Confinement Story Ep1 My BF friendly CL

MY BF Friendly Confinement LADY

Soon as I know I am pregnant, I have started looking for “MY” confinement lady. Phobia of tradition confinement that I faced last round, I decided to hunt for a confinement lady that fit “MY Style”. She have to be a breastfeeding friendly and knowledgeable person and DO NOT start nagging me on all the pantang-ish things to do and not to do.

Finally I found “HER” :)

During my first confinement, I am not allowed to shower (Chinese believe that if you come in touch with water during the this period, you will have Rheumatism in future), stand or sit up for long (saying that it will weaken our bone or “expand” it causing a bigger hips) and only certain foods are allowed.

With my confinement lady help, she help me to overcome all the totally absolutely rubbish hardship.

Food.

She allowed me to take balanced diet. Which means, vegetables and fruits allowed on my plate (Yes, it is awesome!). I ate vegetables and fruits – which all these are the forbidden food as what mentioned by my first confinement lady. Well, in fact, my confinement lady admit that it is true that some of the vegetables are not good as they are too “cooling” for postpartum. However, there are certain type of vegetable and fruits that I can eat.

1. Broccoli (White and Green)
2. Spinach (Green and Red)
3. Carrot
4. Capsicum
5. Long bean
6. Mushroom (All types)

Also there is only one type of fruit allowed.

1. Apple

My confinement aunty also make some delicious milk boosting dessert for me.

1. Red bea (Only red!)
2. Pumpkin soup
3. Fungus lotus soup
4. Papaya fungus soup

 Baby Routine & Breast feeding.

A good well knowledge confinement lady does an awesome job not only on food but also help me a lot on my breastfeeding journey. Get it right on the first time, I would say you have conquer a successful breastfeeding journey – at least half of it.

How she do it?

She help me make a good routine for my baby. From my first and third week only direct latch – no pumping. As I am still weak due to postpartum, she encourage co sleep and dream feed baby so that I can rest while feeding. Fourth week is the week that I pump and feed via bottle at night. From then on, my baby will sleep with her. She advise this routine because my baby will sleep in a separate room when I goes back to work. Therefore, she help me train my baby in this way.

At first, my baby will scream out of her lung when bottle feed but things get better as days goes by. Trust me :)

She taught me how to bottle feed.

• Ask your partner / baby caretaker feed for you so that you can have some rest time, also to train your baby to accept soothing from others
• Change teat and bottles that your baby prefer – I used Avent and my baby is fine with it
• Feed small portion but more frequently
• When feeding via bottle make sure the flow is not too fast – can try medela calma teat for start

Postpartum daily routine.

Shower is allowed but with condition.

1. Washing hair only allowed on 10th day. Then after every 3 days.
2. Shower can be done every alternate day.
3. Only shower with herbs.
4. Hair must be dry up immediately.

Her rationing with shower is this. Olden day people do not shower because the weather is cold in China. They do not sweat. Since we are staying in Malaysia, despite we are Chinese shouldn’t we look at how the Malay do their confinement? I actually learned a lot from her.

Technically, for the first 6 weeks, I have been direct latching and pumping non stop. So other than makan, minum, tidur urut and feeding, I does nothing else.

You can read more about my post natal care – urut review here.

My Verdict?

Pro: as mentioned above.

Con: She do not help out with house work nor take care of my elder (she said so when I interview her).

I personally like her. For sure, I will engage her for my #3 child, if I have one.



Love, Hot MaMa

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