[Pregnancy, delivery and customs: transcultural approach in obstetrics].

Pregnancy and delivery are at the heart of all cultures and ethnic groups, as they assure the continuity of any community. Over the millennia, each society has elaborated a combination of prescriptions, proscriptions and protective rites for future mothers and babies, based on their observations of nature in combination with their religious and mythic convictions. Common to the majority are the vulnerability of the mother-to-be to spirits, and the crucial and symbolic importance of the placenta and the umbilical cord. Delivery in hospital, in spite of its reassurance of greater security, may be an unpleasant experience (to both mother and family) because of the impossibility of respecting traditions. Medical personnel in charge of such culturally uprooted patients should, with the help of cultural mediators, become familiar with a minimum of customs and taboos (of the patient's community) and win the patient's confidence through a respectful approach and an empathetic listening in order to adapt their necessary practices of hygiene and security.