The gifted exchange blog placed this interesting article
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...chance-that-child-will-have-high-IQ.html

HAHA!

With DS6 (who is my DYS) I had hyperemesis gravidarum so bad that I required a hospitalization and frequent IV fluids for the first 22 weeks.

My other two younger kids gave me nausea but not as bad as that first pregnancy.

Yep, all day sickness with all 3 of mine until about 20week....even after that just brushing my teeth was enough to make me hurl....

With DS8 (who is my DYS), I threw up once, but had nausea and serious indigestion throughout pregnancy. My second DS2 gave me some nausea, but I never got sick.

Replace
We prefer the tall=gifted study theory
with
We prefer the very bad sleeper study theory,

I had no morning sickness with either one of my gt kids (DS6 is DYS). None at all. As a matter of fact in the 1st trimester I had hardly any pregnancy symptoms besides loosing my waist line

I had bad headaches and nausea almost the entire time I was pregnant with my son.

I only had morning sickness for the first several months when I was pregnant with my daughter.

this is definately us as well

and my husband is 6'8" too...

I have an abnormally tall kid considering his parents! I also puked my guts out for 25 weeks, regardless of medication or crackers in bed or whatever other cockamamie idea!

So I'll take the Tall+morning sickness= super-gifted :-)

Ohh Dottie he has a giant head too! They told me at 10 mo he'd probably have autism because abnormally large heads were an indicator. Does that mean "more efficient brain development" too?

How about wearing glasses?

In my head that is a clear indicator of intelligence... and it has nothing to do with the fact that DH and I both wear glasses lol.

You guys are cracking me up! LOL! Here's what I've got:

1. Very sick with both my pregnancies
2. Head size for both was off the charts! (DS8 wears and adult size racing helmet...even though he's 52lbs!)
3. Both are 80%-90% for height.
4. Both got teeth early.

I don't see anything in the article about more morning sickness meaning higher IQ. It sounds like any vs. none, and the IQ spread is probably very small, anyway. Morning sickness is also protective of fetal health, so it just makes sense that it would be protective of IQ. I sincerely doubt that morning sickness causes a higher IQ. It seems far more likely that a lack of morning sickness can indicate a problem with fetal development, resulting in lower IQ scores.

FWIW, I was crazy nauseous but only threw up once.

You are all giving me a chuckle! I had no morning sickness at all, but DS had/has a giganto head.

We've got:
- morning sickness that lasted all day
- big head
- tall
- early teeth (3 months - had 4 by 6 months, which is why we only breast-fed for 7 months!)
- and blue eyes (I heard a snippet on the radio the other day that kids with blue eyes have greater intellectual acheivement than kids who don't, didn't catch the why of it)

I was nauseated during the first trimester with DS7, but nothing too extreme. I did lose my breakfast in the hotel shower before my brother-in-law's wedding. I was so embarrassed to have to call down to the front desk for cleaning help! And I couldn't tell anyone yet, so it was trouble.

But if morning sickness = intelligence, then DS4 is the one who should be a total GENIUS!

I was sick the whole time--like from the day of conception!--and he was 2 weeks late, so it was a full 10 months of sick! I felt queasy virtually 24/7 and I barfed at least once a week every week for the whole pregnancy. No exaggeration! I actually threw up a very expensive dinner in the parking lot one week before I delivered! It was awful! I would even *wake up in the act of yakking* and have to leap out of bed still half asleep to try to make it to the bathroom. Torture!

On the bright side, stomach flu is a walk in the park now. I know exactly how long I have to get to the bathroom. There's always a silver lining, right?

P.S. They also had big heads, but they were just big babies, so I didn't read much into that. It would have been weird to have kids in the 90+th %ile for height and weight with little bitty heads, right?

And they're both tall and teethed early, too. Covered most of the (silly) intelligence bases, I think! Ha ha!

With DS7, I was very nauseous. I threw up many times in the first 5 months. He had a big head, so he never dropped and I had a c-section.

With DD4, I had mild nausea throughout pregnancy, but had never threw up. She also had a big head, never dropped and again, I had a c-section.

They were both pretty tall, at least 80 %. They got teeth at normal time. They definitely didn't have blue eyes. That would be freaky if they did because we have no genes for it.

With both my kids I was nauseated 24/7 for about 5 months. During that time I actually threw up about twice a day, but the nausea was constant. Ugh!

