Pregnancy Rules Are Totally Different Depending On Where You Live

As soon as one of your friends decides to grow a baby, you learn pretty quickly that there are a lot of rules surrounding pregnancy.

From what types of cheese is OK eat to whether they can sunbathe, mums-to-be are bombarded with a complicated set of regulations intended to keep their foetus in good shape. But what becomes increasingly clear is no one really knows exactly what pregnant women should and shouldn't do.

Because it all rather depends on what country they happen to be pregnant in.

In the UK we shun sushi. In Japan, pregnant women continue to gobble down the stuff.

In the US and UK pregnant women are advised not to drink alcohol, but the French wouldn't dream of ditching  a glass or two of vino every now and then. And don't even get them started on unpasturised cheese.

Plus how can spicy foods be bad when there are entire populations breeding quite happily while eating a diet based almost entirely on chillies?

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Perhaps the most interesting thing about pregnancy around the world is the different attitudes mums-to-be have towards it.

Search data from Google has discovered what we're worrying about in different countries, and it reveals how pregnancy is treated and thought of around the world.

For example, in the UK, where pregnancy has been quite medicalised, we're obsessively interested in what's safe to eat. But in India, mums-to-be just want to know how to sleep and have sex while pregnant.

In Nigeria, they want to check that it's OK to drink cold water thanks to an old wives' tale about it giving the unborn baby pneumonia.

In most Western countries, there's quite a preoccupation for avoiding stretchmarks, while in India and Nigeria this concern isn't a top search question at all. Though in India, one of the top searches is 'how to breastfeed my husband', so everyone seems to have their quirks.

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Harvard economics Ph.D. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz analysed the stats and commented: "Interestingly, the huge differences in questions posed around the world have only a small amount to do with different diets.

"They are most likely caused by the overwhelming flood of information coming from disparate sources in each country: legitimate scientific studies, so-so scientific studies, old wives' tales and neighborhood chatter. It is difficult for women to know what to focus on."

Many of the food rules we have in the UK are based on scientific advice. You are more at risk of getting literia if you eat rare meat, unpasturised cheese and sushi.

But it also has a lot to dowith what we're used to as a population. Really we don't have much of a history of eating sushi, while the Japanese have been doing it for centuries. So even if you used to go for a sushi meal once a month, your body's still not as used to it as a woman living in Japan. So following British guidelines and eschewing it for the duration of your pregnancy makes sense.

And with something as important as creating another human life, it's probably best to be safe than sorry. The NHS has guidance for mums-to-be on what to avoid. But try not to obsess too much, stress isn't good for the baby either (sorry).