Baby Folk
Here in “deepest darkest Peru” everyone has an opinion about everything when it comes to raising babies. Of the tips that our local cleaning lady, Denise, has shared with me over the past month some show local folklore and others practicality of people with few means.
Noticing how much hair I was losing, something I thought a normal post-partum effect, she said with full conviction that the reason I was losing hair was that my baby sucks her thumb. Thinking I had misunderstood I asked her again what she meant and she repeated the same thing perfectly serious. My baby does indeed suck her thumb but I suspect my hormones are also still adjusting less than six months after giving birth. Also according to Denise, Clara is going to be a chatty baby because she sticks her tongue out often. (She also happens to be teething…)
When my baby had an eyelash stuck in her eye she said I should blow in it. I softly blew in but she laughed at me, grabbed her eye open and blew hard and loudly into her eye. My baby didn’t even flinch, as if she hadn’t just had someone pretty much spit right into her eyeball, and the stuck eyelashes easily slid out of her eye onto her cheek. Problem solved. She shared that another way to get rid of this problem is to express some breastmilk into the baby’s eye. I haven’t tried this method yet but I’m starting to believe that I should take this lady’s tips seriously.
When we fed my baby peas for the first time Denise shared that this vegetable is known for causing gases and that they should be cooked with aniseed to avoid making the baby uncomfortable. When my baby got her first teeth she told my sister, who was the first to notice, that she had to give her an allowance for good luck. I’m not messing with Peruvian folk beliefs so I’ll harass my sister about that allowance!
Another Peruvian secret when it comes to babies is that they give them the juice of a wonderful fruit called ‘granadilla’ even before they try any solids. It’s an exotic fruit full of seeds with a sweet flavour. Its smooth juice is extracted by pressing it through a colander and it’s a great way to ease babies into fruits, keeping them hydrated and giving them some nutrition. In these hot summer days down South (not to rub it in) it’s important to keep babies hydrated, as I keep being reminded!
