Baby
My mom wrote me a letter requesting information on birthing practices in South Africa. This is what I have been able to discover thus far. Hopefully I will find out more, but it is difficult seeing as not too many people speak English well and the ones that do often give me vague reasons for things:
-When women are pregnant you aren’t supposed to ask them about it or recognize it as there are superstitions that talking about pregnancy will harm the baby. Sello tells me this is changing as the culture becomes more Western and more people openly do in fact discuss pregnancy.
-The women here do go to hospitals or the clinic to deliver their babies.
-After the baby is delivered and brought home it goes into a separate room with the mom and is not brought out or shown off for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. This used to be only for traditional reasons but now it is also due to the idea of preventing exposure to disease. When we lived in Moletsi, one of the other volunteers didn’t know his host sister even had a baby until he had lived there for a few weeks, and he finally got to see it at the end of our stay. I remember him telling us: “I get to see the baby in two days.”
-Everyone here breast feeds and since breasts here are not considered private objects no one is discreet about it. I know at least one male volunteer who had to go home and have a few beers one night to recover after having to sit on a taxi squished against some woman’s exposed breast as she fed her baby. Even HIV positive women often breast feed their babies as there is a higher chance that the baby will contract a devastating illness from the water used to mix with formula than of becoming HIV positive from breast milk.
-All babies, from infant to toddler, are carried on their mother’s backs, piggy back style. They always tie the babies to their backs with a towel. Portia, the girl who helps clean my house, was playing net ball (girl version of basketball) two days ago with an infant tied to her back. I told her it concerned me a lot.
-When women are pregnant you aren’t supposed to ask them about it or recognize it as there are superstitions that talking about pregnancy will harm the baby. Sello tells me this is changing as the culture becomes more Western and more people openly do in fact discuss pregnancy.
-The women here do go to hospitals or the clinic to deliver their babies.
-After the baby is delivered and brought home it goes into a separate room with the mom and is not brought out or shown off for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. This used to be only for traditional reasons but now it is also due to the idea of preventing exposure to disease. When we lived in Moletsi, one of the other volunteers didn’t know his host sister even had a baby until he had lived there for a few weeks, and he finally got to see it at the end of our stay. I remember him telling us: “I get to see the baby in two days.”
-Everyone here breast feeds and since breasts here are not considered private objects no one is discreet about it. I know at least one male volunteer who had to go home and have a few beers one night to recover after having to sit on a taxi squished against some woman’s exposed breast as she fed her baby. Even HIV positive women often breast feed their babies as there is a higher chance that the baby will contract a devastating illness from the water used to mix with formula than of becoming HIV positive from breast milk.
-All babies, from infant to toddler, are carried on their mother’s backs, piggy back style. They always tie the babies to their backs with a towel. Portia, the girl who helps clean my house, was playing net ball (girl version of basketball) two days ago with an infant tied to her back. I told her it concerned me a lot.
posted by Cait at 8:10 AM
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