The birth customs of Punjab are elaborate and are still largely observed: the giving of gur or sweets, the songs, the visit of the maternal family with clothes and gifts, and the naming at the gurdwara or by the family priest.
The mother is fed panjeeri and other preparations for weeks afterward, and stays with her own family for a period after the birth, which is one of the few periods in a Punjabi woman's married life that she spends away from her husband's household.
Lohri is traditionally celebrated for a newborn son and the asymmetry of that is now argued about openly, with a number of families holding Lohri for daughters deliberately.
The dai, the village midwife, delivered almost all Punjabi children until the second half of the twentieth century and has been displaced by the clinic, which has cut maternal and infant mortality sharply and has removed a woman from the village who knew everything about every household.
Punjab's institutional delivery rate is now high and its child sex ratio is among the worst in India, which is the summary of what modern medicine and old preferences have done together.
The naming is done at the gurdwara from the hukamnama, taking the first letter of the hymn that comes up, and the family chooses a name beginning with it.
Gur ka Langar, sweets distributed, and the lohri for a son born in the year were the public markers, and the difference in how a son and a daughter were marked is the whole problem in one custom.
The forty days after a birth were a period of rest and of specific foods, panjiri and gond ke laddu, prepared by the mother's family and sent to her.