Childbirth

A woman is usually about her daily labors in the house, the mountains, or the irrigated fields almost to the hour of childbirth.  The child is born without feasting or ceremony, and only two or three friends witness the birth.  The father of the child is there, if he is the woman’s husband; the girl’s mother is also with her, but usually there are no others, unless it be an old woman.

The expectant woman stands with her body bent strongly forward at the waist and supported by the hands grasping some convenient house timber about the height of the hips; or she may take a more animal-like position, placing both hands and feet on the earth.

The labor, lasting three or four hours, is unassisted by medicines or baths; but those in attendance —­ the man as well as the woman —­ hasten the birth by a gently downward drawing of the hands about the woman’s abdomen.

During a period of ten days after childbirth the mother frequently bathes herself about the hips and abdomen with hot water, but has no change of diet.  For two or three days she keeps the house closely, reclining much of the time.

The Igorot woman is a constant laborer from the age of puberty or before, until extreme incapacity of old age stays the hands of toil; but for two or three months following the advent of each babe the mother does not work in the fields.  She busies herself about the house and with the new-found duties of a mother, while the husband performs her labors in the fields.

The Igorot loves all his children, and says, when a boy is born, “It is good,” and if a girl is born he says it is equally “good” —­ it is the fact of a child in the family that makes him happy.  People in the Igorot stage of culture have little occasion to prize one sex over the other.  The Igorot neither, even in marriage.  One is practically as capable as the other at earning a living, and both are needed in the group.

Six or seven days after birth a chicken is killed and eaten by the family in honor of the child, but there is no other ceremony —­ there is not even a special name for the feast.

If a woman gives birth to a stillborn child it is at once washed, wrapped in a bit of cloth, and buried in a camote sementera close to the dwelling.

Twins

The Igorot do not understand twins, —­ na-a-pik’, as they say.  Carabaos have only one babe at a birth, so why should women have two babes? they ask.  They believe that one of the twins, which unfortunate one they call “a-tin-fu-yang’,” is an anito child; it is the offspring of an anito.[16] The anito father is said to have been with the mother of the twins in her unconscious slumber, and she is in no way criticised or reproached.

The most quiet babe, or, if they are equally quiet, the larger one, is said to be “a-tin-fu-yang’,” and is at once placed in an olla[17] and buried alive in a sementera near the dwelling.