The Pregnant Woman As A Warrior

I found this interesting little tidbit about the role of pregnant women in Aztec culture (emphasis mine):

The setting western sun would then be greeted by female warriors, which were the souls of those women who died in childbirth. In Aztec thought, the pregnant woman was like a warrior who symbolically captured her child for the Aztec state in the painful and bloody battle of birth. Considered as female aspects of defeated heroic warriors, women dying in childbirth became fierce goddesses who carried the setting sun into the netherworld realm of Mictlan.

At first glance, that sounds a hell of a lot better than the all-too-frequent Western perception of pregnant women as emotional harpies, doesn't it? However, another source (again, emphasis mine) points out that the only reason pregnant women were considered important was because of the potential war fodder that they carried:

Women were expected to be virginal at marriage, and, according to Clendinnen, and they were given to cement alliances. They could have no public role and only men could speak on high public occasions. In sum, the pregnant young woman was a revered possessor of a valuable commodity: another warrior to die the "Flowery Death" or a girl child to remain (again, in the words pronounced over her at birth) to "provide water, to grind maize, to drudge..."

I managed to find a preview of Aztecs: An Interpretation on Google that allows you to read a significant chunk of the chapter on the role of Aztec mothers. (Start on page 174 of the preview). It's a fascinating read that includes an idea of what an Aztec birthing was like; the kinds of prayers and songs that were sung over pregnant women and their new babies; and neat information about the culture in general, including the fact that the Aztecs thought that the mingling of bodily fluids was necessary for infant growth even after birth - meaning that the parents were obligated to have sex for months after a birth or else they feared that the child would not grow to be a whole person.

Despite the fact that I've never had any personal interest in Aztec culture specifically, I'm almost certainly going to buy this book. There apparently is much more to the story about pregnant warriors than either my first or second source would have me believe.