There’s an Asian tradition of a 30 day confinement period for the mother postpartum. The thinking behind it is to allow the mother to rest and heal following the strenuous labour process as your body ‘opens up’ during labour which leaves you quite vulnerable. Typically, it involves you staying indoors for a full month to rest. You’re meant to eat certain foods to help boost breastmilk production and help you heal. Traditionally, you’re not meant to shower and instead, to bathe in ginger water. In China, there are places you can go to practice confinement or you can hire people to come to your house and cook for you during this time.

For me, I was quite blasé about doing confinement. Given our situation at the time, we would be living with my family after Bub was born so my parents and I discussed it and the agreement was that I would try confinement, but not follow it too strictly.

Rather than go into too much detail, I’ll break down my confinement experience into the ‘Positives’, ‘Not so great’ and as per usual ‘Lessons learned’.

Positives

• I found that I was exhausted for the first month after giving birth so staying indoors was exactly what I needed to rest and recover
• A lot of wholesome food was prepared – my favourites was fish soup and pork trotters cooked with black sweet vinegar. Felt so nice to eat well and know that I was nourishing my body
• Breast milk is mostly water so having a lot of soup definitely helped with being able to feed Bub
• You’re meant to eat a lot of ginger to help ‘warm’ the body and heal – I love ginger so this was a great bonus
• Was so thankful to not have to cook myself – I didn’t have the energy nor motivation to make ‘confinement’ meals if it was just me at home

Not so great

• I kept being told not to touch cold water – after giving birth, your body opens up and is vulnerable to being ‘cold’ so you shouldn’t expose yourself to a lot of ‘cold’ things
• I was reminded to always dress warm– if I didn’t wear something warm enough, there was the warning that I might get backaches or headaches later on which wouldn’t be fixed until the next confinement period
• Not going out apart from a doctor’s appointment made me go a little cuckoo towards the end – I started counting down the days until I could be ‘set free’
• As my body started ramping up breast milk production, I became ravenous and started eating A LOT. It did not help my postpartum body with the excessive eating and sitting at home

Lessons learned

• I definitely agree with the principle behind confinement: giving your body time to heal and rejuvenate after giving birth. Having lots of nutritious soup and a variety of ‘real’ foods was great for recovery and breast milk production
• If I ever have another baby, I will do confinement my way: resting at home and having nutritious food, but going out for gentle walks and fresh air when I feel strong enough