The first question most people would ask before I delivered my child is “Who will help you with confinement?” and after the confinement they asked “How was your confinement?” Let me share with you my journey of confinement of 2 child birth with my parents.
Methods
To this modern day, there are many convenient
confinement methods available for new mothers to choose from. From
stay-at-home, hired a confinement lady at home, order take-away confinement
food, stay at the confinement centre, there are many factors to consider about.
For those whose parents or in-laws are available and able to travel to your
place and help, the stay-at-home method is the most comfortable confinement one
can experience. I stay at Labuan, but both of my parents live in Perak and my
in-laws are in Kota Kinabalu. Hired a confinement lady? I doubted if I knew
someone here. Confinement centre? No, there’s none available in Labuan yet. Get
a helper? It’s expensive and it has some process to go through yet my mom
doesn’t encourage me to have one. Order confinement meals? Not sure if it is a
popular option compare to other cities like KL.
I missed my parents and
definitely my mom’s cooking, as well as seeing the only option that I have, I booked
flights for my parents to come before the arrival of my first and second child
as they were willing to help me through the confinement. My dad has just
retired before my delivery, it just make it in time for him to travel to my
place helping mom out with their first grandson. He was in-charge of driving
mom to the market to shop for the freshest veggies and meats, having breakfast
or afternoon tea at kopitiam (it is too boring to just stay at home with me
everyday!), sometimes he helped with the laundry, clean up the house, boil water
for me to drink and to bath and many more. My mom did the 3 meals cooking; my
in-law and hubby did the dishwashing.
Everyone in the house cooperated so well
to make things in order so I can rest and recover with peace of mind.
Confinement at home is the best method I have enjoyed so far, it is the most
economic yet comfortable method I strongly recommend, if our parents were still
fit and willing to help. Otherwise, you have to seek for referral for good
confinement lady, helper or confinement centre. I also have a friend who helped
his wife with the confinement alone when they were in the United States. The
hubby prepared the dishes and did all the house chores by himself while the
wife attended to the new-born. It is important for the new mother not to get
stressed up throughout the recovery period feeling the helplessness or she will
easily develop post-partum depression.
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| My mother, my strength. She is on her granny duty here. |
Practice
A few practices we need to follow according to the
elderly’s advices that are surrounding the idea of not getting ‘wind’ entering
our body and fell sick. The most common one is cannot bath and wash hair. I
understood the practice of not washing hair is to prevent the moist of water
from entering our scalp which leads to headache like what the old people said “masuk
angin”. Traditionally before the hair dryer was invented and in the colder
seasons for places like in China, the women have to avoid shower and wet their
hair.
They need to wrap themselves tight to keep warm as post-partum women were
generally weaker hence to prevent cold. And also because we are physically
inactive that is how confinement (like being kept in warm room – no air-conditioner,
no direct fan) makes us sweat. Even the food and soup added with gingers or
kunyit are also to help to increase metabolite rate to sweat and remove toxic
from the body. However there’s also a saying that we should not sweat too much
during confinement as that will open the pores as we sweat and the wind will
enter body easily. So sweat or not, you make judgement yourself.
When the
practice passed down to our elder generation coming from China, we are still
practicing these but at a hotter climate place in Malaysia, I just cannot accept
that we are so hot, sweat a lot with oily hair but not allowed to bath. So here
we take herbal bath to clean ourselves which is said can remove wind from the
body. While bathing in the warm water, feeling the oily and itchy hair scalp, I
secretly washed and dried it before discovered by my mom. It just made my
following days so light and bright. Of course there are still some other
confinement practices but I object very much on the washing hair-ban. Another
taboo was that we were not allowed to touch tap water fearing the wind in the
water (as it is unboil) will get into our body through fingers or feet. Apart
from that, I am not allowed to bath later than 6pm. I believe, as long as we get ourselves dry, clean
and comfortable throughout the confinement period with enough rest and
nutritious food intake, that is the best confinement for new mother and infant.
Food
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| Ocean learning to eat on his own. Moments like this makes it all worth it! |
Food
Chinese community is very particular on confinement
food. Before I gave birth I have no idea why people care so much about
confinement to the extent that needed to find a confinement lady to help out.
My mom, although she did not have any experience helping in confinement, she
learnt a bit here and there about the essence of confinement from her friends.
My mother gets all the herbs ready to prepare my 30 days confinement meals,
such as dang-gui, red dates, black beans, dang-sen, herbs I don’t know the
names but you can easily asked the shop attendants at any traditional Chinese
medicine hall to pack these confinement herbs for you to boil and drink.
