Child on Her Back A Mother's Love

Babies clad in diapers cannot sue their parents for obvious reasons. Having said that, they are still in the dark why the warmth, nourishment and love they had in the womb does not exist once they are born.

They appreciate the color coded rooms, blue for boys and pink for girls, but they don’t understand why they must sleep alone in $5,000 cribs, when they slept with the mother for nine months.

Their rooms are warm and designer blankets cover their half a loaf bodies, but it still baffles them why they can’t sleep with a warm body, especially the mother’s.

Well! Babies must understand development. In so-called primitive societies, they wake up at night to the sun in the mother’s eyes. Babies smile in appreciation and reach for their food. They have a conversation with the mother while they are at the breast.

After a few months, mothers carry them on their backs, so the warmth that started in the womb continues. When they reach a certain age, they sleep on the same mat with their parents, brothers and sisters. 

During the day, they are in some warm embrace, being picked up by grandmothers, aunts, cousins and other kids. It was always funny to see some four year-old trying to pick up a baby brother.

There are no feeding chairs. During meals, they sit on someone’s lap, who feeds them. Another person will feed them tomorrow. They listen to the hum around them and unconsciously soak up the culture, language and love. Brothers, sisters, uncles put them on their shoulders to enable them to see the world from up there.

Problem is, we call such societies under developed because we use our own parenting yardstick, which is babies sleeping alone in a pink or blue room and getting love from ten teddy bears.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Executive Blogger