As I have seen time and time again over the last 15 months in Cambodia things change very quickly around here. Our new addition has been scooped up by another side of the family and isn’t here anymore. The timing was fortuitous because this week Pea is sick with dengue and that’s not something you want a little baby around to catch. It’s been a rough few days and it’s heartbreaking to see her sick but she’s being well taken care of and today she definitely turned a corner and is well on her way to getting better.
The Yeh is still hanging out helping watch Pea and today while Ma was out for a bit we got to talking. I asked her how many kids she had and she replied “13” and then held up fingers to make sure I got the point. I was gawking. She gave birth to all of her babies naturally, using a traditional midwife, no twins, no miscarriages and no stillborns. Ten girls and three boys, nine of the children survived, those who didn’t died before the age of 2. She told me a little bit about her experiences giving birth to her first few babies; she didn’t even realize she was going into labor the first time!
The Yeh was telling me that she followed the traditional Khmer customs of drinking wine and roasting with all of her kids. In Cambodia it is believed that if you drink white rice wine, usually a home-brewed moonshine concoction, you will give birth to a whiter baby. It is also believed that delivering a baby makes the body very cold so it is common these days to see women wrapped up in blankets and donning beanies after having their baby. Roasting is a custom that is slowly going out of fashion in rural Cambodia. Most homes here have wooden beds that are just kind of slated platforms outside where people sit and gather and sometimes sleep. The woman is wrapped up in clothes and blankets and sits on the bed while a small fire is built underneath and she literally is roasted, she lies on top of the bed while the fire smolders and brings warmth back to the body. There are some obvious dangers associated with this, including dehydration, dangerous overheating, high risk of accidents, and the baby is usually not breastfed while the mother is being roasted; midwives actively discourage women from being roasted these days. Lately I’ve seen a number of women with blocks of ice on their stomachs soon after delivery; the ice is considered hot and is supposed to have some of the same healing properties as roasting.
It was amazing to hear about her experiences having had so many children and having practiced some traditional customs that these days in America would be pretty unthinkable. More and more I am amazed at how different the experience of a pregnant woman here is today than it was even 20 years ago and even still how it is so different from what we see in America.
That’s my cross-cultural story for today. What’s the most interesting thing you learned today?
Brenda – what a story! You should make an effort to document these practices as thoroughly as you can. You are eyewitness to history here. Forty years ago, I too was in an exotic locale: a kibbutz on the Carmel, not far from Haifa. My job on the kibbutz was working in the children’s house, where children lived, played, and studied from the time of tiny babyhood. Although quite common on kibbutzim at the time, and in fact a bedrock of the founding of the state of Israel, there are virtually no children’s houses today, as this practice lost favor with Israeli families. I wish I had known that I was witnessing the last generation of children to be raised this way, as I would have more carefully written about and photgraphed the kids and parents. It is amazing that women in Cambodia do submit to these traditions but in some ways more amazing that they give them up over time. Either way….a fascinating glimpse into their culture and thank you for sharing it with us.
Not too amazing that a woman had thirteen pregnancies. One hundred years ago Ashkenazim had the highest birthrates in the world. About the same. Nine children out of thirteen making it past childhood is pretty good under conditions and traditions you describe.