OK while the baby talk is getting hot, can we also talk about the mothers instead. Actually this is a little bit about the fathers too, and their stomachs....Has anyone ordered confinement food catering before? We've considered cooking it ourselves (which actually means mothers and maids) but were not completely sure about our own expertise to concoct quality food. Plus, with all the caution about the mothers getting 'feng' and their difficulty to recuperate after giving birth, we started giving a more serious thought to the claims of traditional chinese confinement meals.
There seems to be 2 main suppliers in the market now - natal essentials and new baby. Has anyone tried them or heard of some others?
10 comments:
hi yingjie, have you considered hiring a confinement lady? I think it's the best decision I have ever made with regard to my wife's pregnancy.
at first, we didn't hire one because my father kept "volunteering" my mum to help take care of the infant. unfortunately, after almost 3 decades of "idle", she couldn't cope with it (eg not knowing the correct and hygienic way to do certain things).moreover, we didn't have the heart to ask her to feed the infant throughout the night, so in the end it was my wife who stayed up. imagine, she had to go through the tedious task of breastfeeding, nappy changing,bathing, without much sleep...it was near breakdown for her.
maybe your parents or inlaws are willing to take up the gauntlet, but are they up to it? you won't want to have any friction between anybody, during the time when your wife needs plenty of rest and recuperation.
by hiring a competent confinement lady, she can help take care of everything, including cooking confinement food. my wife had the best sleep post-delivery on the first night the confinement lady arrived. no kidding.
there is only 1 problem: good confinement ladies are rarer than triplets! at least to find a trio, you can check registry of births and deaths. with confinement ladies, you don't know where to look.
usually it's by referral, but nowadays, a lot of good ones are either retired or they have their own grandchildren to look after. you can try asking around.
my leads are all gone:they are happily retired already.
i have some contacts if you are interested. Agree with KC completely. I would actually suggest one step further to get a maid in the meantime so that she can be trained by the confinement lady to cook your favaorite food...!!!! I nearly have nose bleed during XE's first confinement by drinking those left overs of Red Dates Longan tea....
Thanks KC and Catalyst for the tips! Our plan is to move back to "niangjia" where there is a maid to help out with matters. I'll probably also take at least 2-3 weeks off, if not the full month, to have ice-breaking with our new friend. Hopefully I can take care of most of his nappy-changing, wiping/bathing (alas, not breastfeeding) needs. If the cooking is taken care of by the catering, that should suffice right?
hi michael, not sure if that'll suffice. is there anyone who are actually experienced and can be hands-on and guide you?
at first, we thought it should be easy, since my mum is a mum of 2. but things have changed, now, hygiene and cleanliness are of utmost importance, especially to an infant.
do you know how to wipe the shit off his/her butt? it's not just simply wiping----a girl is more complex because if you wipe the wrong way, some residue might be left behind in the vagina and cause infection. (sorry for being detailed, but the devil is in the details). do you know how to bathe the infant? how to hold him/her such that the head is slightly pointing downwards to allow you to first wash the head.
how to apply "ru yi you" the medicated oil that is supposed to rid the stomach of wind. when the infant is crying, you may need some laojiao to tell you what exactly the problem is, or else you'll be driven nuts, especially if the crying happens at 3am!
you know how to burp the infant? swaddle him/her, to make him/her feel secure,warm and cosy?
i don't know about the rest, but if it weren't for the confinement lady and the help of my experienced sisters-in-law, my wife and I would have gone nuts.....tempers may flare, tears may shed etc.....yes, i might exaggerate.
but think carefully. gather more feedback.perhaps the rest in kopitiam can chip in?
KC_Wong
Thanks again for the double dose of advice. One main reason why we hesitate to decide on a confinement lady was the discomfort with a "stranger" in the house. And we've heard some horror stories that kind of strengthen the stance.
Our part-time cleaner, who also happens to be expecting her 2nd grandchild, related a few anecdotes. She was working for this young couple once and they've just had a baby. They hired a confinement lady through an agent - this 70+ year old who apparently was very fit and strong for her age. There was this afternoon when the mother was sleeping, the father working, our cleaner mopping in the living room, and the confinement lady supposedly feeding the baby in another room. Halfway through the mopping, she became curious why the baby room was completely quiet and peeped through the door left ajar. And she saw the confinement lady holding the child, mouth-to-mouth with her. Apparently this is some kind of dark practice to 'suck the qi' from the baby to strengthen the body of an old person. The baby is said to be very much 'weakened' if this is done but whether true or not, it's a heinous act. When confronted, the confinement lady asked our cleaner to keep mum about it so that she can continue to learn her 'living' this way. Our cleaner didn't expose her directly but subtly asked the couple to look after their own child instead. They didn't do it until another afternoon when the father came back from work unexpectedly and saw the act himself. The confinement lady was sacked immediately.
