How We Did Postpartum Confinement Without a Nanny
- alaughingseal
- Oct 25, 2021
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 25, 2021
Hiring a confinement nanny while you are pregnant is quite a common item on the never-ending to-do list of a mum-to-be. My husband and I definitely did consider having a confinement nanny but we decided to do without and here's why and how!
Not having a confinement nanny is definitely not easy. We feel that in order to do confinement without one meant that you needed:
personal experience taking care of babies (newborns especially!!)
an ingredients manager
a competent and capable other half
A LOT of support from your family and friends
a strong will to learn and adapt
Personal Experience Taking Care of Babies
A confinement nanny is an expert (I would think so?!) in taking care of newborns in their first month and they can and will pass down valuable insight into caretaking. They would even be able to help you (or not?) with breastfeeding. Hence, in order to do without a nanny, it would mean that you needed to know these "insights" ahead of time and would not need that additional advice.
I was lucky to be the youngest in my family and was given the opportunity to watch my siblings' kids grow up. As a busybody, I was observing how my sisters' kids were taken care of, and had to chance to "practise" on my brother's kids. Not to worry, my brother's kids are alive HAHA
Although I did not try a hand at everything, I had a rough idea on how to take care of a newborn. I would not say that having watched or practised on these crucial care skills were sufficient to be able to handle your own. However, I would say that it definitely gave me the confidence to "feel" like I may be able to take care of my own. But who am I kidding right? Of course, taking care of your own is a whole new ball game!
I had to figure out and do many things on my own - showering a baby, swaddling a baby (never got great at it, but thankfully my dear girl hated it too), feeding, changing diapers, etc etc. The learning curve is so steep and I am thankful for my fellow mummy friends, who helped me along the way. They were my "nannies" :")
Ingredients Manager
A confinement nanny does the marketing for you, and cooks for you. That is one of the main reasons why people hire a nanny - to cook delicious and nutritious food for you to recover well during your early postpartum days. For most nannies, all you needed to do was to show them the market, give them the money and they would purchase the items for you. But of course, there are some nannies who would give you a list of items that they need and you would go hunting for those items on your own.
As a result, you need support from someone, who knows the food that you need for your meals. In my case, it was my lovely mum. Not only did she know the food needed for my confinement, she also knew how to cook certain confinement food that was harder to cook e.g. pig trotters (I LOVE THEM!).
Every few days, my mum would do the marketing, label each meat properly, portion them nicely for each meal, and pass it to my husband. In that way, my husband would know easily what to cook for the day. My mum also gave him a "crash course" and taught him how to prepare certain food and how to cook them. Aren't they the perfect duo?!
Was it easy? Definitely not. Prior to giving birth, we would go shopping to look for confinement food stuff e.g. spices needed for the soup (we bought the first 14-day plan from Hockhua Tonic and subsequently, my mum picked her own spices for me to cook soup for the next 14 days), dates for red date drink etc etc.
This was truly taxing on my mum, who isn't getting younger anymore so I am really thankful for her help because honestly, without her, I wouldn't know how to do this!! Perhaps for my second child onwards, I would probably consider ordering confinement food instead to free up the stress and preparation from my mum and also, the need for my husband to cook food for me daily. That leads to my next point...
A Competent and Capable Half
You might think that cooking is made easy now because of the prepared food from my mother, but have you thought about the actual cooking and cleaning up time!? We were staying in a small 1-bedder with a small kitchen and cooking was so tough with the limited space. Thinking back... I have no idea how he did it!
Not only did he take the night duties alongside me, he had to prepare red dates drink every night, cook 3 meals a day (we ending up ordering a more atas tingkat service for dinner to free up his time), clean up the house (not our priority at all *cue messy house pics* as baby is our priority) and be there for Emma and I. He would prepare a cup of warm red dates tea and music for me to relax while breastfeeding :")
Watching him do everything at home like a superman already made me feel so tired for him, and he had to stay strong for both the girls at home. I recall the day when he had a bad headache, and we felt like the world was crashing down on us as he was down the whole day!
I also recall watching him mop the floor, clean the toilet and the kitchen while I was breastfeeding and I started wailing like a baby. Oh, did I mention about the intense hormones that would leave me crying out of happiness from watching my baby latching successfully? Hahahhahaa. Yes so these hormones were guilty of making me weep from gratitude, having my husband do everything.
How did he do it? I have no idea. Some nights when Emma decides to party rock with us, he can even crack a joke saying, "Imagine if we had a nanny, we would miss this valuable time to coax and comfort our baby". My goodness, at that point in time I just wanted to punch him as I'm so tired and he could tell me something like this hahahaha. But of course, he held his end of the promise and managed to make Emma go to sleep while I was resting on the bed watching him do so :")
After 2 weeks of paternity leave, he managed to take leave here and there to help me with my confinement but there were definitely some days when I had to SOS and call my mother down to cook for me while I handled Emma :)
A Lot of Support of Family and Friends
I was very blessed with a very hands-on pair of in-laws who popped by almost every day to help with everything - household chores (yes my in-laws love vacuuming the floor, super cute haha), entertaining baby (they're so good at entertaining Emma!), changing baby, feeding baby (I did a mix of latching and bottle feeding) and etc. They took a huge load off our shoulders and helped us so much.
Also, my family and friends also came over to help with Emma, mainly entertaining her when needed and feeding her as well!
It helped to have people over to lift my spirits up and also, to just chat about motherhood in general. Of course, it's also good to have time alone as entertaining guests can get very tiring as well. But in my opinion, it helps with your mood when you have the right people coming over to help :")
A Strong Will to Learn and Adapt
Without a confinement nanny meant not having immediate advice nor help when needed. I found myself struggling with breastfeeding & bottle feeding (milk storage etc etc), baby sleeping and etc. I was thankful to have mummy friends who could advise me whenever I text them and these advice were invaluable and I felt that they were my cheat sheet to succeeding in the 4th trimester HAHA :D
Things will always change along the way and I found myself shopee-ing a lot at the start when I realised I didn't have this nor that! For example, I panicked when I realised Emma could no longer fit into the purple bath tub (a pail to be exact) given by TMC and had to ask friends for suggestions for bath tubs and quickly bought 1 online! It was tough because there were so many options out there and this cheapo mummy right here refused to pay for brands, as I believe there are other products out there, which work exactly the same way!
Also, I learnt many things the hard way - for example, losing sleep as I was always washing my milk bottles & pump parts 3-hourly. My mummy friend then suggested to have 2 sets of pump parts so I only needed to wash 6-hourly. Such advice would probably be given by my confinement nanny (if I had one) or my nanny would probably be washing for me as well.
Hence, I had to learn and adapt many times along the way!
Did I regret not getting a nanny?
Seeing my husband being so tired, yes, but...... There are so much more pros to it!
I felt that we became so so so close to Emma and learning her quirks and "pattern" quickly because um, we had no choice right? So we did not feel the sudden loss after one month and instead, felt much more equipped to take care of Emma ourselves.
Would I hire one for my 2nd?
Probably not, but I would love to spend a bit more on confinement food (this gets me so excited!!!) so my husband need not cook, and my mother need not prepare any ingredients for me. I feel that with the confinement food taken care of, we would then have more time to focus on the newborn and my firstborn - Emma :")
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