What Every Tradition Already Knew

By Henrieta Haniskova, Former Nurse, Certified Clinical Aromatherapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Have you thought about how you will celebrate yourself for carrying your baby?

Baby showers and gender reveals are wonderful celebrations, celebrating mostly the baby. Around the world, people found their own ways to mark this moment. Some for the baby, some for the mother, and some for both. People brought gifts. Some said blessings out loud, and others threw a party. Some traditions are thousands of years old. And some are curiously similar to traditions from cultures that never had a way to meet.

How mothers and babies have been celebrated around the world

Did you know every one of the three wise men's gifts had a meaning? Gold was for a king. Frankincense was burned in worship, so prayers could rise to God. And myrrh was an anointing oil, the same one used to prepare a body for burial, which means one of the first gifts in the most famous birth story ever told held both life and death at once.

Frankincense was sometimes worth more than gold, and I still use it in my Bump Butter, the tin I formulated for pregnancy, because it deepens the breath and helps you stay connected to your body while it changes week after week. There's a reason it was burned in prayer for thousands of years. Breathe it in, and you may feel your breath slow down and your shoulders soften, the way they do when you finally sit down at the end of a long day. And the science backs it up: breathing in frankincense reduces anxiety.

Myrrh is a strong uterine stimulant, so it stays out of pregnancy. After the birth, though, it has a long history in postpartum care. Midwives in Iran still use myrrh in sitz baths, and in one trial it helped episiotomy wounds heal better than frankincense or the standard antiseptic.

For the sitz baths I recommend after birth, I chose three plants with a long history in European women's care: calendula and chamomile, with lavender essential oil, in my Calendula & Chamomile Soak. Chamomile's botanical name, Matricaria, comes from the Latin word for womb, and it has been part of women's care after birth since the time of Hippocrates. Calendula shows up in healing writings throughout the history of Europe, and it was grown in monastery gardens across Europe for salves for wounds and inflamed skin. And the Romans scented their baths with lavender, which may be where its name comes from: lavare, to wash. Calendula and chamomile each eased episiotomy pain in clinical trials. And lavender has been shown to ease pain and help episiotomy wounds heal. Its scent also signals to your nervous system that it's safe to let go. It's there to comfort you while your body heals.

You can find the Calendula and Chamomile Botanical Soak in our online store.

The gift giving never really stopped. Christian godparents have been bringing gifts to newborns since at least the fourth century, and by Tudor times the go-to gift was a silver spoon. So now you know where "born with a silver spoon in their mouth" comes from!

Gold, silver, and money have been a part of welcoming a baby since ancient times. In Jewish tradition, thirty-one days after a firstborn son is born, his father gives five silver coins to a Kohen, a descendant of the ancient priests, in a ceremony called Pidyon HaBen. And long before Chinese red envelopes held paper money, they held real bronze coins on red thread, tucked under a child's pillow to keep them safe from sickness and harm.

Then there are the words. The Bible has more to say about pregnancy than most of us realize. "You knit me together in my mother's womb," says Psalm 139. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you," says Jeremiah. And the Gospel of John is honest about the pain of labor, then just as honest about the joy that comes after.

Jewish tradition gives the new mother words of her own. With a blessing called Birkat HaGomel, she is called to express her gratitude for surviving the danger of childbirth, which has always been seen as a very important threshold. It's the community's way of giving a new mother a voice, and supporting her in her gratitude for having crossed it. Across Europe, the church had a blessing for mothers too, called Churching. About forty days after the birth, a new mother would wait at the church door with a lit candle, and the priest would come out and lead her back inside, thanking God for her safe delivery and welcoming her home to her community. Mothers were churched for well over a thousand years.

And then there are the parties! Hindu families start celebrating before the baby even arrives. Godh Bharai, which means "filling the lap," is held in the seventh or ninth month of pregnancy (depending on the region, it's also called Seemantham or Dohale Jevan). Think of it as a baby shower where the mother is the guest of honor: the women gather around her to bless her, adorn her and make sure she feels cherished. There's even an ancient text, the Garbha Upanishad, that describes pregnancy month by month and says the baby is already aware in the womb, carrying memories they forget at birth. Make of that what you will!

Islamic tradition makes room for the mother and the baby separately. Nifas is the time of bleeding after birth, and while it lasts, up to forty days, the mother is released from prayer and fasting. On the seventh day, the baby gets their own celebration, Aqiqah: a feast is shared, and the baby's first hair is shaved and weighed, and its weight in silver is given to those in need, a tiny first act of generosity made in the baby's name.

In Korea, a new mother traditionally rests for three weeks, a time called samchilil, or "three sevens," and many families stretch that rest much longer. She stays warm, the women around her take care of her, and she eats seaweed soup, miyeokguk, every day to help her body recover. Then, on the baby's hundredth day, the whole family celebrates Baek-il. Families used to wait that long because making it to a hundred days meant a baby was likely to thrive. They make rice cakes and send them out to neighbors and friends, because it's said that if a hundred people share the baby's rice cakes, the baby will live a long life.

In China, a new mother "sits the month," zuò yuè zi, a tradition recorded more than two thousand years ago. For about thirty days she rests, stays warm and is fed special foods to rebuild her strength, while the family takes care of everything else. When the month is over, the family throws a full-month party, man yue, to celebrate the baby's first month of life, and it marks the end of her month of rest too. Guests go home with red-dyed eggs for good luck and slices of ginger, a warming food for a body that is still recovering.

Among the Navajo, a baby is thought to belong partly to the spirit world until their first laugh, usually around three months. And here's the fun part: whoever gets that first laugh throws the party, handing out salt, sweets and gifts on the baby's behalf. So choose carefully who gets to tickle your baby first!

In Yoruba communities in West Africa, the baby is named on the seventh or eighth day at a ceremony called Ìsọmọlórúkọ. They get tiny tastes of honey, kola nut, salt and bitter kola, each one a wish for their life, placed on their tongue in front of everyone who loves them.

Now here's what's interesting. None of these cultures were talking to each other, and so many of them still landed on the same timing: about a week after the birth, a month or forty days of rest for the mother, and in Korea, a hundred days for the baby. That month of rest shows up again and again, all over the world. Each found its own way, and all of them agreed on one thing: becoming a mother is worth celebrating.

So how will you celebrate yours?

If you designed the ceremony that marked your own becoming, what would it need to include?

Who would have to be in the room?

What would you want someone to say to you, out loud?

You don't need a room full of people for this. Start small, tonight: say one real hope for the year ahead out loud, just to yourself, the way a Yoruba family does with honey and salt.

Later in this series, I'll share Royal Heir's own Mother Blessing, our modern take on this very old idea. Every culture here treated a woman becoming a mother as someone worth celebrating, and The First Year of Motherhood™ carries that forward, week by week, long after any single day of celebration.

The Threshold series continues next week.