Confinement Month Superstitions

I was reading Shopping Mum's post on 'Tell Me Why?' and I thought I should blog something about this topic too.

We, Malaysian Chinese have many beliefs about what NOT to-do during the confinement month (after the delivery of the baby). Sometimes, I think why they have all these 'rules'.

1. Shower/Bath - I believe a bit in this and I only took shower (not bath) once in a few days during my confinement month. I was scared to get joint or muscular pain later as warned my MIL and my aunt. I was also lucky that Los Angeles is a dry place and the weather doesn't make me sweat much (even summer time). And on top of that March usually is a cold month.

But to express my thought on this matter, why we were told not to take shower? May be in the old days they didn't have readily available HOT/WARM water like today. And also in the old days when people were living in the kampung (village), they took their shower outside the house on the backyard or somewhere and you could have see the night sky view while showering/bathing. And since then, this 'rule' has been passed down to the next generation.

As for myself, I did the following:

• Took shower during the midday.
• Turned on the shower to let the warm water run.
• Took warm-hot shower (though MIL said to use ginger water but I didn't due to difficulty on using it as my shower area is very small and the ginger water probably would not stay warm that long).
• Quickly dry off when stepped out from shower.
• Quickly dressed up after drying.

2. Wash hair - I washed my hair once a week. My hair wasn't smelling too badly as I wasn't cooking and didn't go out much. I didn't cut my hair short because I prefer to be able to tie it up. The first week when I wanted to wash my hair, I asked my hubby (he was watching tv) to assist me as I didn't want to wet my hand too much (I've been washing my hands a lot after bathrooms or touching anything else, as I was breastfeeding). I was really mad at him because he told me to do it myself. On top of that, I was using the sink in my kitchen to do it and the little shower connector wasn't working correctly. I was grumbling at him, ran into the bathroom with my half rinsed hair (wet and dripping water all over) and finished up at the bathroom sink. GRRRRR .... enough about that.

So why in the old days they didn't allow postpartum mothers to wash their hair? Because they didn't have the new invention of the - HAIR DRYER.

I did this for hair washing:

• Washed hair during the midday.
• Quickly dried hair after washing, using two towels.
• Blowed dry the hair with hair dryer.

3. Ginger - this I highly believe and recommend to all new mothers. Ginger is a very good remedy even for pregnant women as they were used to reduce nausea during the first trimester. When I was younger, I 'hate' ginger. But I don't know why, I love it so much now. Love the sweetened black vinegar ginger and I could have it every day (ONLY up to one month). That's what I have everyday - ginger fried rice with egg and vinegar ginger and pork. I did the red dates ginger drink too but wasn't so well with my bowel movement and I opted out from that. Also my chinese doctor said not to drink it while breastfeeding baby. Beside those two dishes, I also had chicken wine with ginger. And of course the fish soup with ginger and papaya.

4. Physical activity - I was told when I was at the hospital to walk around to fasten the healing process. When I got home, my counsin-in-law said to sit more instead of walking around. Then my Malaysian friend told me to lay down more and to sit less (she knows I spend a lot of time in front of the computer). Well, I couldn't lay down because is only me and my husband around the house and he could only help so much. I walked quite a bit and sat while breastfeeding. It wasn't too comfortable for me to sit due to the epi, and to stand up after sitting down was worse. So I preferred standing.

I thought I healed on the second week and I did more walking and then the third week was when the pain came back and it tored. So I guessed, I wasn't supposed to be walking too much. Or may be it was from lifting my baby in his car seat from inside the house to the car during his third week doctor's appointment (my husband went back to work and i drove there myself to meet him at the doctor's office). After that, I laid down most of the time as my aunt was here and she was helping a lot with the household stuff.

I think this is important - my aunt had told me earlier not to squad down before the laceration healed.

5. No plain water - my aunt told me to drink red dates but I told her I couldn't (see above explanation). I've been drinking a lot of water actually. I am a water person. Mostly, I drank warm water from the water boiler. But that only was for the first two weeks. Then the next two weeks, I had room temperature water most of the day if not the weather wasn't cold. But everyday, whenever I wake up I drink a glass of warm water.

I have no reasonable explanation on this matter about the pantang (beliefs). Is it because in the old days postpartum women had a lot of water retention in so they were not allowed to drink more water worried that they may increase the symptom? According to the new research, if one has water retention symptom, one has to drink EVEN more water.

6. Don't touch tap water - oops ... this I totally ignore. As for hygiene purposes, I washed my hands every time I went to the bathroom or after eating or after anything else, with cold water from the hot water tap. This is due to the warm water will take about 2-3 mins to get into the bathroom. I have no patient to wait that long in the middle of the night as I wanted to go back to zzzz. So I just washed and wiped dry and go back to sleep. I am now afraid that my hands will hurt when I get older.