I know it's not exactly the most controversial of opinions, but being pregnant can't be too easy. You've got nine months of morning sickness, cramps and back pain, and before you get to the beauty of new life and the motherhood stuff, you've got all those hours of hard labour ahead of you to actually push it out.
You're also going to have to give up a lot of things. Your hobby of lifting heavy things will have to wait, and you won't be able to drink away your pregnancy stresses, or eat a ton of raw fish either. One more thing we should probably now add is poppy seed bagels, after one pregnant woman's rather unfortunate tale.
Out in Maryland back on April 4, Elizabeth Eden was probably quite looking forward becoming a mom. Before she went into labour, she ate a poppy seed bagel to give her the energy to give birth. We know that it wasn't one of those lox and cream cheese ones (on account of all that pregnancy), but we don't know what else was in that bagel.
This was something that hospital staff at St Joseph Medical Centre were particularly interested in, after Eden gave birth and underwent a drug test after welcoming her new daughter to the world. She must have been pretty taken aback when her daughter was born, but a case worker made her stay an extra five days after she tested positive for opiates.
Although she was eventually given the all-clear by the case worker, Eden said she had learned in a school health class that eating poppy seeds could cause a false positive, and that's exactly what happened here. Although you shouldn't get addicted to eating poppy seed bagels by eating a lot of them (at least not for opiate-related reasons), they can result in some less-than-ideal drug test results.
Professor Atholl Johnston, who's a professor of clinical pharmacology at Queen Mary University, says about as much, explaining that you probably should avoid such bagels ahead of a urine test at work. Plus, you can't even get high off them!
"If you eat a poppy seed roll, it could give rise to a positive result on a urine drug test for morphine. It is unlikely that a single poppy seed roll, or even a dozen rolls, would result in an individual ingesting enough morphine to have a pharmacological effect."
As you may or may not know, morphine opium extracted from opium poppy seeds can be used to make heroin, morphine, opium and other such drugs, and as such, you've really got to be careful when eating them. In the end, Elizabeth Eden wasn't too affected by the bagels in question, but you may not be so lucky next time. Poppy seed bagels may be delicious, but not get-fired-for-failing-a-drugs-test delicious. Be careful out there, folks.