If you are pregnant in the usa, appreciate the things you take for granted, like prenatal care, maternity leave, and use of doctors along with a well-equipped local hospital. You've probably not spent enough time worrying about surviving your pregnancy. You are luckier than most women on the planet. What might pregnancy end up like should you be a lady in Africa?

Africa is really a continent with 54 countries, where 16 percent of the world’s population lives. Half of all Africans are under age 25. A typical woman in Africa may have about six pregnancies. If you were like most African women, you'd rely on your traditions as well as your village pregnancy caregivers. You'd give birth in your own home, and also you could be distrustful of giving birth at a hospital. Actually, visiting the hospital could be your last measure.

The good news about being pregnant in Africa is the fact that maternal deaths from pregnancy have came by about 40 % since 1990. Unhealthy news is the fact that in certain areas of Africa, about one inch 14 pregnancies is fatal. You'd worry about that, and you would probably know someone who died in childbirth.

Prenatal Care and Traditions

If you were pregnant in Africa, there's a pretty good possibility you'd be younger, perhaps a lot younger. In Ethiopia, for example, it is not unusual for a woman to be married at 13 and also have her first baby right after marriage. Africa has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates on the planet.

If you lived near a town, you may have some prenatal care. You might have to hold back quite a long time to possess someone take your blood pressure and measure your belly. Most African women won't ever possess a prenatal ultrasound or get prenatal diagnostic testing.

Like most African women, should you lived in the united states, you would have no prenatal care. In Ethiopia, 75 % of ladies never visit a health care provider during pregnancy. Your prenatal period might be complicated by malaria. Pregnancy reduces your resistance, so a mosquito bite can lead to a malaria attack and a miscarriage or stillbirth.

You would probably rely and rely upon your village pregnancy care providers. Your husband might be certain to not have sex with every other women, even other wives, while pregnant. You may follow prenatal traditions like the following:

• Not planting potatoes: to lower the risk of your child being born using the umbilical cord around the neck
• Eating traditional herbs or placing herbs inside your vagina: to keep your baby healthy
• Avoiding looking at a defunct person or seeing a funeral: to protect your baby from evil spirits
• Not sitting for long during meals: so your baby have a healthy cry at birth
• Not eating yams: so your baby won't be too big
• Not eating fish: so that your baby will arrive on time

The great news about having a baby in Africa is that maternal deaths from pregnancy have dropped by about 40 percent since 1990. Unhealthy news is that in certain areas of Africa, about one out of 14 pregnancies is fatal.

Birthing Care and Traditions

You would probably have your child in your own home. You'd feel safer in your own home than at the hospital. Like most rural African women, you would associate a healthcare facility with death. The biggest risk during birth could be bleeding and infection. Should you hemorrhaged and needed a blood transfusion, that would apt to be fatal.

You should send someone for that village midwife when labor starts. You might have to climb right into a horse-drawn cart and go discover the midwife. Were you to give birth in your own home, you may get it done inside a kneeling position on the side of the bed where your husband sleeps. A traditional birth might include the next:

• Being attended by village care providers you know and trust
• Having your husband and family with you
• Cutting the umbilical cord having a reed and smearing the cut cord with herbs and your saliva along with saliva of family and friends for healing
• Treating the placenta nearly as an another baby and burying the placenta after birth
• Not giving your child your first milk, to prevent making your child sick
• Holding your baby within the smoke of a “birthing fire” to assist your baby’s head form properly
• Staying home with your baby for around 4 days after the birth
• Not having sex with your husband for that first month after birth

Her pregnancy and birthing experience of a lady inside a highly advanced country like the United States is a world away from the experiences of the woman in rural Africa. But some things are the same. Pregnancy is thought of like a special and sacred experience. Having a baby and becoming a mother is locked in high esteem. Not to mention, mothers love their babies a lot more than life itself.