Is it better NOT knowing?

My mom saw old friends of ours this week at work. I haven't seen them since highschool as we all went our seperate ways. But we were close...just not anymore. Their mother was saying that her oldest daughter is getting married in 2 months, it's stressful. Her mother passed away last month, and last Friday her youngest daughter came home...pregnant. Approximately 5 months along, and they are a very strict Italian-Catholic family with a good community standing and a strong family structure. She cried, while telling my mom, and she said that her husband sobbed...sobbed like she has never seen in their 30+ years of marriage. She acknowledged what we have been through, and mentioned that the biggest dissapointment is that their daughter didn't feel it neccessary for any prenatal care. So she is going today to her first appointment.

So for me, it begs the question...is it better to NOT know what could happen and go through life happy, or is it better to prepare yourself for things that could go wrong? They say that knowledge is power, but is it always? I started researching possible problems when I was pregnant with Dylan. I was obsessed that something was going to go wrong and as it turns out, my intuition was correct. Maybe I should have followed blissful ignorance? Perhaps I would have been better off...or at least slept a little more soundly.

It just seems to me that women who go through a pregnancy without prenatal care walk away with a full heart and full arms. They don't seem to have to go through the horror of leaving the hospital with a little box and a teddy bear. Maybe they have just as many problems, but it sure doesn't seem like it. And I am thoroughly convinced that Derick's cousins little boy has some residual problems from no prenatal care...but also no parental care. He stares a lot, is slow with his motor skills, and doesn't seem to giggle and coo as much as other 9 month old babies. But is that from not having care while in the womb, or not being stimulated enough by his mother as an infant?

What do you all think? About blissful ignorance, I mean.