Time to be born. The midwife in the Ukrainian cultural tradition

The book by ethnologist Olena Boriak is dedicated to a unique figure in the history of Ukrainian traditional culture - the village midwife. The midwife, or midwife, not only helped to give birth and take care of the woman and child, but also foretold the fate of newborns and received a name for the baby from the priest. This tradition was preserved in Ukrainian villages until recently.
The book collects notes from the ethnographic field about the history of everyday life, in which ritual actions, signs, prayers, spells and prohibitions still influenced the world around them. The vivid stories of women about their own experience of giving birth, passed down from grandmothers and great-grandmothers, lift the veil over the incomprehensible act of starting a new life.
Olena Boriak is an ethnologist, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the State Scientific Center for the Protection of Cultural Heritage from Technogenic Disasters.