Midwives and Baptisms

I have been re-exploring the Catholic traditions that were incorporated into my childhood. I had no idea that anyone other than a Catholic priest could baptise. My partner is studying to be a UU minister and yes, he could if necessary perform a baptism. Reading this essay below brought this concept to a new level. As a midwife, I would have had that sacred of a role in the Ukraine? Wow.

When the midwife completed this list of duties aimed at ensuring the medical and
psychological needs of the infant and the young mother, her role as an active member of the birth process was over. Still, her involvement in the life of the child and the mother continued and an examination of her functions in the postnatal period can help elucidate her ritual significance and reveal some of the mythological ideas and folk beliefs underlying her ritual role.

The midwife's first actions after the birth, such as using old, second-hand clothes for
swaddling, for example, were steps in the process of adapting the newborn and helping him or her fit into the human world. We may add to the list of her activities the —naming“ ceremony, through which the new child becomes a separate person and a member of a social group. In the whole of the area on the right bank of the Dnieper the custom of —name receiving“ (otrymaty im'ia) was well known. It was the midwife who visited the priest immediately after the delivery for precisely this purpose. An interesting practice of exchanging or selling infants‘ names is attested. The priest received a compulsory gift (usually a chicken together with some
bread and millet), and the midwife in return —received“ the name, which was registered officially later at the baptism ceremony. It is well worth noting that the midwife was entitled to baptize the infant in the first minutes of life if the child‘s life was in danger. This procedure was called —baptizing with water“ (khrestyty z vody). In such cases the midwife gave the infant its name herself, usually Eve for a girl and Adam for a boy (though sometimes the names would be Ivan and Maria). The church would then recognize the procedure as a true baptism, so that the infant would not die unbaptized.


Boriak, O. (2002). The Anthropology of Birth in Russia and Ukraine:
The Midwife in Traditional Ukrainian Culture: Ritual, Folklore
and Mythology. The Journal of the Slavic and East European
Folklore Association, 7(2).