Mayans were crazy! (birth rituals)

Since tomorrow starts the year when the world is going to end and all, I wanted to learn a bit more about what those nutty people (Mayans) believed in and other rituals, such as birth.

To begin with, when a woman was approaching her final weeks till delivery, there was a lot of freaking prayer.

The midwife would pray when she woke up, bathed, brushed her teeth (if there were tooth brushes back then), pooped, ate, entered the pregnant woman's house and then in every corner of the pregnant woman's room.

I can only imagine the laboring Mayan woman rolling her eyes and thinking, "Enough with the praying already! There is a head coming through my crotch!"

Now, here is the part that really made an impression on me (and I even had to go outside, where stepson helped his dad on the yard to share the new found news): Mayans believed that the spirit of the first born sort of sipped the energy out of the newborn.

To prevent that, crazy praying Mayan midwife would trap a live chicken inside a cloth and beat the crap out of the baby's oldest brother with it until the chicken died. Then she would make the battered kid eat the whole damn thing.

"Aren't you glad you live in 2012 America, stepson?" I asked him, "Even though according to Mayans the world will be over soon?"

Stepson responded by asking if I could make pizza because he is hungry.

Anywho, after all the chicken and first born beating and the safe arrival of the new baby, the new mother would have her hair washed (I would sign up for that) and have her house cleaned (I'd sign up for that too).

So here is what I am thinking right now: if the world is really ending this year and the Mayans were right, I have to go get myself a live chicken.