 Okay. Hi everyone. Hi everyone. I'm Kathy, a fam. I normally talk about tech and ethics, but today I'm going to tell you about the belief that pineapples will cause incontinence forever, post-parm traditions, and maternal health around the world. Here are some things Vietnamese anties will say when you give birth. Don't eat pineapple because it's too cold. No lemonade because it's too sour. And both will give you incontinence forever. Forget seafood because it'll make you itchy and no sushi or crab or shrimp. No tank tops. Keep your body warm. Cover your arms. Don't walk upstairs. And no bathing or washing your hair for one full month. Put on socks at all time. Remember to keep warm. Drink some black chicken soup and some hot ginger. These are some of the things my Vietnamese mom and aunties would say to me after I gave birth to my daughter. And for any woman who walks the streets of Little Saigon in Orange County or San Jose with a baby, you can be certain that if you're walking too fast, if you're going upstairs, if you're not wearing socks, if you're wearing a sleeveless shirt, a Vietnamese stranger will stop you and tell you how to live your life. Most of us here in the United States will have these kinds of reactions. Many of us Westernized immigrant children, we say we think it's crazy, we know better, we yawn and cringe and are frustrated when we we think about this, but maybe they're on to something. So let's explore this more. There's something called the sitting month. It exists in Vietnam and China and many other places. It's one month of rest, learning to nurse, no household chores, people coming to help, no washing your hair and no eating cold foods, but the intent is to focus on rest and recovery. In Japan, there's a term that means quiet and peace and pampering. The new mom rests and bonds with her baby. Japanese women have less uterine diseases than American women and many in the medical community believe it's because of the time to recover. In Latin cultures, there's like quarantine, 40 days. Female relatives handle day-to-day chores, cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, and the new mom just spawns and takes care of the baby. This was my mom and my four week old daughter. My mom died just one week after this photo and it was taken a month after she, I gave birth and I really think she hung around so she can really fulfill her duties as a mom to me to take care of me for one month. So in the United States, we focus so much on the prenatal. The baby showers, the celebration of the baby, everybody wants to hold the baby. We don't focus on what happens to the mom once the baby is out. This leaves many women in danger. The infant mortality rate in the U.S. is so high. Let's look at another culture, the Himba tribe, where the breastfeeding rate is really high. Why? It's the grandmothers. Women stay with their moms and grandmothers for months after birth for support, recovery, guidance, care. In parts of China, new moms go to these luxurious recovery centers with 24-hour supervision, trained nurses, nutritionists, doctors, etc. And someone's always ensuring that all the rules are followed at all time. And by contrast, in the United States, we have the shortest hospital stays. Women are sent home with very little support, very little training. In other countries, they learn to breastfeed and exercises for recovery. And the nurses check in on you to make sure you're okay. The lack of postpartum care is one of the factors that leads to the rising maternal mortality rate here in the United States. We have an average of 26 deaths per 100,000 live births at seven times higher than Finland, five times higher than Australia, and three times higher than the UK. Black women here in the U.S. have a significantly worse risk. Their rates are doubled at 44 deaths per 100,000 live births. Black expectant mothers in the United States die at about the same rate as women in countries with much less developed medical systems. Every year in the United States, 900 women die from pregnancy or childbirth related causes and about 65,000 women nearly die. That's the worst record in the developed world. So in addition to the narrative of those staggering figures, the United States is the only country of our peers to have zero paid parental leave. We do not value or understand the need for women to recover after giving birth. This contributes to our problems of maternal deaths here in the United States. You know, so we don't have to follow all these rules and traditions and beliefs. Go ahead, eat the pineapple, bathe, wear tank tops, but we can learn a thing or two from these cultures that value recovery, care, and the lives of women. Maybe just one month. One month of support and care can turn around the rate of dying women. So we all can help. If you're a policy person, change the law of parental leave. If you're in health care, change hospital protocol. And for the rest of us, be supportive coworkers, build better companies, build better cultures, be part of the village that helps really bring life into the world and care for the woman that makes that possible.