When expecting a baby, time ceases to be measured by clocks or by calendar pages for mothers and family members. Time is measured with a month yardstick, beginning with some point zero, the moment of conception, and ending with the moment of birth some nine months hence. Our knowledge of human reproduction gives a modern sense to the waiting of expectation. While we feel impatient at times, we know that we cannot hurry up the process. Nature takes its course. Unless a disruption occurs, each week, each month, each doctor’s visit, each landmark of the baby’s growth and development, each pound gained or lost, is an important milestone on the way to birth.Waiting for a child to be born is an expectant waiting.
Pregnancy means “before birth,” prae gnas. For the woman who is expecting, the waiting experience itself may turn pregnant-filling up, heavy with-the meaning of birth. Expectation does not just indicate waiting. It is a certain kind of waiting; a waiting for birth. That is why Fujita (1985) says expectation is a subjective aspect of waiting; it is “how we wait”. With expectation, there is “a strong inner activeness in spite of outer passiveness; there is a belief in the occurrence of the expected event; and the expected event is sensed to be imminent and clearly imagined”.From the perspective of others, our movement towards the birth is measured by the mother’s outer appearance, the changes in her body size and shape. From the researchers’ perspective, the changes that others see occurring on the exterior do not reflect the magnitude of the changes that are occurring on the interior. Pregnancy is the subject of an inner process of growth and development that is reflected on the outside by a change in body size and shape. As the baby inside grows and matures, it makes its existence known to others by bulging the mother’s belly out into the world, declaring its presence. Along with the baby, there is growth and development, changing physically as the pregnancy progresses towards its inevitable end, but also transforming inwardly from a woman-without-children to a woman-as-mother. Pregnancy is the time of in-betweenness; it is the time of being with child. Vangie Bergum (1989) calls the time of being with child a primordial relationship, “a mysterious uniona commingling, an entangling, an interlacing” that goes beyond companionship. Here the mother and unborn child are still one, “an indissoluble whole, and yet two, a mother and a child”. To be with child is to grow at the centre: to harbor a developing child at the core of one’s embodied being.The objective aspect of waiting, says Fujita, “what is waited for” in pregnancy, does not lie outside of the mother’s body and yet it belongs to the aspect of waiting in the natural world where one trusts in the process and power of nature, and the elemental external rhythms.
There is a gradual unfolding of “natural potentialities”, and these rhythms are not within our control. One waits nine months for a baby to be born, trusting that it will come.In this regard, the mother and other members of the family, in their anticipation, find ways to determine the baby’s gender. Modern technology offers a way to do this known as ultrasound or sonography. In medicine, it is a technique that uses sound waves to study and treat hard-to-reach body areas. In scanning with ultrasound, high-frequency sound waves are transmitted to the area of interest and the returning echoes recorded. First developed in World War II to locate submerged objects, the technique is now widely used in virtually every branch of medicine . In obstetrics it is used to study the age, sex, and level of development of the fetus and to determine the presence of birth defects or other potential problems. Its use to determine fetal sex has led to the widespread abortion of female fetuses in some countries, such as China and India, where male offspring are more highly valued.
Ultrasound is used in cardiology to detect heart damage and in ophthalmology to detect retinal problems. It is also used to heat joints, relieving arthritic joint pain, and for such procedures as lithotripsy, in which shock waves break up kidney stones, eliminating the need for surgery. Ultrasound is noninvasive, involves no radiation, and avoids the possible hazards—such as bleeding, infection, or reactions to chemicals—of other diagnostic methods. On the other hand, the ancient Chinese have devised an alternative technique in determining a baby’s gender. The original copy is kept in the Institute of Science of Peking. The accuracy of the chart has been proved by thousands of People and is believed to be 99 percent accurate. By reckoning, you follow a line drawn from the figure representing the woman’s age to a line drawn from the month the baby is conceived. For instance, if the woman is 27 years old and her baby is conceived in January (according to the Chinese Lunar Calendar), then her baby will be a girl. The chart is based on the month the baby is conceived and not on the birth of the baby, B-Male, G-Female. A Chinese Scientist discovered and drew this chart which was buried in a Royal tomb about 700 years ago. There is no known scientific basis, though, that will back the validity of this technique. In view this, as budding researchers, there is a need to question the validity of this technique despite its reported level of accuracy over the years it is being used in many countries particularly in China. This is needed since even the “scientific” technique in determining the gender of the unborn baby (ultrasound) is not 100% accurate.
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Tags: Chinese birth calendar,
Chinese Calendar,
Chinese Lunar Calendar,
Gender Prediction,
Nursing,
pregnancy calendar
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I found this article to be very interesting. I have never read anything relating lunar cycles with the gender of babies. Fantastic!
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