Care during pregnancy, post-delivery and with babies between women from Pedra Branca, Santa Terezinha, Bahia

Abstract

This present article records how women who live in a village from the interior of Bahia State, northeastern Brazil, perceive and deal with the care they are supposed to receive during their pregnancy, in the post-delivery period, and with new-born babies. Fieldwork was carried out by students in the Ethnobiology program of Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana. They performed open-ended interviews with seven female inhabitants of the village of Pedra Branca in May 2004. The interviewees’ ages ranged from 18 to 60 years. Local obstetric knowledge and practices, as well as those concerning the care for babies were contrasted with information from the academic literature. It was observed that, although traditional practices have been transmitted from generation to generation, younger women of this community do not give the same importance to these folk knowledge as the more experienced women do.