Insights into a Bimbo's Mind

Post Labor: Confinement

I’m just a week away from going back to work, so the coming few days marks the very very end of my maternity leave, probably the only long break I’ll ever take from work till I reach 65.. And it wasn’t even fun.

I was away from work for 3 months since I delivered Mini-N. It wasn’t really a holiday of roses and wine because in the first month I was plagued by some hormonal changes that locked me into depression. I cried a lot especially in the evenings without really knowing why. One evening Narrrling asked me why I was crying and I just said, “It’s..It’s…the ginger smell!”

It didn’t help also that Narrrling had to travel for work to the US for 10 days leaving me alone at home, confined together with the confinement lady who wasn’t exactly my best friend. Yes, she was an excellent cook who could whip up the best meals I’ve tasted for years but I HATED the way she handled Mini-N and HATED the way she’s on my back the whole time about this confinement bullshit and that confinement bullshit, which I waved off from the first day of meeting her. I told her, “Focus on the baby. He’s most important.”

Then she goes about to force feed Mini-N till he vomits. Drowsy from being over-stuffed with milk, she puts him back to bed and sets herself on my back again about wearing shoes, wearing socks, eating this miracle Chinese herb pill and that anti-wind herb pill. In my confinement month, the word, “wind” drove me mad. She didn’t allow me to drink plain water and I had to drink some longan water that was boiling hot at all times. Look, I don’t mind drinking that longan crap, but why can’t I drink water?? The more she was on my back, the more I ignored her. I drank water blatantly in front of her. I refused to wear the shoes and socks she kept harping about and I took once the Chinese anti-wind rubbish and refused to take them again. I completely dismissed her talks about ‘wind’ and ‘wind’ and ‘wind’.

I cried every night from depression. I felt ugly, weak, painful (where the wound is) and on top of that, I had to have someone trying to instill in me all these rules and boundaries in my own home. My house smelled like a huge pot of ginger and looked like a refugee camp with clothes hanging everywhere to dry and my shower smelled like pee. She probably pees as she showers. Poor Narrrling had to come over to my room to wash the toilet numerous times because the smell of pee was simply intolerable.

I was also extremely worried about Mini-N. He had colic and was making a lot of noise at night from discomfort. In my condition, it can be excruciatingly painful to get up from bed but I did that several times each night to comfort him, because the confinement lady was deep in her slumberland and Mini-N was wailing and vomiting milk the whole night, thanks to her 3 hourly overfeeding. If ever one of his wailing wakes her up, she translates it as he’s hungry and stuffs another bottle into his mouth. Nothing I say seem to change her. Bloody hell, Mini-N was only 4 days old and she was feeding him 3oz of milk every 3 hours. Some babies drink 1oz until they’re 2 months old!!

What stays most vivid in my memory was one night after getting out of bed too many times to comfort and clean Mini-N, I was lying in bed looking at him. And right there before my eyes, he shot a foot high of milk out of his mouth. One side of his cheek was completely washed in milk. I knew I had to get up to clean him but my lower abdomen was just so painful that I couldn’t bring myself to get up. I called out to the confinement lady twice but she was snoring so loud she couldn’t hear me. So I lied there, all the while looking at Mini-N with more and more milk regurgitated down one side of his face, trying to gather my strength to get up and while doing that, I cried. I cried, I cried and I cried. I wasn’t sure if it was out of pain, out of frustration or out of worry for Mini-N.

I use to think it’s not that tough being a mother, just make sure your baby eats and poops and sleeps. I was prepared for the late nights, I was prepared for the hard work, but what I wasn’t prepared for was the weak state I was in and the worry for my child. I was worried sick on the first month after delivering Mini-N because he was vomiting milk constantly and would wail out with discomfort every night during sleep. He does that the whole night long. Yes, the whole night long so you can imagine how much sleep I got in the first month. The confinement lady told me it’s normal, she’s taken care of other babies who makes funny sounds as well. She said he’s just stretching and that’s suppose to be a good thing. After that night I watched him shoot out the milk through his mouth, I told her the next day, “NO, it’s NOT normal. We’re going to see a doctor”.




