Everybody Loves... Babies: A Documentary

Today while the kids were napping I decided to watch the documentary called "Babies". I've heard of it before, I think I saw an ad or a preview somewhere and it caught my eye. Netflix happened to have it, so I gave it a go. What an interesting documentary! There was no narration, no explanation, just video clips cut together to tell a story. A small amount of appropriate music was used, but it was mainly just natural sound.

The documentary followed four different babies, Ponijao from Opuwo, Namibia; Mari, from Tokyo, Japan;  Bayar, from Bayanchandmani, Mongolia; and Hattie, from San Francisco, California. Four babies, four lives that are totally different yet completely the same.

The film starts out with the pregnant mothers, all with different facilities for the birth, all with different rituals and traditions. Then we see the newborn baby and what happens after they are born. I'll admit, my jaw dropped when the Mongolian mother hopped on the back of her husband's motorcycle, newborn babe in arms to go home. True, they were only going across fields, but the idea of an unrestrained infant goes against my American upbringing. Here, as shown, babies are secured in a 5-point harness system and placed in an enclosed vehicle.

Another thing that made my eyes go wide, was how the Namibia women dealt with poop. The Namibia mother was nursing her infant when he had a bowel movement. Diapers don't exist there, so what did she do? She wiped his bottom (and the contents thereof) onto her knee. Baby poop, on the knee. Then, she picked up a corn husk from the ground and scraped the feces off. That was it. My husband (a germ-a-phobe) would have had a conniption! But it's simply how it's done there.

Bathing was another area that differed. The Mongolian child was bathed from a metal pan of water, the Tokyo and American children were bathed in bathtubs and showers. But the Namibia child was the most interesting. His mother used her teeth to pull the bugs and grime off of him, then spit it out on the ground. When the Mongolian child was an infant, the mother squirted her breast milk on his face to wash it. Different, but fascinating. In the end, all the mothers were cleaning their child.

I also loved the scene where there was a rooster on the bed where the Bayar was lying. It was just... amusing and strange to see an infant gazing up at this gigantic bird in his bed.

All in all, the film was cute, educational, and beautiful. It really was a great reminder that though we're all different, we're all essentially the same. We have the same needs, the same desires. But we have different ways of sating those needs and desires. And also, just because someone does something differently than you, doesn't mean it's wrong.

To learn more, or to watch the trailer of Everybody Loves... Babies, click here- http://www.focusfeatures.com/babies/