CHAPTER XI
CUSTOMS AT BIRTH
It has already been shown that the decay of the Fijian race is due, not to a low birth-rate, but to an excessive mortality among infants. The mean annual birth-rate for the ten years 1881-1891 was 38.48. This compares very favourably with the mean annual rates of European countries, which vary from 42.8 in Hungry to 25.9 in France. In England the rate is 35.3.
The excessive mortality among Fijian infants makes it necessary to examine very closely the practices of the native midwives at the risk of wearying the reader with somewhat technical details.
Native midwives are generally the ordinary medical practitioners, and are termed Vu-ni-kalou (skilled in spirit-lore), or Yalewa vuku (wise woman), though that term belongs more properly to the wives of the hereditary matai sau (canoe-wrights and carpenters). These women keep their craft secret, and as a consequence it often becomes family property, being handed down from mother to daughter. The natives assert, however, that so far from the craft being regarded as hereditary, any person who thinks she has discovered a new remedy is at liberty to follow the business when so inclined. This opens a wide field to quackery, of which any woman with more cunning or self-assertion than her neighbours can avail herself for the sake of credit or of gain.
MIDWIVES
None but a few of the female relations of a lying-in woman are admitted to the house when she is in labour, the mixed attendance customary in Tonga on such occasions not being tolerated. When the labour pains begin the woman assumes
a squatting posture, but during the throes of childbirth she lies back in the arms of two friends sitting behind her, who support her shoulders while the midwife stations herself in front. From a physiological point of view this is a disadvantageous position, but it appears to be adopted by chance rather than design, it being a natural posture for a people who both sleep and sit on a matted floor. The midwife makes a digital examination for the purpose of ascertaining the presentation, which is generally normal. The membranes are not tampered with, and nothing else is done until after the natural birth of the child. Then the midwife clears its mouth of mucus with her fingers or with her lips. Midwives differ on the point of the moment at which the umbilical cord should be severed. Some of them seem to know that the cord pulsates, but they do not understand the reason, for the Fijians know nothing of the circulation of the blood. They generally wait until the child breathes or cries out. If it emits no cry the general practice is to compress the cord between the finger and thumb, and to squeeze the blood onward towards the child. Sometimes they rattle a bunch of kitu (gourds) near its ear in the hope of awakening it. Neither artificial respiration nor a dash of cold water is ever resorted to, though cold water is used in Tonga in extreme cases, and the natives mention cases in which children must have perished through the neglect of this precaution. The cord is then measured from the navel to the knee, and cut square across with a mussel-shell, or a bamboo knife. Now-a-days scissors are sometimes used. It is never severed by biting as is done by some natural races, nor is it ever tied or knotted. Native opinions vary as to whether bleeding occurs in consequence of the cord not being tied. The midwives deny that it does, but some women declare that it is a good thing for the "bad blood" to drain out of the cord. Severance of the umbilical cord without ligature is not so unsafe as might appear, for the experience of obstetricians goes to show that there is less risk of hæmorrhage when the cord is left long, though, of course, bleeding is more likely to occur from a clean transverse cut than from an oblique
cut, or a laceration. After division the fœtal end is wrapped in a shred of bark-cloth, and coiled down on the abdomen. The blood that oozes from it is absorbed by the cloth, which is changed occasionally.