Bizarre Birth Rituals

While tossing a newborn off the side of a building or burying its placenta may sound wacky to us Westerners, these ancient traditions are the tenets of childbirth and parenting in other areas of the world. Learn about birth rituals far and wide, and thank your lucky stars that you don’t live in Vietnam, where new moms are trapped indoors for a month … with their mother-in-law!

This practice, of keeping the placenta attached to the infant until it falls off naturally, originated in the East but has recently risen in Western home births. The idea behind the custom is that keeping baby and cord intact is what Mother Nature intended. However, leaving the placenta attached means increasing the risk of infection and carrying around a chunk of rotting flesh for up to a week.

A Chinese tradition known as “zuo yue zi,” or “sitting out the month,” confines moms to the home for a 30- to 40-day period following birth. Practitioners believe that exposing the new mother to the elements will cause weakness, and in turn, sickness. In addition to avoiding the outdoors, moms must stay clear of open windows, air conditioners and fans, a feat that must be tough during summer months.

For over half a millennium, a shrine in Maharashtra, India has practiced the rather daring tradition of tossing newborns off the side of a 50-foot-tall temple. Thought to bring good fortune and instill both courage and intelligence, congregation members catch the infants on a stretched-out sheet below.

Photo via The Telegraph

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While many Vietnamese also follow the confinement custom, their tradition has an added element: The new mom’s mother-in-law moves into the home for a full month after the birth. In addition to helping her son keep house, the in-law is in charge of cooking medicinal stews and soups for the new mom. Every gal could use some help post-delivery, but a 24/7 mother-in-law sounds a tad overwhelming.

In a popular Irish tradition that symbolizes the circle of life, new parents sprinkle a saved piece of their wedding cake on their newborn’s head at the christening. Whiskey fruitcake, believed to bring good luck in fertility, often heads the top tier of Irish wedding cakes for the purpose of this practice.

Most African countries have some type of custom surrounding the placenta. In Nigeria and Ghana, parents treat the afterbirth like a dead twin of the new child, giving it full burial rites. The spot where the placenta is earthed—most often under a tree—is called “zan boko.”

In Bali, tradition states that a baby’s feet cannot touch the ground for the first 105 days after the birth. Mothers, and often very close family members, must continuously hold the little one until the prescribed amount of time has passed. Talk about a creative way to work off the baby weight!

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A few days before a baby is born in the Kalash valleys of Pakistan, the mother moves out of the home and into a ritualistic building with animal murals that contains a shrine to the goddess of birth. Only “unclean” women—those with their period—may enter the building to aid in the birth.

Mexican folklore holds that a woman’s womb loses heat during childbirth, a phenomenon that some believe causes the ovaries and genitals to soften and never return to their pre-baby state. As a preventive measure, some of the more traditional midwives place their body between the woman’s legs at the instant she’s giving birth to keep the heat in and bad omens out.

Midwives in Guatemala do not cut the umbilical cord before the delivery of the placenta. According to lore, if the cord is severed, the placenta will rise to the mother’s throat and choke her. If the cord must be cut for the infant’s safety, the midwife ties the end still attached to the placenta to the mother’s leg with a strong piece of string. Sounds crazy, but we’ve confirmed that it’s totally true.