Informants report that the baby was not touched, either by the mother or
her attendants, until the afterbirth was expelled. The birth and
recuperation were carried out in a pit filled with warm ashes. A slow
birth was blamed on the belief that the mother had slept too much or been
lazy during her pregnancy.
The mother was not allowed to eat salt until the baby’s umbilicus dropped
off, usually in two or three days. The umbilicus was dried and hung on the
right side of the cradleboard to insure that the baby would be
right-handed.
The baby’s hair was cut about thirty days after its birth. Until that time
the mother was not permitted to eat meat or to leave her bed of ashes.
However, one of my informants who had borne eight children claimed never
to have spent more than two weeks in her lying-in bed. She did insist that
“in the old days” women adhered to the traditional thirty-day period.
A pregnant woman was not permitted to eat eggs with double yolks, or
double fruit, lest she have twins. No special action was taken if twins
were born, however.
During her confinement a woman was not supposed to rub the sweat from her
face. She might dab the sweat off, but to rub it would cause her to be
wrinkled in her old age. One informant assured me that this was the truth
and pointed to her own relatively unwrinkled face as proof.
When a child loses a milk tooth, it is taken up and thrown into the brush.
At that time an admonition is shouted to “some little animal with sharp
teeth,” that it should exchange the milk tooth for a good permanent one
(2295a-2301)