The word from Hong Kong on TCM Postnatal care

[Randy W]

in the SCMP

 

Should you avoid bathing or leaving the house after childbirth, as Chinese tradition dictates?

Much of traditional Chinese postnatal confinement practice runs contrary to Western medicine. We ask health professionals from Chinese, Western and holistic backgrounds for their views on postnatal care

 

 

 

Imagine being told you are not allowed to wash your hair, have a cold drink, or leave the house for a month. This is not some bizarre form of house arrest; millions of Chinese women follow these restrictions each year as they observe the traditional Chinese practice of postnatal confinement known as zuo yue zi (cho yuet in Cantonese) or “sitting the month”.

 

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Childbirth is considered synonymous with imbalance, as it involves a significant loss of blood, causing a new mother’s body to enter a state of yin. Cold food and drink must be cut from the diet, while bathing and exposure to wind is discouraged as the body is more susceptible to the cold.

The postnatal period is also treated as a crucial window of recovery for the mother, who is encouraged to rest throughout confinement. Cooking, household chores and care of the baby is passed on to hired help, in the form of a pui yuet confinement lady, alongside older family members, usually the mother and mother-in-law.

 

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Hulda Thorey, director of the Annerley midwives clinic, also in Central, says: “There is no current support in the professional studies of midwifery for not bathing after birth. It is easy to understand that in the past, when heating, accommodation and the quality of water was much worse, that getting cold just after giving birth with breasts full of milk, was not a good idea.”

Dr Lucy Lord, senior partner at Central Health Medical Practice, in Central, says that dirty or contaminated water can be a problem in parts of China, which can lead to puerperal infection – a range of bacterial infections in the female reproductive tract contracted soon after childbirth. “This is less relevant in Hong Kong given the relative cleanliness of our water supply,” says Lord.

 

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My grandmother, Chan Sin-yue, a mother of nine, recalls that the traditional Chinese stew of pig’s trotters and hard-boiled eggs braised in ginger and vinegar was brought to her home even during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, after she had given birth to her first child. “It didn’t matter that there was a war on our doorstep,” she says. “That’s how important consuming that stew was.”

 

 

[MikeandRong]

Daughter has lived here for 10 years now and practiced the TCM 30 day post birth to a T. While I did not agree on some of the more controversial aspects of what took place, I certainly understood the cultural aspect of it. When the 30 days were finished, both daughter and baby were just fine.