Sibu Tales : Foochow Mothers' Tales about the Placenta

The birth story of a lovely girl with big eyes and a mop of hair.

We have been living in a fairly big town for some years by then when a third child was expected. Her paternal grandmother was suffering from breast cancer and she had been seen at the Lau King Howe Hospital and by the late Dr. Fan. The prognosis was not good at all. Any time she could go.

Usually for busy ASIAN fathers, any childbirth would be in the hands of the expectant mother. And child birth in most culture is no big deal. the Penan mother had in the past gone into the jungle to deliver her own child, without any one in attendance.

I was in the middle of teaching that day and the baby decided to come in the middle of a lesson. Luckily it was not dramatic. So off I went, quietly to the maternity clinic with the help of my colleague after giving all the instructions to the school clerk and my departmental colleagues.

The private clinic midwives were good especially my aunt Lau Fong Fei, who informed my mother and sisters about the impending birth, which could be any time in the evening. The labour pains started nonetheless. There was no recess time for labour pains.

The whole maternity ward, well air conditioned, a luxury at that time, was empty except for myself, as the other bed was vacant. It was a bit frightening but I could hear people walking and sounds of babies crying. I could even hear new mothers being discharged from an outer office, all in Foochow of course. Giving birth in a maternity clinic was a luxury not many women could afford and it was also for a mother who was certain that there would be no complications.

Then it was time for me to be wheeled into the labour room. One hour later the unnamed baby was born at about 3.30 pm .

My mother and aunt Fong Fei were confident that the baby would be born naturally and easily. My mother and sister came, not with the chicken soup but with a condensed milk tin filled with the best Kopi-kaw for me, a Foochow style of coffee shop coffee to go . It was a luxury to sip the hot kopi kaw with a straw. That is one hot drink I can never forget.

I remember my mother asking a very Foochow question, "Did the placenta turn in side out?" My dear aunt said,"Yes." The baby was my third daughter, and that answer "yes" meant that my next baby would be a boy. 

I fell into a deep sleep dreaming about the House of Commons in London.

Another Foochow belief about the placenta was its colour . The colour should either be purplish red or dark red to almost black. These would be the healthy placenta which meant that the baby had "good food". Mothers whose placentas were a bit rough, darkish in colour and bubbly in texture would be told by the midwives that they had bad diets and had not given the foetus good nutrition. However it was really hard to generalize because no one really did a research on the nature of placentas in Sibu in those days.

Many mothers-in-law would want the placenta of their grand children to be taken home to be buried. So that was one of the difficulties that government midwives would face. Biologically and scientifically placentas belong to the babies. They can be methodically disposed of in the hospital. But culturally, families' requests needed to be adhered to. There was some mystical beliefs in keeping the placentas well, in different ways .

Placenta Capsules

Then of course most recently, people spread rumours that placentas were sold to Japan and Korea to make beauty products. That caused a lot of uneasiness among new mothers. But I would not know what happened to Sibu maternity wards. Did they really ask the new mothers to bring home their babies' placentas?

The retention of the placenta had caused the deaths of many Foochow women. So this kind of fear led to a lot of distress among not only Foochow women but generally women in Sibu.