Since, giving birth is no easy task, every birth is celebrated and the new mother is treated royally in many Nepali cultures. Professional health-care maybe lacking but expected mothers receive attention from family members. Since the mother’s body becomes very vulnerable after the birth, she is well taken care of by the family members. The birth of the child takes place in the parents home. In this case it is usually the family home of the father. After the baby’s naming ceremony, which takes place on the eleventh day of the birth, the mother and the baby are taken by her family to the maternal home where she can rest fully.
New mother is given a special kind of diet which consists of meat, ghee, pulses, lettuces, fruits and thyme soup. For a new mother, thyme becomes the most integral part of her diet, as this herb is used in almost everything cooked for her. The mother is given lots of pulses and meat, and these two becomes mandatory for at least two months for each meal along with rice, ghee and thyme soup, as thyme soup is believes to have the power of increasing the amount of milk produced by the woman’s body for the baby. Almost all communities of Nepal provide with similar post natal care for the women.
Besides for the diet, people believe that a new mother becomes very vulnerable and therefore should abstain from cold things and activities involving lots of water like washing, cooking, cleaning or drinking cold water and eating ice cream. The mother is supposed to wear warm clothes irrespective of the weather, which at times might be quite troublesome as they are supposed to wear full and thick blouses and also a special kind of belt that is made using a very long cloth that is tied tightly around the mother’s waist with a belief that their belly would come back to normal shape and they would have no back pain then and later in their lives, which is very common among Nepali women. A belief common among Nepali people is that the past natal care largely determines the quality of lives of women not only of present but of future as well.
Additionally, a new mother is assigned a separate helper who gives her and the baby massages two to four times a day. The helper also gives bath to the mother and the child and washes their clothes as well, as the new mother is taken very good care of and is not allowed to do any household chores. In traditional Newari families, the mother is also given specific ayurvedic medicine for good digestion. But on the contrary, in Rai and Limbu communities, the nursing mothers are also given homemade liquors, as they believe it adds to the good health and vitality.
The most important rituals attached to the post natal activities are naming ceremony and the rice feeding ceremony, which are held respectively on the eleventh day of the birth and six months after the birth. Both these rituals are carried out by the priests of respective religions, by carrying out different astrological calculations and these rituals do not differ greatly among different communities. A new mother and the child are showered by lots of good wishes and gifts by all the family members, relatives and friends, making the birth a very auspicious occasions.
[Source:nepalhomepage.com]