My mom
also got me su-he wan (traditional supplement to relieve flatulence) and wild
chicken wine. I heard the way she described the process of making the chicken
drown in wine and jar filled with herbs made me chill – they said people drink
it to remove wind from our body during confinement but to me this wine sounds
not hygienic and I doubted if it will make me sick. Of course I didn’t take it,
but food that are apparel and appetizing for me I’d definitely enjoy it to the
max. The herbal soup that my mom made for me were just heaven, so nourishing
and nutritious yet milk boosting! Having a healthy and nutritious diet
throughout the recovering period is more important for new mothers. The Chinese
herbs can be obtained cheaply as they are pack raw and in abundance amount.
Similar items could be packed nicely by branded outlets but at a costlier
price. It looks nice and convenient to drink. However, the same amount you may
spend on the nice packaging I could use to buy more herbs and drink at a larger
quantity.
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| When my husband is on daddy's duty. |
Hormone and
Stress
Some are fortunate with their mothers or mother in
law to help with confinement, some hire confinement lady and some stay at the
confinement centre. When settling down to a new motherhood phase, things
changed not only from the physical presence of a newborn, our emotional and
mental changed significantly from the moment we stepped into the delivery room
until we brought a baby out, when the care and attention are all given to the
newborn, we forgot to rest, or maybe, can hardly truly rest.
I can’t recall when was my last time to sleep
through the night since I became a mother. When people said confinement period
is the time for new mother to rest, you must really capture the moment to rest
together with the newborn even though you don’t feel sleep in the daytime but
you’ll surely complaint the need to wake up every 2 to 3 hours just to feed and
pump out the milk from the engorged breasts.
The strange thing at night is no matter how tired
you are, you will still alert to the cries of baby and get up to feed her. I
rarely seen my husband could get up by himself even the baby cries were just
next to him. It is always the mother’s duty to make sure the baby is fed,
asleep safely in her bed. However, to my comfort and little one’s sense of
security, I put my baby next to me so I can direct feed him without needing to
get up, bend my back to carry him up for breastfeeding. Compare to my first
born, my second child has lesser feed at nights, calmer and we have longer
sleep. Recalling the firstborn, our nights have never been easy, frequent
nights up, burped him, carried him and walked around to put him back to sleep
was like a routine for both of us. Perhaps because of co-sleep our bond is
stronger until he could sense my disappearance when I left him sleeping alone!
The problem is, we new mother could rarely have “enough”
sleep just like everyone wishes. Confinement is the time when people come
around to help us to take care of the newborn’s from changing nappies to bath
him, while we are recovering from delivery and adapting to the new motherhood
routine and change of lifestyle. Without my mother’s and in-law’s help,
although my husband could take care of me and baby, but I am sure their
presence have sooth a lot of tension that comes with me, so I can talk to them
to release stress. As my mother is the closest person to me whom knew my temper
so well, I never hide my emotion with her presence. For many advises she and
in-law had asked me to follow and not to do, many times I just ignored and
followed my habit routine. There were times we both lost our tempers when some
of the confinement practices I was disagreed with, although I knew it was for
my own goodness, me as a hormonal imbalance woman couldn’t keep myself sane but
easily triggered by just little small things. Until now I still feel sorry for
the words and action I have done if that have already hurt my mom and in-law.
You know you are balanced when you are not emotionally triggered easily. A
simple question like “do you have enough milk or not?” is really annoying,
whether or not you ask out of care or simple want to tease the mother for not
supplying enough milk, this question is a big no no to mother. If we were lack
of milk, there’ll be no stack of milk storage in the fridge, baby won’t sleep
soundly, peep and poop so frequently. So, observed before you asked any silly
or stressor question.
Confinement is a big time for many new mothers to
recover from childbirth. The elderly says, once we get sick or did not recover
properly at this time it could get worse in the later time. Whether or not it
is true, we will find out when we are at the age. Nonetheless, elderly have
their wisdom and they passed their knowledge or experience to the next generation.
We the younger one could learn from their wisdom too because what they did is
all because they care and love for their children.
Thank you to my mother and mother-in-law for taking
good care of me and my little ones during the post delivery period. Every
childbirth is a new journey for young mother and their presence in indeed a
blessing regardless how demanding or naïve their daughter can be throughout the
entire process. We learnt and grown by directly experiencing the emotions
though.
Written By Kimlee Choy
Mother of two, Health & Counselling Teacher, Founder of Sustainable Urban Living Association Malaysia / FunLabuan.
