An African birthing chair is a wooden seat with a sloped back and angled seat.
Birthing Chair
Original Purpose and Modern Uses
Its original purpose was to help women maintain the proper position to deliver a baby, however many people use them for seating or decoration.
On 1stDibs, shop a range of birthing chairs.
Traditional African birthing chairs consist of two interlocking wooden planks carefully carved.
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A birthing chair, also known as a birth chair, is a device that is shaped to assist a woman in the physiological upright posture during childbirth.
It is intended to provide balance and support.
Historical Context
The use of birthing chairs or similar devices has been seen around the globe, not isolated to a particular region.
Women giving birth in the upright position have been depicted in Asian, African, Pacific Islander, and Native American art.
The birthing chair can be traced to Egypt in the year 1450 B.C.E.
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Pictured on the walls of The Birth House at Luxor, Egypt, is an Egyptian queen giving birth on a stool.
It can also be traced to Greece in 200 B.C as it is featured on an ancient Grecian sculpted votive.
Celtic items from 100 B.C.E in Britain also depict women sitting in the same upright position as if in a birthing chair.
The first depiction in a woodcut from the 16th century shows a woman sitting on a stool and surrounded by other women.
The three legged birth stool, sometimes called a groaning stool, was designed to be carried disassembled, and sits low to the ground.
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Ancient Egyptian birthing scene
Design and Functionality
The early birthing chairs varied between having three or four legs, though three legged birthing chairs are most commonly seen.
Both styles support the bottom of the women in labor and often have a slender, sloped back for comfort and to allow birthing assistants, who are positioned behind the mother in labor, to massage or support her.
Often the arms of the chair have hand holds or arm rests for the mother to grip, providing extra leverage.
The position of the birthing chair allows muscles (including vaginal and abdominal as well as those in the back, stomach, legs, and arms) used in childbirth to work to efficiency.
Jomo Tariku, an Ethiopian American designer, draws inspiration from various African cultures to create contemporary African furniture.
His latest design, The Birth Chair II, is inspired by African birthing chairs and uses a single bent piece of wood with clean lines for the seat and a sliding back rest with artistic carvings.
The modular backrest can be switched out and hung on the wall for decoration.
This interchangeable functionality allows for creativity in decorating a room of one's choice.
Unlike the commonly found birthing chairs where the seat section goes through a slot in the backrest, Jomo reversed how the backrest connects with the seat.
This feature also introduces for the very first time a modular chair with an easily swappable backrest that can be switched either by flipping it or by inserting an alternate backrest with a new design.
The spare design can also be inserted in a floor stand with light or be hanged on a wall as a decorative element serving a dual purpose.
Resurgence in Modern Medicine
Birthing chairs fell out of use after physicians began using the flat bed for women to lie on during delivery.
As of the 1980s the birthing chair has been making a comeback in the modern medicine of childbirth.
Some expecting mothers have reverted to the birthing chair for its upright position because it allows gravity to assist in the expulsion of the baby, and a position ''upright but more or less immobile".
Studies have shown that the birthing chair speeds up the time of delivery and increases comfort for expecting mothers.
Modern Birthing Chairs and Stools
A modern birthing chair/stool can be made of many different materials including PVC inflatables such as the CUB support, plastic such as the Kaya stool and padded wooden stools.
More recently birthing chairs/stools have been made to accommodate several upright positions such as squatting, all fours, kneeling and sitting, and are used as supports not necessarily as chairs or stools.
Even in a single environment, birth furniture (and birthing positions) can vary dramatically, from the supine position a birthing bed facilitates to the more active, interchangeable, and spontaneous positions that equipment like yoga balls and peanuts, slings, bars, stools, pools, and chairs make possible.
Various birthing positions
Cultural Traditions and Ceremonies
There are fewer ceremonies and traditions surrounding pregnancy amongst Christian Africans, but these remain prevalent in many African tribes, including the Samburu of Kenya.
Just like the Maasai, the Samburu are a semi-nomadic people, only they remain very traditional and still follow the old customs, unlike the Maasai.
As the birthing time nears, the women return to the homes of their mothers or grandmothers and remain there until the child is of walking age.
With the birth of a baby the woman becomes a boofeydo or ‘someone who has made an error,’ and she cannot see or speak with her husband, nor can the husband show any interest in her or the baby.
After two to three years, the woman is able to visit her husband but not live with him.
In the Baganda group of people of Uganda there is a tradition of making banana leaf waistbands for the expectant mother, just before she was about to give birth.
These would come from both the male and female banana plantations, in readiness for either sex of baby.
Umtata tribes (in the south-eastern cape of Africa) maintain several traditions after the birth.
The afterbirth is used to ‘cleanse’ the baby and is similar to ceremonies performed by several other African tribes.
The umbilical cord is cut back to a length of 7-10 cm using a strip of dry grass.
One hour later, the cord is again cut, this time to a length of 5cm.
With the Bamiléké people of Cameroon, an important event after the birth of a child is to bury its umbilical cord under the roots of a tree.
The Bamiléké have very close ties to the lands of their ancestors and to nature.
One of our Akan respondents, originally from what is now the Ivory Coast, told us about the tradition amongst new mothers of using the lovely smell and skin enhancing properties of shea butter to show that they are doing well and are in good health after the birth.
Shea butter has been known for centuries as ‘women's gold’ in Africa, as it is a product which has been primarily made by women for women.
