Pregnancy is not an illness: a South African lesson

Pregnancy is not an illness: a South African lesson In Britain, pregnant women are often treated as though they are made of glass, but with the reverence there comes some unwanted attention, writes Aislinn Laing. In South Africa, it’s a condition that few make a fuss of, which is blissful and frustrating in equal measure. I am less than two weeks from giving birth to our first child and, since we’re fortunate to be able to afford private health insurance, anticipate having a more pampered birth experience here in South Africa than many of my friends will enjoy back home in the UK. Keen to avoid joining the 70 per cent of women who, by choice or necessity, have caesareans as private patients here, we have chosen an “active birth clinic” which, with its individual rooms kitted out with wooden furniture and huge stone baths, looks more like a boutique hotel. For £180, I will be massaged and aromatherapised into tranquillity by a doula and, in keeping with the ethos of the clinic, the pain relief should stop there, if all goes according to plan. As we’ve been reminded frequently by our midwife, ante-natal tutors and gynaecologist, it’s the way African women have been doing it for centuries – generally not out of choice. As I’ve progressed through my pregnancy, I’ve learned that there are many other things African women do differently when it comes to carrying and bearing children. In the West, pregnant women frequently lament how everyone from mothers-in-law to virtual strangers think it perfectly acceptable to paw their pregnant bellies. When I commented on this to a friend from South Afrca’s Pedi tribe, she told me that, in her culture, it is considered very unlucky to touch a woman’s bump and deemed a privilege reserved only for senior community figures and close family. Such discretion also extends to the announcement of the pregnancy. When we found out I was expecting, my husband decided that since it was apparent that I was unlikely to obey him in any other aspect of our marriage, he would like me to obey him in keeping schtum for three months, and wait til the birth to find out the sex of our child. As a result, I bit my tongue for several weeks, pretending to have simply gone off my beloved sauvignon blanc and dodging probing questions of well-meaning friends. In Zulu circles, however, the three-month waiting time doesn’t exist. “You tell your close family and friends, and then just leave everyone else to work it out for themselves,” a friend due at around the same time as me said. “It’s not a big thing.” Even when you are most definitely a “big thing” and into the waddling, tent-wearing last stage of your pregnancy, Africans will not make a fuss. These days at press conferences and social events, expat friends rarely speak to me about anything other than when I am due and how I am feeling. During a recent visit to the scene of the mine strikes in South Africa’s platinum belt, I struggled to persuade a group of rugged, Afrikaans police officers to discuss their deployment of rubber bullets on the protesting workers, so taken were they with debating whether I would be having a boy or a girl, and the best way to introduce the new arrival to our boisterous Rhodesian Ridgeback. But when I visited a Durban township to research a story, not a remark was made. It’s generally my practice to put interviewees at ease by volunteering some personal information, and the now planet-sized belly seemed to present a perfect opportunity. But the reaction on each occasion was the same: a polite smile and eyes averted from the bump. The photographer working with me explained afterwards that in Zulu communities like the one we had visited, pregnancy was viewed as a purely personal thing.