Dear all, I just finished my Confinement a few weeks back and we had our own horror stories too. For those who haven’t do your Confinement..
My Tips are:
1. Be assertive
2. Activate your mother and MIL. They dare not say no to elders aka Queen bee of the clan.
3. Keep track of the bb feeding on your own.
4. Check the diapers actively.
5. If you are strong believer of breastfeeding, hide all bottles, pacifiers and the can of formula milk.
6. Be prep that your kitchen is gone. Try to gave specific instructions on what can be shifted and used and what cannot used in the kitchen.
My nightmare started here..
- Confinement lady was pushy and wanted me to keep bottle feeding my baby almost EVERY HOUR. Cry - feed, bb awakes - feed, bb vomit - feed even more. An increase of 10ml every 2-3 days for newborn. Hubby was’t home so you know how stressful i were. She didn’t feed according to weigh of bb, challenged me that bb was having growth spurt (Everyday????)
In the end, overfed my bb and milk gushed out from bb nose. We brought bb to PD and were told that it’s overfeeding. PD Warned us to feed lesser and monitor.
After bringing bb back home, CL STILL insisted to feed more and said, 相信我 她可以喝多一点 (trust me, she can drink more) 🤦🏻♀️ Caught stealing fomula milk to feed more in the middle of the night.
- CL refused to cook more Veg for me, or eggs, or fruits. She said it’s “windy”, LITERALLY, every food is windy to her. 🙄 if you looked at the pic below, she liked to cook like that. My Friend said my hubby can cook better. I had pork with noodle for 20days of breakfast. Literally eat till I wanna puke. Told her to stop cooking breakfast for me in the end.
- Her rates aren’t cheap. I also don’t expect 4-5 meals a day so she can rest. But she promised to cook for my hubby when I first called her, when she arrived on 1st day, she rejected to cook for hubby.
- she spends a lot of time scrubbing my kitchen, but refused to change my bb’s diaper. I don’t know if I should be happy or sad. My kitchen is sparkling clean but my bb was found sleeping in shit throughout the days and nights. 💩Just like the mummy shared below, I’ve requested many times to change bb’s diapers because bb wailed non-stop due to wet diapers. She brushed me off, in the end I did it all myself.
- For mothers with female bb, pls take note to clean the private part (butterfly like area). Must open up and clean. There was 1 day, I opened up and inside its all shit accumulated. 💩 my hubby said, I thought the CL bathed bb?
- Unlike other CL, she requested for aprons (hubby got her diaso ones) , 101 kind of gloves, 101 kind of cloths, for this and that cooking tools. Keep asking my hubby to buy things (later I found out that she did that so to get him out of the house 🤦🏻♀️)
- gave pacifier without my consent, bb refused to latch the next day. 😰
Now here’s the twist... after knowing her pattern, we come out with our own pattern too.
- my MIL is the Queen! We had to get my MIL COME OVER every 2days. Every time CL needs to buy something, she let my MIL knows. My MIL will decide if that is a need or a want. And my MIL will reject her if she over buys.
- she claimed that she can’t cook for my hubby? Ok, when my MIL is over here, she suddenly whipped out a table of lovely dishes for my MIL. (None of those lousy cooking as seen below) my MIL treated her really well, even gave her Ang bao and kept praising her.
- After catching her stealing Formula milk twice in the middle of the night, she suddenly become very guai and listened to all my instructions.
It was a very stressful period for us. At the end of the day, I didn’t have enough rest, fighting the overfeeding battle. I felt that I hired a high class maid to clean the kitchen daily rather looking after my bb.
Hope that the rest of the mothers out there who are having your Confinement soon, will have a better one.