Well, here's my story of my very sad confinement..
After giving birth, every lady will have to stay confine at home for 1 month. We, Chinese called this period of time, 做月. Basically during this period of time, mummies who just gave birth are consider very weak and they aren't supposed to go out have to be "confine" at home for their postnatal recovery.
Many preggie will start to look for a good confinement nanny when they have past their 1st trimester. The very clever me, didn't bothered to look for one, simply because my mother in law has agreed to help me with my confinement. Which means that I've to look after baby at night, which I'm pretty fine with that arrangement cause I have to learn to look after anyway.
Along the way, we employed a Myanmar maid to help with the household chores as my mother in law got pretty occupied with her own newly setup business. Things are fine when we received our maid and both of them got along pretty well.
But somehow, one fine day, things changed. My mother in law got so pissed off with the maid that she started to tell us that she isn't very good, eg, lazy, crafty, instructions given to her and things are not done and such. My hub and I didn't really believe caused when we instruct our maid, things get done.
Than we thought maybe they have communication problems. (My mil english isn't that good... the maid is just half past 6). So we just let it be....
Came the day I went into labour and after 3 days staycation in the hospital, I'm back home.
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| Hello Danielle.. You're just 3 days old |
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She decided to open her eyes and say Hello to me.
Just looking at her, makes me forget how terrible my confinement is. |
To my horror, my mil only cooked the confinement style breakfast and prepared the ginger red date tea and that's all. The rest, my maid has to ask me what I wanna eat and she cooked accordingly. As for my baby, she only help me to shower her twice. Can you imagine the 4th day I tried to bath my daughter all by myself??!!! And where did my mil go??! Well, she left for work in the early morning like 7am.
So I got really depressed cause during the 1st week, both hubs and I were super tiring, Having disrupted sleep, not sure how to soothe a crying baby and etc.. and we received no support from my mil. My mil slept thru the night, not even helping me during those late night feedings. Same goes to my maid. Well, who to blame the maid??! My mil choose one that is so young and inexperience in looking after infant.
I told my hub no matter how expensive it is to hire a nanny during CNY, I'm going to get one. I cannot stand having to handle baby without any guidance. But sadly, it's too last min so I couldn't hire any confinement nanny.. thanks to my gf who suggested me to sign up for food caterers that does confinement dishes.
Google and search for some reviews, managed to find one and immediately book my lunch and dinner for 28 days. So 1 item on our list is done.
Next, we need to find someone who is willing to help us to teach the maid to look after baby and to cook those tonic soups. And I'm soooo lucky that my best friend called and check up on me and I causally asked if her mum is willing to help. And she agreed!! So for the next 3 weeks of my confinement, I have good soup and food to eat. Plus a motherly figure to help me look after baby (during the day) and to teach the maid how to boil those tonic soup.
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| Thankful for auntie to come over and help me!!! |
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| On one of those afternoon where baby slept like a baby. |
One of the power packed confinement food that auntie prepared for me...
After this episode, I learn my lesson. If wan to employ maid to look after baby. Get one that is married, has kids and know how to handle infant and has working experience in domestic work.
And if I'm ever pregnant with #2, I'm going to hire a confinement nanny. Be in stay in or not.
Have a great weekend!
Xoxo,
Felicia
