Thursday, November 18, 2010

Postpartum Care: Chinese Style, intro.

I tried to surf the net for informations about chinese postpartum care and found limited resources in english.  And, they mostly introduced why the chinese (race) practice this kind of postpartum care.  The more "beefy" information such as do's & don'ts, how-to, what-to-eat, etc., were mostly in blogs that contain chinese characters.  Hence, I've thought of researching and sharing these information to those who are interested about this topic but has limited access in understanding chinese characters.

Let's start with the common terms used for chinese postpartum care: "坐月子" read as "zuo-yue-zi" in mandarin chinese (literally means 'sitting the month'), "cho-yut" in cantonese chinese, and called "ge-lai" in taiwanese/min-nan/fookien chinese dialect.   

Generally, the chinese postpartum care calls for a 30-45 days 'confinement' of the mother and newborn within the house. There is a also a long list of traditional practices such as no shower or strenuous exercise, shouldn't drink water, etc. Plus, strict menu!  These are the traditional or ancient ways.

There were modern twists on these practices, which I hope to share in my blogs lateron. I believe that some of these modern twists will be more acceptable and make better sense to our modern women of today.  

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