DD has a small head.
DS has a large head.

Both are tall, have brown eyes and late teeth.

Go figure

Nope, doesn't work here! I never threw up at all with my DS6, and I was sick all the time the whole 9 months with DD2 whose testing remains to be seen.

I actually have a theory (I'd make it a study if I had a grant) that it has to do with blood types. Not the intelligence, the sickness, LOL!

Hah! Dh and I are both lefties too, no left handed kids though. In fact most of your list is a match with our brood except for the tall, we are more medium height-large headed-fair skinned folk with glasses... paints a pretty picture

Nausea - yes, with ds, loads. And then 2 months after the birth I had to have my gall bladder removed. Apparently about 40% of pregnant women experience a hormonal shift which causes some gall stone formation, though often not as severe as to require surgery. I had to be on anti-nausea meds for about 1/2 the pregnancy.
Dd, some nausea, no way as severe as with ds. I think working helped keep my mind off it, however. I do remember having to get off the metro train to puke at one of the stops with dd.

I have heard that nausea is a sign your body is producing the right hormones to make a healthy baby, so good health would surely be a + for higher iq. I see #5#5 has mentioned this too...

Ok this is fun what if they have blue eyes but blond hair does that cancel out? LOL!

I have one tall and one little both had "proportional" heads they never looked big headed KWIM? Most likely both Gifted although DD4 has not been tested except to have her school put her in Kinder as a young 4yo......I figured it mostly had to do with genes since I was pretty clueless as to child development and following any lists of stuff to do. they still managed to learn. at one point I realized we hadn't read as much to DD4, when my DH pointed out that DD8 read to her (including after bedtime using a flashlight).....

Forgot about the morning sickness, I was nauseous but only threw up once with each kid. Certain things really turned my appetite off though.

Let's see, we have tall, early teether's with brown eyes. Hey 2 out of 3 is not bad, right. But I am not sure where I fit on morning sickness. I was never really sick or nauseous, but I had absolutely no appetite. The docs were getting really mad at me & they had me drinking double milk peanut butter milkshakes for breakfast. Yum

Now what I want to know is, can we convert all of this into IQ scores so we don't have to worry about testing?

I was more sick with DD3, but didn't puke once with either.

I'll take the

1. Ate tuna when I shouldn't have (making my own up) method
2. large heads study
and
3. he's his momma's boy of course genetic identification study

LOL, this thread is hilarious.

Here is my equation....

Didn't puke during pregnancy but felt a little sick here and there
+ DS has a HUGE head
- DS has brown eyes
+ DS never slept much and barely napped as infant
- teeth came in at avg time
+ DS is tall and a big kid
+ drank lots of water
- didn't play classical music to my belly
x hadn't eaten red meat in 13 yrs and suddenly had cravings for it during pregnancy and ate a jr. whopper with cheese a couple times

= a PG kid

so there you have it. That's my recipe : )

I forgot to add asthma and allergies to mine!

So I get:
morning sickness
+tall
+big head
+asthma
+allergies
+glasses

But lose one for:
Brown eyes
average time teeth
right handed

So I guess that's the recipe for an HG kid... has nothing to do with two HG+ parents at all :-)

DW was tossing starting the 3d week until 6 mos. We'd go for walk and she'd spend half the time inspecting the grass. Mr W has such a big head and long legs, I call him El Melon Con Piernas. He does not sleep much.

Mr W has startlingly blue eyes, very fair, and very pronounced epicanthic folds that he gets from DW.

This makes for some double-takes when he and I are out together as I have dark hair and round brown eyes. Mr W gets a lot of funny looks from Chinese especially.

( It does not help that he has picked up some phrases from "Ni Hao Kailan." )

well that's good for me, but DS5 has the darkest brown eyes ever.

but what if i'm lefthanded, but ds5 is right handed?

What? I thought the eye color was a joke.

We all have blue eyes. Both DS6 and DS4 have out of the charts heads. I had to take DS6 for special follow ups because there were concerns about his head size when he was a baby.

Now could somebody hand me over DS4 IQ so I wouldn't have to bother with testing? What additional info do you need?

