The Mother-Child Bonding in Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Postnatal an Ethnographic Study of Birthing Among the Sasak People in Lombok
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The Mother-Child Bonding in Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Postnatal An Ethnographic Study of Birthing among the Sasak People in Lombok Saki Tanada December 2018 The Mother-Child Bonding in Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Postnatal: An Ethnographic Study of Birthing among the Sasak People in Lombok Saki Tanada December 2018 Doctoral Dissertation The Mother-Child Bonding in Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Postnatal: An Ethnographic Study of Birthing among the Sasak People in Lombok Division of Human and Socio-Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Human and Socio-Environmental Studies, Kanazawa University Student ID Number: 1621082005 Author: Saki Tanada Primary Supervisor: Haruya Kagami Abstract Drawing on my anthropological fieldwork in Lombok Island, this paper aims to illuminate the Sasak women’s perspectives of bonding in pregnancy, childbirth and postnatal and the social significance of the healing practices in contemporary rural Indonesia. In the former half of this paper, we will see the general background of the shifting birth settings in Reragi village (pseudonym) in East Lombok (Chapter 2), the Sasak concepts of being, spirits, and things (Chapter 3), and the rituals and treatments in pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal (Chapter 4). In the latter half, we explore specific cases in which women cope with pains of maternity in the critical moments of birth, sickness and losses as well as in everyday lives (Chapter 5). This ethnographic study discusses three primary questions (Chapter 6). First, situated in the shift of birth settings from traditional midwifery to modern medicine, how do women in Reragi village acquire and value the local healing practices? Second, how do the birthing mothers and people surrounding them understand the relationship between pregnant women and the unborn as well as the one between postnatal women and their children? Finally, how, and for what purpose, do the women in Reragi continue turning to the ancestral notions of illnesses and healing in the contemporary context of medicalization of childbirth? Based on the village women’s voices about their experiences of birthing, I argue that people in Lombok perform the local rituals and treatments of pregnancy, childbirth, and postnatal as the essential effort to nourish the whole of the baby’s being. In such aspect of the daily cares, the mother-child bonding is equivalent not to the formation of the attachment between individuals but to the existence of a dimension of the partly shared bodies of the persons. Keywords: body; childbirth; healing; Indonesia; Lombok; materiality; postnatal; pregnancy. Contents List of Illustrations viii Notes on Transliteration and Names x Acknowledgments xii 1 Introduction 2 1. Research Objectives 2 2. Method and Material 5 3. Definitions and Delimitations 8 4. Chapter Outline 31 2 Reragi Village: Birth Settings and the Background 34 1. Chapter Introduction 34 2. Land and People of Lombok 34 3. Reragi Village 43 4. Birth Settings in Reragi: The Local Medical Conditions 61 3 Sasak Concepts of Being 78 1. Chapter Introduction 78 2. The World of ‘Onion Skins’ 79 3. Being Vulnerable in the Multidimensional World 81 4. Personal Competence as a Being 102 5. Chapter Summary 111 vi 4 Rituals and Treatments of Pregnancy, Birth, and Postnatal 114 1. Chapter Introduction 114 2. Marriage and Conception 115 3. Pregnancy 121 4. Childbirth and Postnatal 126 5. Chapter Summary 142 5 Giving Birth in a Lombok Village 144 1. Chapter Introduction 144 2. The Presence of the Living Thing 145 3. Pregnancy Loss 162 4. Pregnancy Sickness and Cravings 181 5. Feeding Mothers and Children 194 6. Postnatal: The Cares of New Mothers and New Grandmothers 208 7. Chapter Summary 225 6 Bringing Babies into Being 228 1. The Points of the Discussion 228 2. Cares in Daily Lives of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Postnatal 229 3. The Holistic Understandings of the Mother-Child Relationships 234 4. Bonding as a Dimension of Being 244 7 Conclusion 252 References 256 vii List of Illustrations Chapter 1 — Introduction • Figure 1.1 A mother kissing a child. 1 • Figure 1.2 The container model of pregnancy. 16 Chapter 2 — Reragi Village: Birth Settings and the Background • Figure 2.1 Map of Indonesia. 35 • Figure 2.2 Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, Sumba. 36 • Figure 2.3 Mataram Islamic Center of Nusa Tenggara Barat Province. 41 • Figure 2.4 The old mosque in Bayan. 43 • Figure 2.5 A scene of the grave visit. 53 • Figure 2.6 A woman making wraps (topat). 53 • Figure 2.7 A scene of the sacrifice. 54 • Figure 2.8 A scene of the morning market (peken). 57 • Figure 2.9 A set of gift for the hosts of the funeral feast. 59 • Figure 2.10 A scene of gift-bringing at the funeral feast. 60 • Figure 2.11 A scene of morning consultation at Puskesmas. 66 • Figure 2.12 A scene of Posyandu maternal and child health care services. 