Cultural differences and attitudes to childbirth .... (sorry, bit long)

[ghosty]

One of the things I love about living in Auckland is that I get to meet all sorts of people from all sorts of countries and cultures. Apart from a large Maori and Pacific Islander population there are many many Asian immigrants here (mainly from countries like China, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philipines, Indonesia).
Anyway, I have been getting friendly with a lovely lady from Indonesia whose son goes to swimming with my DS. Yesterday we had a massive discussion about how our different cultures view childbirth ... she was shaking her head at some of the 'barbaric' things that European/Kiwis do and my head was reeling at some of the stuff she was saying .... it was a fantastic conversation:
Here is a list of some of the things she said:

1. In Indonesia no one has a midwife. You don't have your husband there either ... it is just you and your doctor ... she found this hard having her baby in NZ as it was expected her husband was there for her.
2. Immediately after birth you should wear a very tight girdle that you wear for 2 months ... this girdle goes round your hips and lower abdomen and should be so tight it hurts when you sit down. This way your tummy goes flat again. But you can't do it if you have a caesarean section.
3. You can't go out for 40 days after having your baby. Not even to the corner shop. Her mother came to NZ to stay with her and her mother and husband did everything ... shopping, cooking etc .... all she had to do for 40 days was feed the baby and sleep. She says she can't believe that Kiwi women go out and about so soon after giving birth ... she says it is terrible that most don't have much of a choice in that regard (due to not having a mother near to help etc) and that in her case her mother flew all the way from Jakarta to be at her house so that she could do the 40 day thing.
4. You can't wash your hair for 40 days .... Her accent lost me a bit on this one so I am not sure why this is .... but I think it has something to do with your body repairing itself and that soap on your scalp will hinder that. She said you could wash and shower but not wash your hair ... although you could rinse it with tepid water that had been boiled with fresh ginger in it.
5. You can not touch cold water at all for those 40 days ... only warm water .... not totally sure about why this was either .... but something to do with the energy flows of your body.

There were some other things she said that escape me right now but I will post them if I remember them. I found it all so interesting and she and I had a laugh about things like 'poo' when you are in labour because in her culture you have to do a poo before you give birth and she was horrified when a kiwi friend of hers told her she gave birth and pooed at the same time
I really like the idea of not going anywhere and sleeping and breastfeeding for 40 days although I am not sure I could handle not washing my hair for that long ...

There were certain superstitions in Mexico about birht and the days afterwards, but most of them have been eradicated (shame the good ones, like having a herbal bath to relax after birth, are also disapearing)

About not being allowed to do anything for 40 days afterwards.... in my country is slightly similar, the 45 days after the birth the mum recieves lots of help, practically every female near relative takes some time to burp the baby, clean the house, do the cooking and allow the new mum to rest as much as possible. The disadvantage of it is that the husband has very few oportunities to "bond" with the child during the days after the birth, and, by the time all the female relatives gradually stop the help, he has -in many ocassions- assumed that babies are women's work and is not inclined to take a very active part in taking care of the baby out of playing with them for a short time.

I can see why the dad can feel alienated there Chandra .... definitely ... but I can also see how the 'look after the mum' approach can stop a whole heap of problems. The lady I was talking to said that Postnatal Depression was almost unheard of in Asian countries .... I know that had I had someone at home with me 24/7 for 6 weeks I may not have had the PND that knocked me sideways for nearly 18 months.

Ghosty - the things your Indonesian friend spoke about are common in the rest of Asia too. If you look up old conversations under the Chinese Mothers thread in multicultural families, there has been some discussion too.

Basically in the Chinese culture, there is a custom of "confinement" post childbirth where the mum has to stay indoors, not wash hair, touch cold water, have a special diet etc for a month. Usually families employ a woman who comes into the family home to live with the family for that month. Her role is to look after mother and baby, including cooking for the mother etc. If mum is berastfeeding, she brings baby to mum for feeds and then takes baby again to let mum rest (handy at nights!!!!)

There is also in the Malay culture, the custom of abdominal massage followed by tight wrapping to help regain the figure!

Like your Indonesian friend, my mother came to live with me in the UK (she lives in Malaysia) to help me out after both my births. I believe in the UK, if you advertise in say Chinatown, you can employ a traditional "confinement" woman.

I like the way in less urban societies, the women get together to look after a new mum and support her, this could be through employing a specialist, or more often than not, relying on the network of mothers, MILs, sisters, aunts etc

As some of these societies get more "westernised", these cultural practices are not necessarily followed by younger mothers. I would most certainly not have followed the confinement period Rojak describes or hired a confinement lady who would force noxious liquids down my throat and boss me around or take my baby away from me.

