Don't Clean Baby

[2006]

[Attendee]

The Native Americans used to rub in the afterbirth into the baby's skin because t's actually the moisture, whereas in the hospital where they, they immediately wash it off, and that's why a lot of the infants get the chapped flaky skin.

[Aajonus]

It's already in the tissue because they've been soaking in that for almost 10 months. So, it's in their skin, but they'll usually use antiseptic, a detergent to wash the baby.

[James]

I did everything with the home birth and in many cases the skin would start to shrivel because they'd go wash the baby off, and they did learn that if you didn't wash the baby off, most of the time that didn't happen to that intense degree.

Because that goes away fairly shortly after, a day or two, that doesn't last long.

Are you pregnant?

[Attendee]

No, no, but we've just been fascinated by this.

Well, actually we will in a year hopefully, but a friend of ours had birth through a midwife and it's interesting that she had her first child in the hospital and she tore and Benjamin was actually maybe six pounds, so he was smaller. She just had a midwife and she had a baby about a week ago and this baby was larger by two pounds, she didn't tear and it was a midwife and she said the pregnancy was so much smoother, and she said it was great.

[Attendee #2]

Well, she's been on a similar diet, 80% of the diet since the last kid too. She put on weight.