Dhanashekar's Birth

Delivery is a community event. Many of the women deliver their babies at home, and their youth also makes the delivery easy. The delivery is without complications. Govindamma of the opposite village, Eguva Maalapalle, is the village dai, the mantrasayani. Some five to ten women and the mantrasayani gather at delivery time. They joke, and make light of the affair as the mother-to-be moans with pain. They tell her that if she shouts like this, long after the pains are forgotten, she will remain a laughing stock. They reminisence about their own deliveries. Small children are often running in and out, though they are shooed away. 

Poorna, Mangamma’s daughter, and Annapoorna, Lakshmamma’s daughter-in-law, were our neighbours. I was there through their deliveries. In Poorna’s delivary, Poorna’s mother, Mangamma, went off to a corner to weep over her daughter’s pains, but the other women were around her. When Poorna started shouting ‘Aaiyo Amma’, Mangamma, forgot her tears and corrected her, “Say ‘Aiyappa’, not ‘Aaiyo, Amma’”. Poorna started shouting ‘Aiyappa’.

Annapoorna, during her delivary, did not cry but kept a stiff face throughout. Later the women were saying that that it is not good to keep emotions in check so much. The pains increased quickly and the delivery was smooth. The grandmothers and others were waiting and watching to know the gender of the child. Her mother-in-law wanted a girl, because all the grandchildren so far were were boys. The other grandmother wanted a boy for a similar reason. ... After cutting the cord with a sickle or blade and tying it with a string, the mother is helped to stand and her hands and legs are washed with warm water. A cloth band is tied tightly around her waist, cotton is put in her ears and a scarf is tied around her head and ears. She is then put to rest on a mat laid on rice straw in a corner of the room. Rice straw is considered heating, and is laid out for the mother to lie on. For the next eleven days she sleeps on this. The regimen of a cloth tied tightly on the waist is maintained for three months. In the case of a caesarean birth this cannot be done. Eashwaramma says her daughter Kalpana has a flabby abdomen even now because of this.

The child is wiped with a cloth and is sometimes washed. Some ragi, if the child is male, or paddy, if the child is female, is taken in a winnow, and a cloth is put over it. The child is placed on the winnow. The winnow is taken near the doorway. The midwife waves a round grinding stone over it, saying, ‘I will punch you with it’ and someone else tells her, ‘Don’t, don’t’, This is repeated with a sangati stick (a three foot stick of hard wood used to stir the rice while making sangati for meals) and with a firewood stick with live embers. After removing drishti with these, dristhi is also removed with salt and green chillies. Then the child is laid near mother on the mat on straw.