In one respect only have the ancient customs relating to suckling children begun to break down; the missionaries have tried to discourage the employment of a wet nurse, probably because her own child is likely to suffer from neglect.
Among the common people it has always been the custom for two girls from the wife's and two from the husband's family to feed and tend the new mother, unless her rank is too lowly to entitle her to the services of more than one. The two grandmothers of the child, if living, also help to tend the mother. But at the tenth day they all leave her to the care of her husband. This custom fits into the waning practice of concubitous marriage, (_q. v._ ante), for if the husband and wife belong to different islands the wife's relations are unable to contribute their services to her support. During the first ten days the mother is confined to a vegetable diet. She is forbidden to eat what the native call _ka ndamu_ (red things, _i.e._ fish, crabs, pork, or broths made therefrom), and is fed upon taro or bread-fruit puddings (_vakalolo_), yams, taro, or spinach. At the end of ten days she goes about her house-work, and if she cannot command the services of her relations to enable her to lay up for the _bongi ndrau_ (hundred days), she resumes all her ordinary outdoor work except sea-fishing, for, as the natives say, "there is _dambe_ in the sea, and if the mother wets her leg above the calf in salt water, her milk will be spoiled."
[Illustration: Women Fishing with the Seine.]
It is perhaps owing to their hard work and low diet that Fijian mothers so often suffer from a deficiency of breast milk, and that so many children die from _matha na mena suthu_ (drying up of the milk) and _londo i suthu_ (privation of milk), _i.e._ from the death, absence, or neglect of the mother. When the mother's milk fails her breasts are oiled and steamed and painted with turmeric, and are kept warm by bandages of bark-cloth, while she eats spinach, _mba vakoro_ (a mixture of spinach with shell-fish), and drinks fish soup and spinach water. Kava, which was absolutely forbidden to women of the last generation, is now drunk by both pregnant and nursing women under the belief that it induces easy labour and promotes a flow of milk when all other means fail. But if the flow of milk is re-established, the more nutritious diet is at once discontinued, for quantity is all that is aimed at.