I guess I just don't see a very valid reason to wait if I have the opportunity and can be 100% sure the needles and such are clean. My doctor doesn't see an issue with it... I mean I see waiting on getting a tattoo as being on par with not eating cold cuts while pregnant for the risk of listeria. The risk is so low, and if you can guarantee that you won't have to worry about listeria, why stop eating cold cuts throughout your pregnancy? I guess it would just seem extreme to me when the chance is SO low. I don't see an issue with anyone else making those decisions for themselves and for their pregnancy, however, I just don't personally see the point.
Okay, this is maybe just a really sensitive spot for me personally, but this attitude really bugs me.
I personally have a friend who lost a full term baby girl
the day before her due date, to listeria.
It is the single most devastating thing that has ever happened to her. It's been three years now, and she is still just as destroyed about it as when it happened. That pain is NEVER going to go away. Maybe, some day, decades from now she won't be thinking about it constantly, but looking at her now and the way she was before. All the hopes she had, how happy she was, how much she was looking forward to her baby, this has completely devastated her to the point of destroying her life. She carries an incredible amount of guilt with her over her choice to eat certain foods, in the belief that it wouldn't affect her because of the statistics. There is nothing than anybody can or has said that will convince her it wasn't her fault. And that's really sad.
Maybe I'm paranoid because it seems like the odds always work out wrong or something. Maybe it's because I almost lost my own son before he made it into the world, but if you can take a small risk of death and turn it into ZERO risk of death, by doing something as simple and easy as not eating cold cuts for 9 months out of your life, why wouldn't you do that?
You don't even have to completely stop eating them. I craved corned beef really bad for parts of mine. To get around it, I just nuked it in the microwave for a minute and put it in the fridge to cool off before eating. It's that simple.