Guiding them to a healthy motherhood

Rana Preet Gill

The woman helper, who sweeps and cleans my workplace, a hospital, came walking in uneasily with two kids. She told me she was expecting again. The two kids (a boy and a girl), who were below five years of age, ran amok in the open space of the hospital compound, making their mother anxious. She would discard the broom a few times to run after them, feeling breathless and enervated.

I was moved by her plight — two children, taking care of a home and this job at the hospital was a difficult proposition. Giving birth to a child — for the third time now — must be taking toll on her health. But of course, she was oblivious to this.

I gently enquired her about the reason to have another baby when she already had two kids and meager earnings. She admitted that she was unaware about her own pregnancy for several months. Her shy glances did not make me uncomfortable as I tried to reason with her that though the child will be a source of joy to her family but also an additional burden on her health and on finances. Not much to my surprise, she had little clue to contraceptives and birth control measures. She did not know and perhaps, no one has ever talked to her about the need to safeguard her health.

There are several women out there, like her, who don’t even have basic knowledge about subjects concerning them. I fail to come with terms to the fact that birth control is a taboo subject when we are dealing with a population explosion threatening to overtake China? The government repeatedly emphasises through advertisements that a happy family compromises of two kids (of any gender) and there should be a difference of at least three years between the two — ‘do he kaafi, aur se maafi’.

The information seems not to have been permeated enough because there are women who are not aware about their healthcare and there is an urgent need for create awareness among them. Raising kids is still very much considered a matriarchal task in India. Though the fathers do get involved, but changing nappies, feeding babies, taking care of them, getting them vaccinated while very much remain the domains of a mother. In this whole process of mothering, women tend to ignore their own health and wellbeing.

The ante-natal and post-natal care of a mother should be acknowledged and given due importance. And though the government hospitals provide expectant mothers with free multivitamins and check-ups and vaccinations for newborns, it is not enough. We need to empower women and make them aware. There is a need for imparting education to them by conducting camps at the grassroots level to make sure that they priotise their health above all else.

Every healthy, educated and well-informed mother is an asset to the society and a nation for she can make better choices for her welfare and for the welfare of her family.