She also told us some stories about maids abusing babies but I shall spare everyone the details since the devil is in it...but to be fair to her, our cleaner is not a maid-basher. In fact, she also said that there are some very good maids and advised that we consider one if our plates do get too full.
We'll probably get our hands dirty first, literally and metaphorically, and then see how it goes. Hopefully, Mariam Stoppard's books, ante-natal classes and tips from all of you will come in handy too!
well, so far only the daddies have spoken, so let me give my 5 cents worth...
having a confinement nanny does not mean complete delegation...at the end of the day, you should know how much "outsourcing" you need and the "scope of work". With confinement lady, one thing is important, you need to know what you need from her. Let me share my experience, I basically got her to do cooking, washing of baby clothes, changing nappy. Trust me, changing diaper once or twice is fun but with Justin he pooed 8x a day!!! and they poo in the midst of feeding! It'll be quite a challenge to handle all this and I agree that a lot of times, our mothers will probably feel as helpless as us at first. And somehow it;s of course more difficult to tell them that you do not like their way of handling the baby versus a confinement lady. Also, hubby will try to help but after a while, they seem to develop some immunity towards baby's cries that they stop waking up in the night!!! So left to poor mummy again...
For both, I tended to the babies myself. I carried them in the day and they sleep with me at night and I feed them myself. I did not do any bottle feeding so basically, the confinement lady does not come in so much contact with my baby (so I presume the horror story that Yingjie mentioned should not happen if this is the arrangement.
Also, be firm on what you want. Confinement ladies will always advice but most of them are quite all right if you insist your way. Of course some post natal blues may make you more agitated than usual but overall it should be ok.
Lastly, of course the intrusion factor.... we felt it more with Justin..since he's the first and prior to that we had no maid. (our solution - after dinner, retreat to our room and spend our 3-ren shi jie while the confinement lady does the washing up, cook the red dates tea and do up the washing - babies change a lot of clothes all the time and if he's in nappy cloth, even worse...
Overall my confinement lady did very little for the caring of Justin and Darren...of course you may wonder then why "waste money"...but I still think it frees up more time for you to be with your baby and avoids unnecessary friction between you and your mil/mom...after all, if you grumble, at least it's not about you own relatives...
Do think about it...do selective outsourcing
my sentiments too, xue'e! in my opinion, the "selective", in a nutshell, can mean outsource only the work of a maid, but not outsource the work of a mum/dad. had seen too many mums on the streets or shopping centres relaxing one corner but leaving the care of the children to the maids. some even left the maid to hold the hands of the children to cross the road when the maid also had many barangs barangs to carry.
and the daddy should help out during the course. if the mummy is happy and appreciates the daddy, the daddy will get to enjoy his share of the fruits in the long term right?? but it seems most, if not all, males species are genetically engineered to tolerate noises to a very large extend so it might take a fair bit of coaching from the female species prior or during the course lah.
Wow wow wow...thanks for all the information and experience-sharing. From Xue'e's feedback, am I right to assume that the combination of a maid (to do the selectively delegated stuff) and confinement food catering (since the maid probably doesn't know the right recipes) can cover the necessary scope of work?
Oh another thing I just remember is that my mum was a confinement lady (or at least a nanny!) after she demonstrated the proper way of applying ru yi you to babies and correct bathing techniques recently. Must ask her to conduct a crash course for us.
I guess it's quite obvious we die die don't want confinement lady heh...
so you want a maid?? That to me, is a more permanent way of privacy intrusion.... hmmm... actually I was just sharing my experience, at the end of the day, it's your parenthood and of course you decide how it will be :) have fun... gather more information though most times, babies differ (even for me between Justin and Darren) and I think that's what make parenthood so challenging but fulfilling!
so you want a maid?? That to me, is a more permanent way of privacy intrusion.... hmmm... actually I was just sharing my experience, at the end of the day, it's your parenthood and of course you decide how it will be :) have fun... gather more information though most times, babies differ (even for me between Justin and Darren) and I think that's what make parenthood so challenging but fulfilling!
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