But, hey, that's just me .

I think it depends how much support you get as to how eager you would be to employ someone to help out.

There is increasingly in the UK, a trend for young (fairly wealthy) mothers to employ maternity nurses following a birth.

A friend of mine in Malaysia employed a "confinement lady" because her parents lived abroad and she would have had little or no help.

Paternity leave in most Asian countries is also unheard of.

Ghosty, I tend to agree with that ( I did also suffered from post natal depression and certainly could have done with a bit of extra company at some point) I don't have any family nearby -although mum and mil came for a week after the birth- and knew very few peple with children so, the first months after the birth were very very lonely.

I have met mums who were pampered by their families during the "diet" (the name given to the 45 days after birth) but most of them complain this help sometimes means having your MIL/mum/etc. practically moving into the house which creates a huge variety of problems, I have heard friends complaining about their mums/mils taking over completely, not allowing them to decide and act over what they thought it was the best for the babies, on most occassions the fathers tell the story of passing the baby to the arms of the relative and not being able to hold them back for more than a few seconds in the 6 weeks afterwards. All of them agree that when the "help" left they felt totally lost at finding themselves alone with a baby.

In my case I had a MIL on one side telling me that I might be the mother but she "had the experience", and my mother criticising all of our decisions for the birth. Both insisted I was stupid for insisting in breastfeeding when there was formula which was "much better" so, go figure... I can say then, that I felt a slight relief when they left.

So, is not always very supportive, and as for PND being unheard of...sad truth is that it exists but, because most people assume that you can only have depression after birth because you don't love the baby or because you are a bad mother rejecting him, most mums who may be suffering it are clever enough to hide it well. In all this time since DS was born everytime I have mentioned I suffered from PND that's the sort of response I got. It takes ages to convince them that you love your baby very much but the hormones are playing you down.

So, as in everything and everywhere, all gets down to finding the balance, if you are lucky enough to have a network of mums who appart of providing practical help are respectful of your decissions, fantastic, if not... you are much better without. :)

You are so right Chandra ... balance .... definitely. I can see your point about PND existing but not being out in the open and how mothers/MILs can actually probably do more harm than good in some cases.
Personally I would have loved my mum to be there for 6 whole weeks but that is because I have a good relationship with her and she is the most knowledgeable person I know re. getting newborns to breastfeed and how to hand express .... (ex midwife) so the week or so she did spend with me when my babies where new were invaluable.
My MIL on the other hand .... oh no .... definitely not .... she would hate it and I would hate it and I think we probably would never speak to eachother again

Oh, and Rojak and blueshoes ... meant to say, thank you for your thoughts ....
I think that in 'western' society, the extended family ethos of childbirth and baby care being passed on mother to daughter obviously used to exist (it must have done surely) and probably not that long ago (during the 20th century women's lib movement perhaps) it was lost ... I don't know, I am pulling ideas out of the air here ... perhaps I will go and do some historical research about this ... I find it so very interesting.
Modern western medical culture has changed society a lot I think. I mean, women used to be 'confined' in England didn't they?
So in Asian cultures, where the extended family is still such a big feature (even when the daughter lives thousands of miles away from her mother .... like my indonesian friend) the tradition of mother/MIL - daughter support is still so strong .... and it is only maybe the current generation of asian mothers who are slowly moving away from this. My friend said that although she had her mother come to stay and she followed the 40 day thing, some of her chinese friends who are very strongly 'kiwified' (as she put it) decided not to do it that way ...

interesting thread.
Ghosty, my guess is that the mother-daughter childcare ethos would have been lost in the mid 20th century when hospital births became common, rather than being a result of women's lib. (You see feminism blamed for so many things that I don't want it to get blamed for that as well )

Yes, Kathy, you are probably right ... I wouldn't want to blame women's lib either (like I said, I was pulling ideas out of the air there) ...
But maybe women's lib did have some kind of effect on this in terms of things like maternity leave and women going back to work on certain date and equal opps etc? I know that women staying at home is only a recent thing so I am not knocking the WOH or SAH thing but more the equal opportunities .... also the western modern age of modern appliances making housework etc 'easier' so who needs someone to come in for 6 whole weeks when you have a dishwasher/washing machine/microwave ...
Again .... chucking ideas into the mix ... have no fact to base this on as yet ...

I would more say there'd been a massive change in society of which women's lib was a part, that created our individualistic, liberal society of the West we have now.. Of course it has its advantages, like everyone doing what they want and being themselves, being only with people they choose to be with and choosing not to see their family if they don't get on, but the Eastern/traditional way, where a person being defined quite a lot through their family, and the family and community sharing an identity, has its advantages too (warmer ties, maybe more tolerant and accepting of people's faults rather than just eliminating them from your life etc).