Turn up the volume to hear Mini-N and tell me if you think that's normal.

The doctor confirmed that Mini-N has colic and prescribed medication. At some point, the confinement lady started blaming me for it. She said Mini-N has wind in his stomach and it’s because I didn’t do all the things she told me to. My wind was passed to Mini-N through my breast milk. Oh, she’s so good at this game.

All these contributed to my post-labor blues on my confinement month. What a wreck I was. I looked at myself in the mirror and hated the person who was looking back at me. Let’s put it this way. On the day I delivered Mini-N, the weighing scale told me I put on 27.7kg in this whole pregnancy. Beng visited me and was shocked at my appearance. He told me much later that he almost couldn’t recognize me. In his own brutish words much later, he said, “Ugly was the only word to describe you.”

My thoughts then was, this whole pregnancy has ruined my body. I am fat, I have a big gash on my lower abdomen that hurt like hell, I have stretch marks all over it, I had massive backaches still, I have asthma still and I was swollen all over still, a chunk of my memory have gotten lost, like I find it hard to remember a lot of things, at loss with certain words, names….

Man.. that month was tough. When Narrrling was around, we ignored the confinement lady and he took me out to the movies to make me feel better. I remember we watched “Stardust” in One Utama about 2 weeks after delivering. I remember I walked very slowly from the car park to the cinema and back before and after the movie as to not aggravate my wound. That was how desperate I was for something to cheer me up. Sometimes when the confinement lady was not looking, Narrrling would sneak me a nice drink like a pack of ribena, a coca-cola, a glass of orange juice. Basically, we were thieves in our own house.

Looking back now in restrospect, I think we made one major mistake. If we didn’t believe in all these confinement wind bullshit, we should never have hired a confinement lady. What we needed was a helper who would do as we tell them. That’s lesson No.1 for the future if I EVER intend to have another child. At this point, I am thinking not. It’s a miracle that my asthma didn’t kill me this time around.

The moment the confinement lady was out of the door, I launched myself straight into action. I had my hair done, I had eyebrow embroidery, I went for facial, I had eyelash extensions, I even signed myself up for a slimming treatment. So far, I’ve miraculously lost 18 out of the 27 kgs I gained. Now the slimming treatments deserve another whole story by itself. I never use to believe in these treatments until I tried them myself. They work like a miracle, at least the one I went to. I think I look ok again. Ofcourse, I’m still seriously overweight but at least it’s not that bad that my friends can’t recognize me.

And Mini-N, after 7 weeks of wailing through the night, he finally stopped. Oh, thank GOD!! And he doesn’t vomit milk anymore. When I say vomit, I mean shooting milk out of his mouth. Sometimes he still regurgitates a bit of milk but that’s normal. He’s a healthy and happy boy now. At 2 months plus now, he’s just learned to smile and has started talking back recently with coos and goos. He also has a natural flair for posing for photos.

For those who believes in confinement, they’ll read this blog and say, “Girl, you might think you’re mighty strong now but when you grow old you’ll suffer for not listening to your confinement lady. All the pains caused by the lack of confinement care will only surface when you grow old.”

Yeah, when I get a backache, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t listen to the confinement lady. When I sneeze, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t listen to the confinement lady. When my poop is too soft, I also wonder if it’s because I didn’t listen to the confinement lady.

To me, this whole confinement thing is like a religion. It’s up to you whether you believe it or not. It could be true or it could be self-fulfilled prophecies. It’s not been proven, nobody knows if washing your hair really gets wind into your head, nobody knows if walking without socks on cold marble will get wind into your feet, yet people follow it, for the fear of being punished later in life…. It’s just like a religion…

posted by Miki-C @ 1:04 PM