Pregnancy Education Week (12 – 16th
February) African Birth
It is interesting working as a
midwife in South Africa because many African women still hold onto traditional
cultural beliefs when it comes to pregnancy, birth and babies. For example,
women are told not to have sex during the last few weeks of pregnancy. If her
baby is born with vernix (natural creamy water-proofing lubricant on baby’s
skin) she’s found guilty of breaking this cardinal rule!
It’s understandable that women will
go to great lengths to avoid pregnancy and labour difficulties – even if it
means complying to traditional myths like not plaiting your hair so that the
umbilical cord does not get knotted, covering your belly with buck skin so that
the baby will be born fit and agile, and not eating boiled eggs because it’s
believed that they will delay labour.
It’s not easy being a woman –
periods are painful, messy and inconvenient, pregnancy is nine-months of
uncertainty and childbirth is just darned-right scary. Women will do anything
to make it easier, prevent complications and make the pain go away. Each time
that I was pregnant I went to church more often, prayed the rosary and lit
thanksgiving candles afterwards! I pinned medals onto the vests of my
grandchildren and blessed them with holy water from Medjugorje. So, who am I to question the validity of ‘lucky
charms’ worn by African women during pregnancy, the wrist, ankle and belly
amulets, the ‘tsonga xanga’ (a maiden’s post-puberty ‘initiation belt’ that’s
dipped in her first menses as part of the transition from childhood to
womanhood and again in a herbal mixture after the birth of her first baby) or
drinking a herbal mixture called “isihambezo”.
Professor Beverly Chalmers (PhD)
studied African birth and wrote a fascinating book on the subject. My own experience of African birth were brief
spells working voluntarily in the townships of Grahamstown, delivering babies
by the dozen during the 1976 riots in make-shift conditions, and working in the
municipal ante-natal clinic during the apartheid era when black and white mothers
were kept separate.
It’s taken me a life-time to learn
that centuries of inbred cultural beliefs are powerful and that no young
midwife fresh from college is going to persuade an African woman to follow
instructions that make no sense to her. My colleagues who worked at BBH
(Boksburg-Benoni Hospital) told us stories of women in labour who complied with
the ‘stranded-beetle position’ (lying flat on your back during labour) until
the baby’s head was ready to ‘crown’. Then they would get off the bed to squat
underneath it, give birth to her baby, then climb back onto the bed with the
wet and slippery baby in her arms, still attached to the umbilical cord!
The objective of Pregnancy
Education Week is to stress the importance of ante-natal care to help prevent
complications. In South Africa, all women are tested for HIV so that they can
have ARV (Ante-retroviral) treatment to spare the baby getting the virus –
mainly during delivery. We know that babies of women with Low folate and
vitamin B12 levels risk neural-tube defects, that some viruses
during the first trimester affect the developing baby, that toxins like
nicotine, drugs and alcohol can cause irreparable damage and that certain
vaginal infections will infect the baby during the birth.
The objective of ante-natal clinics
is to prevent preventable complications and to date, the successes of these
clinics outweigh the inconveniences of having to take time off work, or wait in
long queues when women don’t have the luxury of medical aid and private health
care.
Finally, let’s not forget the pregnant
teenager who often hides her pregnancy for as long as possible – sometimes
until she goes into labour. Women younger than 18 are just as much at risk for
complications as are women over the age of 40. These young girls are ostracised
at school, and often by their parents and society because their ‘mistake’ is
public knowledge. More needs to be done to help the pregnant teenager who has
opted to go ahead with her pregnancy for the sake of her baby, in spite of the
challenges she will have to face alone in the future.
If you are pregnant, scared and
alone, reach out to a friend or pick up the phone and find out about ante-natal
care. For your sake, and that of your unborn child.
Illustration taken from “African
Birth – Childbirth in Cultural Transition” by Beverly Chalmers PhD
