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not have good diet in pregnancy and had suffered from some worries. She strongly endorsed the doctor’s assessment
and narrated how worried she used to be in pregnancy and how her husband used to beat her.
The baby was now one and half year old but he still suffered from eye problem. Moreover, Zaibi said that the baby does
not speak and remains inactive most of the time and is not growing in size like a normal baby. She thought all this was a
continuation of the previous events.
During this one and half year, the baby was taken to a doctor only once. The doctor told that there was some affect on
baby’s brain and that his brain was small in size. The doctor told Zaibi and her family that though the baby was growing
physically but his brain remained small. Zaibi reported this in a distress:
“Though he is one and half year old but looks like a 5-6 month old baby, his physique and brain are small. He still suffers
from eye problems as his eyes are often affected and discharge pus, then I apply polyfax and he recovers for some time and
then again the eyes are affected”.
Case Study 8 (Lakki Marwat): Gender Difference in Care
This case study 2 sheds light on the gender factor in taking care of the newborns, level of
participation of mothers in decision making for seeking care for neonates, and beliefs on
maulvis for dam darood for healing.
A mother in Landiwah village stated that her daughter did not cry for three days after birth, which was very unusual,
as normally the newborn’s cry immediately. The mother said that since it was a daughter, nobody in the family paid any
attention to the absence of crying and if it were a boy, things would have been different. She clarified that for a mother,
sons and daughters are equal as they give birth to them with equal difficulty. Providing information about her pregnancy,
she informed that because of poverty she could not make any changes in diet and work during this pregnancy. She
added that, though it was her third daughter, she did not suffer from any problem during pregnancy except that she used
to sleep a lot.
The mother said that people of the area generally say that if a baby does not cry that means s/he is asleep. Her daughter
was born at 11:00 at night; the dai gave bath to newborn immediately and laid her with the mother. The mother did not
breastfeed her till morning as she thought that the baby was asleep. According to the mother, the next morning baby
was otherwise active and was moving her eyes but she did not cry. She waited for three days but after that she started
to have some concern about it.
“It seemed very strange because a baby should cry some time or the other but three days passed and my daughter did not
cry even once. If it were a boy, somebody in the family would have given importance to the matter. Since I am a mother I felt
concerned”.
The mother then shared her concern with her mother-in-law who was of the opinion that there was nothing
worrisome and that things will get better by themselves. After that, the mother told the baby’s father about the
situation. The father also thought that it was not a big issue. He, however, called a maulvi sahib at home for dam.
According to the mother, as soon as the maulvi gave dam to the baby, she started to cry and she cried a lot. The mother
and the other family members believe that God had shown them a miracle of the powers of Quran.
The researcher also interviewed the mother-in-law and she confirmed that the baby had not cried for three days
otherwise she was normal and would move and shake and suckle. The mother-in-law, like the mother and other family
members also believed that it was a miracle of God.
2. Researcher’s Note: We faced many difficulties in collecting case study material in this district. We asked respondents about case study material in every union council but
the participants would tell us that babies have small problems and then they recover. They said that they did not know any baby who had got severely ill during neonatal
period. Finally we decided to record following as case study.
82 l Formative Research on Neonatal Sepsis, Low Birth Weight AND Birth Asphyxia