I recently attended a "full moon" celebration of my colleague's child. "Full moon" here means one month old. It's a Chinese tradition to celebrate a child's coming of a month old. My colleague comes from a traditional Chinese family and so during the dinner whilst his mom was carrying the baby, she brought up the topic of what you shouldn't do during pregnancy and after pregnancy to ensure the toddler's and the mom's health.
Some of the interesting ones were:
1. Always get a confinement lady to help around for the first couple of weeks after mommy has given birth;
2. During pregnancy don't drill holes or hammer nails around the house the family is going live in;
3. Don't eat certain food stuff during pregnancy;
4. During the first few months of the child's life, ensure proper sleep posture, use pillows to keep the head straight; and
5. A whole lot more of stuff you should or shouldn't do (I really couldn't keep track of so many when she was talking about it).
So that's what I heard from "old school" mom so to speak.
On the flip side, a relative of mine is a pharmacist. She has got very differing views when it comes to such practices. Well, to put it in a nutshell you can call her "non old-school" or simply, modern-thinking. I found out her hard stand on not believing old popular beliefs. She called it anachronistic. I wouldn't say she's wrong since I am not qualified and even if I did say she's wrong, I probably can't own up to it anyway.
Despite the fact that medical professionals discount these so called "old beliefs", I can't help but think there's got to be some truth to these so called "old beliefs". If such beliefs were indeed untrue, how is it possible that so many old folks seem to come up with the same or at least very similar beliefs? It couldn't possibly have just popped out from nowhere or some genius decided to say, "Don't do this during pregnancy lest you want this to happen".
Big question is - are we now in a day and time where we face anachronism or were all these practices an accumulation of observation done by those people during that day and time?
I guess at the end of the day, call it old fashioned, anachronism or superstition or whatever you wish to brand it, you can't really deny this - whether you believe in it or not, there is no harm playing it safe. Either way, sometimes the old folks do know more than us for one simple reason - experience.
Something to ponder about maybe?
