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chapter 3 Birth: The Journey to the Land of Light D uring my first stay in Flower Village, twenty-six babies were born. About six months into my stay, women began to trust me enough to invite me to births. I then attended six births, usually because I was friendly with either the young woman herself or her mother-in-law. They would let me know when the woman was about to give birth—sometimes early on in the labor—and allow me to come to the house. I waited either in the main room where other people went about their business or in the small bedroom where the woman labored, sometimes with her mother-in-law in attendance. As the roofs are thatch and the walls bamboo , I could hear what was to be heard—very little, in most cases—even from the main room. Birth is a very private aªair, and it was something of a privilege for an outsider such as myself to be invited to witness such moments. When I say women are alone in labor, I am speaking of their ideal of birth, not of what always happens. Especially if a woman goes into labor during the day, she is likely to have company during labor and delivery; at night the mother-in-law is usually there in case she is needed. I was told, but did not observe, that sometimes a husband is present. In the case study below, Ntxawm went into labor in the fields. I was there 77 and accompanied her and her sister-in-law back to the village, so I was in attendancethroughoutherchildbearing.Thiswasanormalbirth,inthatNtxawm had no di‹culties during labor or delivery and the child was healthy. Ntxawm’s Labor and Delivery Ntxawm was a young, newly married woman. In the hours before she gave birth to her first child, she and her (husband’s) family had been harvesting the annual rice crop, men and women working together in the fields. The rice harvest is a stressful time because rice is the principal staple food for the coming year. The family had been in the field for several days, sleeping out in their small field house in order to spend as much time as possible bringing in the crop. Each morning at sunrise the women gathered firewood to cook the morning rice. On this particular morning, as she bent over to cut the first sheaf of rice, Ntxawm felt a pain in her lower back. It was not the usual pain one gets from leaning over to cut rice plants; she suspected it might be the onset of labor. Her husband and the other men had left early in the truck to pick and sell tomatoes in the valley, a trip that would take several hours. Ntxawm went to her mother-in-law and said, “Mother, my back hurts and I have a sickstomach.”Thephrasesheusedfor“sickstomach”wasmobplab,aeuphemism for labor pains. The Hmong use this phrase, instead of being explicit, to keep from alerting malevolent spirits who might harm the newborn or the mother, and also out of modesty. Ntxawm’s mother-in-law, who would spend the rest of the day working in the fields, immediately sent Ntxawm and Ntxhi (a daughter-in-law who already had a child) back to the village. The two young women walked the seven kilometers back to the village. Ntxawm carried a basket of empty rice containers on her back. When they reached the village they bathed at the village water pipe and then sat down to talk and sew until it was time to do the afternoon chores. No one mentioned Ntxawm’s sick stomach, nor would anyone have been able to tell that she was in labor by looking at her. As night fell, people began returning from the day’s work in the field. All the rice had been cut and was drying; the following day, if there was no threat of rain, the threshing of the rice would begin. As Ntxawm’s father-in-law 78 chapter 3 drove back from the valley, other people climbed aboard his truck, dusty and tired, and hung on to the sides while the truck jogged and bumped its way back up the hill to the village. Ntxawm fed the pigs, helped her mother-in-law Mai prepare the evening meal, and, after eating, got ready for bed along with everyone else in the family. Ntxhi brought in firewood for the...

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