Here in Kazakhstan where I'm working you can really see the pull of the two ways against each other, but the Eastern way wins out at the moment and most young people, for example, choose careers etc according to what the family expects or wants, not so much "sod you mum and dad I'm going my own way."

All v interesting! Personally I prefer the Western way because I'm used to it, but you hanker sometimes after the extended family and warmth you see in say Iranian families, where people are just so warm and welcoming, not always asking what's in it for themselves...

ah well, back to work!

My MIL came all the way from Australia to London for a month after ds2 was born. Made me all sorts of healing soups and stuff. It was a ll a bit of a haze for the first month so don't remember much, but I think it was a bit freaky for little ds1, 2.4yrs, who had to be nice to this strange woman who was in his house - but thhey are the best of friends now. And it did cause a bit of friction between me and dh. However it was awfully kind of her and I love her for it.

Thread hijack alert ...
Hi suzy .... am feeling shy ... whose going to make the first move then? Fancy a chat later? I'll be on line properly in about an hour and a half ...

Btw ... I thought your post was excellent gemmitygem ... especially your last paragraph about being used to the Western way but liking the idea of the warm extended family thing.

oh dont' be shyyyyyyyy, no no no don't be shy!

I'll be picking up ds2 from school then

what time frame are you on We are GMT+8

PS saw a piece about Tauranga (sp) on Getaway last night

we do the numbers 2 and 3 as well. In fact during the 40 day confinement period (that's a loose translation of it), we also have a female masseuse(sp?) who comes and massages both mother and baby.....I'm having my next child in India/Dubai I think.

It's not so much you can't go out, it's more an encouragement to rest really, well they way it's done in our culture.

Where are you from fuzzywuzzy?

Suzy ... we are GMT + 13 at the moment but will be going to +12 when our clocks go back and then +11 when UK clocks go forward ...

I had my mum and dad here for 3 weeks after ds's birth and dh stayed home for 6 weeks on parental leave. We went out every day, but I didn't do any housework, or cook, or wash the endless nappies or anything.

So I like the doing no domestic chores element, but the staying indoors for 40 days - well that would have done me in completely.

Funny that you are fed and rested, but wear a girdle to get your figure back. Is the 40 days more about nobody seeing your post partum belly? I mean that as an genuine observation - like pregnant is okay, but once you have had the baby you need to be womanly again before you can be seen.

Having help for 40 days with breastfeeding would get it totally established - which would be good.

Aha ... belgianbun ... you could be on to something there ... I hadn't thought of that ... that MUST be part of it ...

I've just skimmed over this thread but god, how lovely would it be if it were tradition that women rested for 40 days after childbirth? My ex MIL (Indian) told me it was expected in her culture too.

ghosty I'm Indian, the confinement period is to do with post partum bleeding, not so much as being seen as unclean, but more that you'll have less energy as your losing so much blood, having said that, my evil sister in law solemnly told me that she knew women who burnt the clothes they wore during there confinement period (I ignored her on that as she was the only one to tell me that and she has no children).
Wearing a tight girdle is supposed to enable a woman to get her figure back, because a lot of women who I encountered straight after having had dd2 kept telling me that my stomach would fill with air and stay bloated like that.
Surprisingly my stomach went in after only about three days of having kept it bound up tight...couldn't have kept it bound for the whole forty days though...yikes

Yes agree 40 days confinement more to do with post-partum bleeding.

I had my mother stay with me for 3 months when DS was born and 6 weeks for DD. She was a great support but I was a terribly ungrateful cow to live with.

She did all the cooking, helped out with washing, kids etc but I found it difficult all of us living under the same roof.

She also supported my decision to breastfeed and never once pressured me to let her bottlefeed, unlike friend of mine, whose mother stopped her breastfeeding after her baby turned 6 weeks - basically told it was enough and time to get baby on bottle. I was quite shocked as my friend didn't challenge it!

Yes agree 40 days confinement more to do with post-partum bleeding.

I had my mother stay with me for 3 months when DS was born and 6 weeks for DD. She was a great support but I was a terribly ungrateful cow to live with.

She did all the cooking, helped out with washing, kids etc but I found it difficult all of us living under the same roof.

She also supported my decision to breastfeed and never once pressured me to let her bottlefeed, unlike friend of mine, whose mother stopped her breastfeeding after her baby turned 6 weeks - basically told it was enough and time to get baby on bottle. I was quite shocked as my friend didn't challenge it!