An ex-student, Petra, gave birth a few months back, and has been posting updates on Facebook, one of which said she gets peed on and is covered in vomit.
This reminds me of what happened on one of the post-natal trips I made with my mother, who was a private midwife.
The term “private” needs to be clarified here: in those days (1950s and 1960s), women who were illiterate did not want to go to hospital to have their babies delivered because they couldn’t speak English (the official working language of the time in British colonial Singapore). They also preferred to be at home, so that they could be cared for by family members, usually the older children. These women mostly lived on coconut and rubber plantations, and some would have 12 to 16 children.
My mother’s post-natal visit routine: bathe the baby, clean the area around the tied-up umbilical cord, bundle the baby up in clean swaddling cloth, check the baby over (take body temperature, etc.), then leave it lying on the bed and go and attend to the mother who’d be sitting in a chair (a change from lying in bed).
It was after my mother left the all-clean, all-nice-smelling baby on the bed and went over to the mother that I, aged six, would sneak up to the bed, open the swaddling cloth at the bottom, pull out the baby’s feet and kiss them.
If I was spotted by the mother, she’d ask, “Would you like to take it home with you?” I’d look at my mother eagerly, as if to say, “Can I? Can I?”
On one of these occasions, however, I opened the swaddling cloth to find the baby had just defecated. Not realising what had happened, the baby’s mother asked the usual question, “Would you like to take it home with you?” I reeled back in horror, “No!” She asked, “Why not?” The six-year-old me said, “I only want one that doesn’t poo.”
(Singapore, late-1950s)
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