Friday, May 31, 2013

On Confinement

Hi folks!

Today marks the 16th day of confinement, or rather post-delivery for me.

For the Chinese, we believed that confinement is the time we must really take good care to nourish our body. I feel it's a gift from God to women. For if we really take good care, we could be stronger/healthier than before, vice versa.

Guess which is why, Chinese would either engage a confinement lady,CL(way before delivery as they are pretty hard to book especially the good ones! I booked mine when I was 4mths pregnant!), check in to a confinement centre(especially a trend in places like China, Taiwan and S'pore where the confinement centre are superb like hotel!) or simply cared for by mother-in-law or own mom.

My first confinement was done by my
Mother-in-law who basically helped me with the bathing of the baby, cooking confinement meals(will blog about this later), washing clothes and preparing confinement bath water for me..basically anything which involve touching water and carrying heavy stuff. Other than that, caring for baby, changing diapers etc were done by me as she is quite busy caring forum nephew and other household chores then. As a result, I bend quite a lot then when changing diapers etc, and being new mom, didn't rest much then..the backache lasted till I was pregnant with my second child. It was quite bad that I couldn't even kneel down for prayers.

During my second confinement, I engaged a confinement lady(the fees was between RM2500-2800) 5-6 years ago for one month care. They will cook, do basic housework, care for the baby-even night time as most will stay at our home during the entire one month. As I was breastfeeding and didn't really needed night time care and the CL stays nearby and glad to work only daytime(till around 4-5pm after she cooked dinner), I had a discounted rate then on mutual agreement. I managed to rest more, lie down a lot; she took care of all the diaper changing(yes! This part here can really strained your back so invest in a good changing station/pad!).

Third time round, I got the same CL to help(as she really helped me a lot and I managed to recover from my back pain which haunts me for 2-3 yrs after my first delivery). She requested to stay overnite and of course a the full rate. After the dragon year hike in prices(reaching min RM3800 last year) when many Chinese rush to get a dragon baby thus CLs were in High demand(and highly paid) then, and the price doesn't go down this year ...phew..as I saved by delivering at govt. hospital, I channel the fund to get a good CL care.

Wish to know what is the different in having a CL around during night time as well and what are the things a CL could do to ease my confinement period? Will share in next few posts ya..till then(typing via phone lying down in bed :D)

Cheers and have a good weekend folks!

Sent from my iPhone

1 comment:

Eray Majid said...

i've heard chinese style of confinement is quite strict. until you cannot take a bath. is it true?

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