The Household COO

After all the debates on this topic, I’m finally going to have a confinement lady. I figure that this is one of those things where it is just easier to accept and endure it than to have to listen to the constant nagging that I don’t know how to take care of myself postnatally.

On the request of my MIL, I borrowed the confinement cookbook that my aunt used when she nursed my cousin in Australia after the delivery of the baby. After flicking through the book, I have noticed a discernible lack of beef dishes and I’m wondering if that has something to do with religious connotations of beef or a confinement belief that beef is bad for new mothers. I did see one or two beef dishes in another confinement cookbook while browsing through MPH so perhaps beef has been omitted from this particularly cookbook for religious reasons.

Some of the dishes look okay, but I have serious reservations over the ones containing pig spareparts (liver, kidneys, trotters, tripe and offals) and fish maw. The book also encourages the consumption of ginger, to which my MIL has agreed that I don’t have to eat it as long as I allowed my food to be cooked with it.

The cook book also contains a short but interesting segment about the purpose of the confinement period. After pregnancy, the mother’s uterus has expanded from the size of a pear to the size of a large winter melon. The main function of the confinement period, therefore, is to nurture the new mother’s body back to its prenatal form. The belief is that if the mother does not take care during this time, she will be predisposing herself to ailments that will surface later on in life.

Historically, it has always been the duty of the MIL to take care of the new mother. Part of the reason MILs were keen for their DILs to recover quickly was so that they could conceive again and possibly add another name to the ancestral line. There is also a traditional belief that new mothers were not allowed to come into contact with their own parents because of the “stale blood” and “evil wind” inside their bodies which would bring bad luck to her family. Funny, if that were the case, then wouldn’t she also be bad luck to her in laws?

In some instances, families will employ a “pui-yuet” (meaning companion for a month) or confinement lady to look after the new mother and baby. Pui-yuets are usually middle-aged women who have a great deal of knowledge on postnatal matters through her own experiences.

Some of the strict confinement rules were briefly listed by the author based on her own confinement experience. She wasn’t allowed to wash her hair during the confinement period and she could only mop her body on certain days. She was not allowed to read or watch television because it would strain her eyes. The strict diet was enforced to help her remove the “stale blood” and “wind” from her system. She had to endure body binding and was made to rest as and when the pui-yuet commanded. She and her husband were also banned from having sex for 100 days after birth.

The author saw the merits of having a confinement lady because she was able to slip back into her pre-pregnancy clothes immediately after the confinement period. After glancing through the sample menu of what she was made to eat during her confinement period, I’m not particularly surprised. I think I would barely have been able to stomach half of what she was made to eat!

Okay, I know I’m being nasty and cynical but I admit, I am a sceptic when someone talks to me of “stale blood” and “wind”. I can already feel my eyes rolling to the back of my head and a sigh catching in my throat. I’m disinclined to believe things such as bathing a baby or touching water during the confinement period causing rheumatism later on in life. If there are people who believe this, it is their choice. I do not dictate what you should believe in. All I ask is that you do not dictate what I believe in.

Since this is one of those arguments one can never win, I shall employ a tactic recommended by Big Big Planet called TINROWA. Even though that tactic was recommended for internet arguments, I think it applies equally well for such instances.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 2:26 am and is filed under Confinement, beliefs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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