There are many folk signs associated with the birth of a child. One of these signs requires protecting the mother and the newborn from strangers, allowing only close relatives to communicate with them, because of the danger of the evil eye, damage and disease. Sometimes the young mothers themselves, with difficulty calming the baby, who does not want to fall asleep after the visit of numerous relatives, doubt whether the prohibitions and restrictions that have survived the centuries are so irrational.
Why shouldn't the newborn be shown?
The prohibition to show newborns to anyone except the closest relatives goes back to ancient times. According to Christian canons, the child was not taken out of the house and was not shown to strangers until the sacrament of baptism, which was usually performed on the fortieth day after birth. It was believed that after baptism the child would be protected from evil by a guardian angel, and before that, both evil spirits and strangers could harm the baby.
The pre-Christian tradition also required the protection of newborns from outsiders for a sufficiently long time after birth. Childbirth was the beginning of the child's transition from the other world to the world of the living, and it took time to complete this transition - on average, this period lasted all the same 40 days.
Superstitions that have survived to this day claim that a newborn child can easily be jinxed even by people who do not wish him harm - for this they only need to praise the newborn or even just look at him.
Health of the newborn and others
The requirement to limit the child's contacts with strangers has a specific reason, far from religion and magic. The immunity of the newborn is insufficiently developed - the baby's body does not yet produce its own antibodies that can fight infections, they come to him only from mother's milk. Therefore, babies are vulnerable to any infection and easily become infected even with short-term contact with sick people or during their stay in crowded places. Doctors recommend limiting contacts at least during the first month of a child's life, and in the cold season, when epidemics of viral diseases occur most often, try to avoid appearing with the baby in public places.
Even if a relative or friend assures that he is completely healthy, his words may not correspond to the truth. The incubation period of infectious diseases is asymptomatic, but sometimes the causative agent of the disease can already be released into the external environment, which means that a person who is sick, but does not yet know about it, can be contagious to others. The so-called childhood infections are especially dangerous for babies - some of them (for example, chickenpox) in newborns are very difficult. Therefore, you should not, soon after birth, show the baby to cousins and sisters or friends' children.
In addition, babies do not tolerate the hustle and bustle and noise that reigns around them. It is this, and not the mythical "evil eye," that explains the anxiety, crying, difficulty falling asleep, arising in babies after a visit from relatives and friends of the family.