70 • Figure 2.13 A scene of Posyandu maternal and child health care services. 70 Chapter 3 — Sasak Concepts of Being • Figure 3.1 A set of food offering for the unseen. 83 • Figure 3.2 A scene of the treatment of the illness of meeting the dead. 92 • Figure 3.3 An ancestral cloth of reragian. 98 • Figure 3.4 A Child being fussy (nyelek). 101 • Figure 3.5 A healer and a client. 106 • Figure 3.6 An example model of transmissions of jampi (healing formula) and ilmu (personal competence). 107 • Figure 3.7 An example model of the illness of coming across a person’s ilmu. 110 viii Chapter 4 — Rituals and Treatments of Pregnancy, Birth, and Postnatal • Figure 4.1 A scene of the wedding bath (mandiq penganten). 118 • Figure 4.2 A scene of the pregnancy bath (mandiq besembet). 122 • Figure 4.3 The birthing belt (sabok beranak). 123 • Figure 4.4 A scene of pregnancy massage therapy. 125 • Figure 4.5 A scene of the resting hours on the day of child delivery. 126 • Figure 4.6 A woman weaves the birthing belt with the back-strap loom. 127 • Figure 4.7 A scene of the placenta burial (Ariq-ariq). 131 • Figure 4.8 The mount of the placenta burial. 132 • Figure 4.9 A scene of the day of exorcizing (molang malik) of the child. 134 • Figure 4.10 A scene of coin showering (serogot kepeng). 136 • Figure 4.11 A scene of the hair-cutting (ngurisang) ritual. 138 • Figure 4.12 A child wears rattan-braided threads on the wrist (teken). 140 • Figure 4.13 A mother and a child. 141 Chapter 5 — Giving Birth in a Lombok Village • Figure 5.1 A massage therapist (belian urut) showing her hands. 145 • Figure 5.2 Outline of pregnancy as described by a healer. 151 • Figure 5.3 A mother and a child looking into each other after breastfeeding.153 • Figure 5.4 A grave of an infant. 173 • Figure 5.5 A husband and a wife. 178 • Figure 5.6 The used kit of the pregnancy test. 190 • Figure 5.7 Women cross-wrapping the abdomen with the birthing belt. 208 • Figure 5.8 Women and a newborn child on the exorcizing day (molang malik). 224 Chapter 6 — Bringing Babies into Being • Figure 6.1 The holistic model of the mother-child relationship. 243 ix Notes on Transliteration and Names To protect the privacy of the informants and the anonymity of the field village, pseudonyms replace the names of all informants and the site village throughout this paper. In the field of linguistics, there has not been an established analysis on the geographical variation of the Sasak language in Lombok, while there are five currently recognized dialects named Ngeno-Ngene, Ngeto-Ngete, Meno-Mene, Merarik-Meriku, and Ngene-Mene (Wouk 1999: 92). Most of the Sasak spelling in the ethnographic data of this paper presumably belongs to Ngeno-Ngene dialect as spoken in the field village in East Lombok. There has neither been a grounded agreement among researchers in transliterations of Sasak words pronouncing the sharp, almost inaudible sound of ‘k’ or ‘q’ at the end of words (e.g., mandik, or mandiq: bath). The difference between the two spellings does not bother the informants in the field village, and they use those interchangeably in writing. This paper follows the spelling check of the informants in indicating ‘k’ or ‘q.’ In addition, people in the site village use accented words of Indonesian origin in the Sasak phrases while changing accents from ‘i’ sound to ‘e’ sound (e.g., In., baik; Sa., baek (good, kind) and from ‘u’ sound to ‘o’ sound (e.g., In., sabuk, Sa., sabok (written as sabok and pronounced as sabok): belt, sash) and, vice versa, use Sasak words in accented Indonesian phrases. Most of the informants speak both the Sasak language and Indonesian fluently and often with hybrid words and sentences of the two, and some of them x speak basic English. Interviews were mostly conducted in Indonesian since I was less competent in the Sasak language. Some interviews with older informants, who were more comfortable to speak in Sasak than in Indonesian, involved the assistance from native speakers of both, who were mostly the extended family members of the informants. In translation from Sasak to English and from Indonesian to English, changes were made in the word order so that sentences make sense in English. Complimentary words are also added in brackets to indicate the dropped subjects, objects, verbs and tense and the descriptions of gestures. Throughout the paper, English translations follow each word in the first time it appears. The language distinctions are indicated in the following manner: (1) Sasak words: italics. e.g., spirits (bakeq) / bakeq (spirits) (2) Indonesian words: italics with the abbreviation ‘In.’ e.g., village (In., desa) / desa (In., village) (3) Words appearing in both Sasak and Indonesian contexts: italics with the combined abbreviation ‘Sa./In.’ e.g., pain, sickness (Sa./In., sakit) / sakit (Sa./In., pain, sickness) (4) Words of Arabic origin in Sasak or Indonesian contexts: italics with combined abbreviations of ‘Sa.’, ‘In.’, ‘Ar.’ e.g., prayer (Sa., solat; In., shalat; Ar., salat) / solat (Sa., prayer; In., shalat; Ar., salat) The indication of the language differences is omitted when words appear as of dialogues.