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Motherhood and Birth Customs and Ceremonies

 Estonia, Ingria and Mordvinia, India, China, Nigeria-Yoruba/Salvador-Bahia, Ghana, Africa - Edo, Nubia, Kenya, Egypt,

Article: Rites of Passage - Celebration of Birth

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COMING SOON!

Multicultural Celebration of Motherhood: A Festival of Diverse Traditional Baby Ceremonies, Music Dance and Rituals

A project of Sweet Mother International

AIMS/OBJECTIVES: The aim of 'Multicultural Celebration of Motherhood: A Festival of Diverse Traditional Baby Ceremonies, Music Dance and Rituals' is to showcase the diverse cross-cultural dance, music, food and rituals that ushers a baby to the world and at the same time, celebrates the heroism associated with motherhood. Also, this festival, seeks to honour the millions of unsung heroes who have died attempting childbirth.

Furthermore, the festival seeks to awake our collective social consciousness to the fact that, even in this age of advance medical intervention through obstetric cesarean sections, millions of women are still dieing from minor childbirth complications in developing countries. Lack of capacities such as: Lack of funds by families of the woman to pay for urgent cesarean operation and lack of or inadequate obstetric medical equipments for Cesarean sections in local hospitals are the primary cause of these deaths.

MISSION: To create a festival where people from diverse ethnic and cultural background can come together in unity and to share their rich cultural ceremonies that honours motherhood.

VISION: In unity, to create friendship and bonding across cultural divides.

Why Celebrate Motherhood?

Motherhood is celebrated all over the world across cultures and ethnic divides. The transition from woman to motherhood, particular, during the periods of pregnancy and child birth are honored, respected, revered and celebrated by all cultures.

This respect and honour of women during pregnancy and childbirth transcends even to high masculinity societies, a society where women are regarded as inferior by men. During pregnancy and childbirth, a woman is viewed as a 'super hero' by the community. This heroic status is reinforced by the challenging and complex cultural specific rituals that a woman has to comply with, including the turbulent emotional, psychological and physiological obstacles that a woman overcomes during pregnancy. At labour, a woman gracefully challenges death and heroically overcomes mutilation and morbid pain to give birth to a baby. Unfortunately, not all women are successful. Several millions of women die from childbirth every year. According to the United Nations and the World Health Organization's statistics on maternal mortality, over 500,000 women die from childbirth every year.

A woman triumphing over death and giving birth to a baby, and contributing to human demographic sustenance is a reason to celebrate. For us all, this childbirth paradigm brings about an ecclesiastic fulfillment, and induces overwhelming joy that leads to pumps, pageantries, reunions, showering of gifts, and colorful celebrations .

These rites of passage ceremonies includes baby warming ceremonies, baby showering ceremonies, baby naming ceremonies and so on.

On this website, we will share some of these cultural ceremonies.

Contribute

As we shower gifts and celebrate a successful mother and her new born baby, let us also champion the cause to reduce maternal mortality in developing countries. We can do this by donating to the Multicultural Celebration of Motherhood (MCM) trust fund that specifically goes to paying for emergency cesarean sections and procurement of obstetric equipments and pediatric incubators in government own hospitals and recognized obstetric hospitals in developing countries.

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