The youngest casualty of fake news is probably the little one in mummy’s tummy. Auntie ji’s advice to WhatsApp forwards to uncle’s point of view on breastfeeding to conscious parenting trends – the floodgates of advice can be overwhelming and at times, intimidating.

The mother-to-be is vulnerable because now her body needs to take care of two and how to do it is an exam with no set syllabus. So, she tends to go with what she can trust. When someone in the family says spicy food makes your baby hot-tempered, the mummy-to-be might go on a sattvic diet. Even though the baby may crave the mirchi ka salan on a Hyderabadi biryani.

When I was pregnant with my son last year, my fellow-mommies told me smile and wave at the ‘helpful advice’ that came my way. Some advice was cute, Buzzfeed-style quizzes like a ring test that predicted the gender of the baby and some advice was frightening. Like a mother who has a caesarean baby will find it difficult to bond with her baby. (I have a C-section baby and we get along just fine.) Or one of the most popular ones – if you eat papaya you might have a miscarriage.

Most of the news that came my way was not innocent. But from ‘coconut oil cures stretch marks’ to ‘I must eat for two people’ – fake news came dime a dozen.

My gynaecologist made a strict recommendation – stay away from Dr Google. New parents seemed to google every new medical term they were introduced to. In one of his prenatal seminars, the gynaecologist joked about how new parents seem to know more about upcoming medical techniques than the doctors at the maternity ward.

However, another professor and lactation expert from the UK says the opposite. In her book,’Informed is best: How to spot fake news about your pregnancy, birth and baby,’ Professor Amy Brown, Department of Public Health, Policy and Social Sciences at Swansea University in the UK says – information is empowering but we need tools to evaluate the information.

In a world of this dichotomy, my husband and I decided to verify inevitable information. We created a verification system for information that came our way.

We made a list of three doctors who would cross-check information for us. We would ask all three and then choose the opinion that seemed most likely. Critical thinking is a way to go. Though we couldn’t help ourselves from googling on pregnancy, I would make sure the article and the author are credible. Next, I checked the date and saw if there are other stories from different publications that corroborate the story.

It also helped that I did an online verification course called the Google News Initiative.

As soon as there was a pregnancy WhatsApp forward in the family group, that we might believe, we would make sure we verified it and if necessary countered it. This was quite empowering as parents to be but annoying, at times, to people we were confronting!

PS: The fake news continues after the baby is welcomed. During one of my doctor’s appointments, I overheard, a mother refusing to let her daughter drink anything but ajwain pani after her delivery. Ajwain pani is supposed to help colicky babies ease their tummies but only that is a myth. The new mother had to drag the doctor to be the judge. In the end, the doctor recommended 4 litres of water and thus, the daughter and mother found something else to contest each other on.