Thanks for the giggles.

eyes: DH has dark brown eyes (his father had blue or green, but his mother is south american). His IQ is clearly higher than mine (after all, as he likes to remind me, he scored 0.2 percentile higher on the lsat than I did). I have blue. Three of my kids have brown eyes, two have blue, and there's one still in the oven.

morning sickness: usually I have a bunch of nausea, but the only times I have ever vomited during pregnancy were from a stomach bug or food poisoning.

My 12-month-old seems to be really late with teeth.

We're all short (ok, DH would tell me to speak for myself lOL. So, medium to short).

DH and I are both righties, though we both have left-handed brothers. Two of the older three kids are lefties (my VSLs, big shocker).

Once upon a time I thought I read someplace that large eyes were equated with intelligence (or maybe it was with VSLs). DH and the kids have relatively large eyes.

LOL ... love it. And I was thinking the same thing .. DD should be an idiot by the complete lack of morning sickness I experienced.

Love this thread.

1. no sickness
2. in the 90 to 95% across the board. She is our proportionate child.
3. early cutting teeth
4. blue eyed kid (Dad has blue and Mom has green/hazel (depending on my mood)
5. DD is clearly left-handed which I read somewhere in one of the GT books that gifted kids tend to be right-handed.

Oohhh... maybe we can make up our own wise ... I mean wives tale. Hey, I couldn't resist!

In total agreement here too!

This thread is so funny! I find it particularly amusing since I'm expecting in the next month or two or so. (due dates are rather meaningless when you are having pre-term labor!) It falls right in line with the in-laws trying to guess whether we are having a boy or a girl depending on how much weight I have gained in my thighs! Ha!

For DS8 (and future little one):
1) no morning sickness with either.
2) DS on the shrimpy side of height. (DH was the shortest in class until HS)
3) lefty. (very Visual-Spatial kid)
4) hazel eyes, like his dad.
5) early teether. (teeth at 4 months, all 8 first permanent ones in by 6 years.)
6) glasses. (like his parents)
7) very small head (like his parents)
8) didn't sleep through the night until after 4 years old.

So far, DS?/DD? (-2 months) has a head in the 35% when everything else is smack on the 50% mark!

I think if you take all of the HG+ kids out there and average them together, you will find a fair representation of all genetic combinations possible. It seems more dependent on the gene pool than IQ. It is fun to look at all of the various combinations though!!

It would be fun to be able to pick and choose. (I would dump #8 very, very quickly!) But it also begs the question of whether you would choose to have an HG+ child to begin with. It is a long hard road to travel, without much aide or understanding from others, present company excepted of course. There are days when fighting with the school and asynchronous development leaves me exhausted!! I think we would probably choose to our second child be gifted, given the option, but there are days when I pray for just a normal, healthy baby. (with the emphasis on the word normal!)

for the record, i was totally joking in my posts above.

Bad eyesight and height would definitely work for my daughter, she's somewhere in the 20/700 area? Which, I recently discovered, makes her visually impaired *until she puts the glasses/contacts on*. And she's always been the tallest in her grades of 100-300 kids- now she's blending in more, but she's still "the tower." She's brown eyed and right handed though. And I did not have much morning sickness....

We've got:
Very tall and big
Never slept
lots of nausea in pregnancy

BUT:
no eyeglasses
green eyes
regular sized heads
they are right handed, I am left handed
one had late, late teeth, other had normal timed teeth

This is great, we should submit our findings and get our own research grant, no need for IQ tests

Hmmm....

I don't throw up all that much in pregnancy any more because I start taking my anti-nausea meds at 6 weeks. I take it until I give birth because I start puking if I forget it one night. It just so happens that brushing my teeth, raising my heart rate, laughing too much, and many other things trigger my gag reflex and make me puke too. The one I'm carrying right now seems to be the worst.

All three of my kids started out in the 95th percentile.

DD got her first two teeth at 4 months and lost her first two teeth at 4 years. My youngest DS got his first two teeth at 2 months.

All three of them have blue eyes and are right handed.

OMG Imagine! WOW that would be something. I was deadly sick, in and out of hospital hypermeses def. Although I was sicker w/my 2nd and not seeing any gifted signs although I took medicine w/him that could have had some neg side effects.

I need to add "visited a chiropractor regularly" to mine... both prior to conception (too many years of not getting pregnant to not think being aligned helped) and during pregnancy.

JJM-

In other words, your chiropractor got you pregnant?

LOL. If only I could get some monetary support from him, right? Ha!

And what if DS is my 1st born, but he's DH's second born?