40 days ( or some set time) of 'not going out' with newborn.Do you or anyone you know practice... - Page 3

[almadianna]

old thread but in my culture (mexican) this is called "quarentena" and it is quite common.

[JakeHagop]

hello,

i was talking to a friend about the moon and then, recalled this secret story, i've heard from an old friend - he is an Armenian atheist, a scientist and knows a great deal of secrets.

for my personal safety, and his too, i will not reveal his identity at any time in here, or anywhere else, unless i'm tortured to :)

alright, the first 40 days of newborn, staying at home and not seeing anyone.

in actual tradition - which, by the way, according to my friend is before christianity - is this.

the new born baby has to be in a room that is sunny and bright.

the newborn cannot see any other, except own blood - mom, dad, grandma, grandpa.

the newborn, at night - This is Most Important - ought not to see the moon.

the newborn cannot be exposed to the moon

---to my question "Why?" the person who knows secretology (not studied at any university or school) said:

"because moon registers the weaknesses of the mankind and uses those weaknesses, such could be an illness, when the moon is new."

this didn't make any sense to me -- but when he started giving me examples of how some diseases were treated in Armenia -- i started to believe in it.

one of the diseases he mentioned was - skin bumps (i don't know proper medical term on this, but in Armenia we call it "Gortnuk") and the way it is treated (in old tradition) is:

use a dirty broom when the moon is new, and hit the skin bumps with the dirty broom and cuss the moon. (yes, cuss the moon with the insults you know of.)

then the skin bumps go away.

this happened to me, and it was cured the way i mentioned - but, back then i was a kid, and i didn't pay much attention to the meaning of it.

so, there is a little secret i'm giving out - i hope somebody doesn't mind - i may be in trouble for revealing this -- who knows. let's keep in touch.

[mt_gooseberry]

As a few PPs noted, the "cuarentena" is practiced in Mexico.  "Cuarenta" is Spanish for "forty," but the word "cuarentena" sounds just like the English word "quarantine."  Being a hobby linguist, I wonder if the custom of quarantine can be traced at all to the postpartum-rooming-in tradition?  Interesting....I've only skimmed through the posts, but I'll definitely go back and read this thread when I get more time!

On a personal note, my husband has always kind of felt bad that I never got my cuarentena with our first dd.  He was stuck in Mexico, and I was here and had no help.  I ended up tearing through all of the stitches in my perineum due to overexertion that first week and got all infected.  I have never been so miserable as I was those first 40 days trying to be a new mom all by myself.  I wish our society provided for more of these traditional practices that care for new mothers.  I won't get my cuarentena this time either, although my husband is with me, because somebody has to bring home the bacon!  I'm trying to line up help for at least the first week or so, but nobody really wants to take time out of their busy, work-driven lives to lend a hand (if I sound kind of bitter, it's because I am ;)  ).  Here's hoping that every other mother out there gets the time she needs to heal!

[skreader]

According to the various dictionaries and encyclopedias I looked at, it comes from the Italian  for "forty days", but the author relates it to the Bible (Jesus's 40 days in the wilderness)

"...The word derives from the Italian, quaranta dei (forty days) and reminds us that the custom of segregating putatively infected persons and the ships on which they were traveling originated in the maritime empire of Venice in the 14th century. This length of time probably relates to the biblical story of the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness, not to knowledge of the mode of transmission of infection — although the rise of the practice suggests that there was some understanding of the concept of contagion even if not empirical knowledge of infective periods and incubation times of the plagues that were raging in Europe in those days."

     - John M. Last "quarantine"  The Oxford Companion to Medicine. Stephen Lock, John M. Last, and George Dunea. Oxford University Press 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.   22 June 2011  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t185.e416>

"..The first known law of segregation on account of disease was enacted by the Emperor Justinian in AD 542. The earliest definite regulations against the spread of disease were, however, developed by Italian city states under the threat of bubonic plague in the fourteenth century. Venice, the great entrepôt of trade with the east, probably issued regulations as early as 1127, and was the first city to issue a complete quarantine code in 1448. This code provided the model for all subsequent regulations over the next four centuries. Initially these European quarantines were limited to the exclusion of goods and people from stricken localities, but as time went on they were increasingly extended to foreign places as well, especially in sea ports.

By the sixteenth century the practice of quarantine was well established across Europe, and British governments also began to adopt the policy. It was not until the eighteenth century, however, that comprehensive codes of practice were put into place in response to the last outbursts of plague on the European continent — in the Baltic states between 1709 and 1712, and at Marseilles in 1721. These early eighteenth-century regulations were apparently successful at staving off the menace of plague, and were repeatedly revised and renewed over the next hundred years."

     - Anne Hardy "quarantine"  The Oxford Companion to the Body. Ed. Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  22 June 2011  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t128.e789>