Childbirth---In Your Life and Around the World

My personal birthing experience was awesome.  The fact of knowing that I had another human being growing inside of me was wonderful.  I exercise daily and receive prenatal care early on during my pregnancy.  I found out I was pregnant when I was about four weeks.  I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl that was healthy.  She weighed 6lbs and 7 ounces and was 21 inches long.  I experienced natural childbirth because I did not want to take any pain medication during my delivery.

Birthing is a wonderful experience and should be taken very serious.  A mother to be should be aware of any medications taken and should try to maintain a proper diet in order to help ensure that the fetus will develop as it should.  Everything that the mother encounters has an affect on the child’s development rather it’s stress, joy, or medications prescribed or non-prescribed. 

The country that I chose to find out about how births happen there is South Africa: Indigenous and Traditions.  South Africa is a country of many cultures, languages and traditions.  The area, at one time, was populated only by a group of indigenous people: the Khoisan Bushmen.    The !Kung are a particular small group of San nomadic hunter-gatherers who today still strive to live in relative harmony with the eco-system.  The women are respected for their knowledge of being able to find edible plants and the ability to find water, and especially their ability to give birth and nurture their young.  Unlike the women here in the western world where medication is offered for pain relief at the slighted twinge that labour may have begun, a young !Kung woman is actively taught that she must face the pains of natural childbirth with courage and fearlessness.  Most women give birth alone in a squatting position, a few hundred meters from their settlement.  Although mothers giving birth for the first time may have a helper at hand.

Just as in the U.S. it is made known to a mother to be that how she feels and thinks during the pregnancy will affect the labour and birth of the new baby.  A pregnant  !Kung woman is expected to continue her normal duties such as cleaning, gathering food, caring for other children and not complain.  Women in the U.S. also still carry on her daily work duties unless it interferes with the well being of the fetus.  A pregnant woman in South Africa is rarely overweight and an unborn baby is likely to grow to be the right size for the mother to give birth.  Often time women in the U.S. are overweight during their pregnancy.  It appears that San women bite the cord with their teeth and bury the placenta after giving birth, before walking back to the settlement.  It is her duty to return the remaining placenta to mother earth.  They believe it connects the infant to the territory particular groups of Bushmen clan occupy.  The mothers in South Africa share the same tradition as do some mother here in the U.S. for breast-feeding.