internet. It upsets and amuses me at the same time. It is interesting that plenty of celebrities and ordinary people upload photos of their kids, but they all are fine, and nobody jinxes them. * To jinx = to hoodoo = to bring bad luck