Gramin Vikas Sansthan

Indla lives with her immediate family - her husband and six children in village Chaturkhera. She does not have a mother-in-law or sister-in-law she can depend upon at the time of childbirth. When four of her older kids were born she exercised little control over her pregnancy. She did what neighborhood women told her to do. Albeit, she gave her newborns her own milk only on the third day, dutifully adhering to the complex code of touchability-untouchability and superstition.

As is the custom when a woman is going to have a child, neighboring women come to assist and send for the traditional village midwife. In their lack of education and information they more often than not act out of ignorance, neglecting hygiene and cleanliness. And when disease strikes they blame it on an evil spirit. To chase that spirit the child is put through some painful procedure in exorcism.

When the BCC program addressed these women with scientific explanations, in simple terms, it made sense to them. They readily adopted each of the seven behaviors recommended for pregnant and lactating mothers. They started paying heed to the five steps to better hygiene during childbirth, like sterilising the thread and blade, washing hands, removing rings and bangles, etc.

When Indla was expecting her youngest child, she paid attention to her diet eating a lot of mustard leaves, spinach and radish leaves. She also completed the course of 100 IFA tablets. She even told us about loss of vitamins if you cut and then wash the vegetable and that it can lead to anaemia. Like a child, Indla was eager to exhibit the knowledge she had acquired in recent times.

When it was time for Indla to give birth to her baby she cleaned the place with a fresh coat of mud plastering. In her state of labor she instructed her mother, who had come down to help with the delivery, to remove her rings and wash her hands. She then showed the midwife and the neighborhood women where she had kept the new blade and the thread and asked them to boil the two in water and sterilise them. After the midwife cut the cord, tied it with the thread and cleaned the newborn, Indla herself asked for the child and started breastfeeding.

Indla's family is extremely poor. Not just her family, the entire village is very poor. Yet it was remarkable to seem how with little information and a mother's determination, Indla had given birth to a healthy baby of three kilograms.