a drunkard, or a half-wit, they believed the child would be one too.
THE Chinook Indian tribe considered a flat skull to be a sign of beauty – so they strapped babies head to toe between boards until the end of their first year.
THE significance of storks in connection with babies seems to emanate from beliefs spanning many centuries and cultures. In Roman mythology, the stork was sacred to Venus, the goddess of love, so the ancients considered it a sign of good luck if storks nested near their home. The stork has long been considered a good luck omen in Norse, German and Dutch folklore.
IN nineteenth-century Wales, the bone from a shoulder of mutton was used to predict the sex of an unborn child. After being charred in a fire, the bone was hung over the door of the house. It was believed that the child would be the same sex as the next person to come through the door.
IN Germany it was once believed that a wife who carried one of her husband’s socks would never give birth prematurely.
A baby born into the Akha tribe of Thailand cannot be touched until it has cried three times.
THE Asmat people of New Guinea believe that, in order to have a baby, a woman must be impregnated by the spirit of an ancestor and the spirit is always of the same sex as the new-born child.
IN some African tribes, the men will take to their beds for the entire duration of their wife’s pregnancy. The women continue to work as usual until a few hours before giving birth. They believe that men are cleverer as well as physically stronger than women and are therefore better able to defend unborn children against malign and evil spirits.
THE Punan tribe of Borneo believe that women are born without a soul, and do not acquire one until they marry. There are certain advantages to this – as she has no soul, she cannot sin, so Punan girls can have a very active sex life until they marry. There is, however, a drawback to this belief. In order to gain a soul, the Punan girl’s husband has to find her one. He goes off into the jungle, and returns some days later with a severed human head. This is tied to the head of the bride, and the medicine man performs various rites lasting several days until everyone is satisfied that the soul has transferred from the head to the girl.
IN medieval Europe a woman would put on her husband’s clothes when labour started, hoping to transfer the birth pains to him.
The medieval belief that all fathers felt sympathetic pains when their children were born could get men in hot water. Villagers in the north of England would seek out the father of an illegitimate child simply by waiting for the mother to go into labour, and then scouring the village for any man lying ill in bed.
THERE is a strange myth that a premature baby of seven months has a better chance of survival than one of eight months. While it is now obvious that the longer the baby is in the uterus, the stronger it will be, this myth survives. It is believed that the idea originated with astrologers, to whom seven was a magic number.
Adoption
PERHAPS no other society honours friendship with the unselfishness of the Hawaiians. Those who are blessed with infants give them to those who are not, a practice known as hanai. Hanai takes place between close friends and family, the children know who their genetic parents are and see them regularly. The children are considered temporary gifts, not possessions.
THE first record of adoption by childless couples has been found in ancient Sumerian law codes dating from 1800 BC. The laws enabled childless couples to adopt a child so that their worldly possessions could be passed to an heir.
Be Fruitful and Multiply
THE world’s heaviest twins weighed in collectively at twenty-seven pounds and twelve ounces, and were born to Mrs J. P. Haskin of Fort Smith, Arizona, in 1924.
IN 1994, Cynthia Silveira gave birth to two healthy girls eight days apart, one from each of her two uteri. One in 50,000 women have two uteri, but the cases of pregnancy in both uteri in which the mother gave birth vaginally are astronomically rare.
MADISON Barbara, Jackson Frederick and Allison Rosemarie are a little different from most triplets. They were born to two women in different cities, and in different years.
When their parents, Linda and Marty Schaper, discovered it was unlikely they could have children of their own, Linda’s sister, Barb, suggested a plan. If they both had embryos implanted, it would increase the chances of Linda having children. Marty and Linda would be the biological parents, Linda would still have a chance of giving birth to her own child, but Barb, who already had a family, could be a surrogate mother. Both sisters underwent IVF – which was successful for both of them. Linda gave birth to her own twins in St Louis, on Christmas Day 1993, and Barb gave birth to the third triplet, Allison, in Columbia, Missouri on 25 January 1994.
ANOTHER unusual set of twins are Hanna and Eric Lynn, who were born ninety-four days apart. Pegge Lynn, who lives in Pennsylvania, gave birth first to Hanna, who was almost four months premature, on 10 November 1995. She weighed just twenty-three ounces. Doctors stitched Mrs Lynn’s cervix and gave her drugs to stop her labour progressing, and delay the delivery of the second twin as long as possible. They were incredibly successful – Eric was finally born on 2 February 1996, weighing a much healthier five pounds and seven ounces.
THIRTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD Czech Siamese twins Josepha and Rosa Blazek were admitted to hospital so that Rosa could give birth to her baby son. The father admitted paternity and was eager to marry Rosa, but he was told that if he did so, the Czech police would arrest him for bigamy as soon as the ceremony was over, so the son was registered as illegitimate.
TWO record-breakingly prolific women have each produced sixty-nine children. Mrs Fyodor Vassilet, a Russian, had sixty-nine babies in twenty-seven confinements – four sets of quadruplets, seven sets of triplets, and sixteen pairs of twins. She became extremely famous, and appeared at the court of Czar Alexander II. She died in 1872.
Her rival for the record, Mrs Bernard Schenberg of Austria, also had twenty-seven confinements, with four sets of quadruplets, seven sets of triplets, and sixteen pairs of twins. When she died in 1911, at the age of fifty-six, her husband Bernard remarried, and had a further eighteen children with his second wife.
THE most prolific mother living is Leontina Albina, born in 1925 in San Antonio, Chile, who gave birth to her fifty-fifth child in 1981. Amongst the births were five sets of triplets. Only forty children survived.
IN 1993, a woman who had been treated at one of the most prestigious fertility clinics in the Netherlands gave birth to twin sons – one black and one white. Both she and her partner, who had given his sperm for artificial insemination, are white. It seemed that a technician had reused a pipette that still contained some sperm from a previous insemination. DNA tests proved that the biological father of one of the twins is from the Caribbean island of Aruba.
GIOVANNI Aversa, an Italian living in Bristol, desperately wanted a son. After his wife Maria had given birth to two beautiful healthy daughters, they decided to try once more for a son. When Maria found she was expecting quadruplets, a delighted Giovanni was told that there was only a three million to one chance that his wife would have four daughters. At last, he was going to have his son to take to football matches. But, when Maria gave birth
