2025 update: my family tries Chinese confinement ourselves!
https://youtu.be/SUEE2OJYTkk

As a French Canadian from an agricultural environment, we used to have the EXACT same type of confinement prior to the 1950’s. Each farm had a small house not too far from the main house that was called the “birthing and nursing 🤱 house”. A woman would give birth there and being taken care for 100% by other women for a minimum of a month. They would only eat warm foods because that kills potential harmful bacteria. They focused on meat, fat and garden vegetables 🥕 soups. No man was allowed to visit. The reasoning behind this is that men are constantly in contact with the farm animals 🐓 🐄, who carry diseases. Women who cared for the mother and baby were also not allowed in the barns or near the animals as to not carry back disease to the woman and baby. To me, Chinese confinement makes total sense to our family. I did the same with my first baby and doing the same with my second. Only difference is I shower 😂. And confinement will be in my own home since we do not directly live on the family farm. Our family’s “birthing and nursing house” from the 1800’s still stands! It is now a rental property 😊.

This brings tears to my eyes, and I can't help but wonder how many less women would suffer from things like PPD if we all had this type of post-partum care.

Honestly to bring a child into the world and know that people can just dedicate time to care for mom and baby and not expected to bounce back immediately or do everything immediately but have a whole transition period. It’s so needed and can be adapted into something that fits for each momma. It’s just increasing that sense of care and wellbeing.

Watched both this and the orginal video. Honestly as an American where mothers are sent to work as soon as possible with little post partum care, it opened my eyes to the importance of recovering. It also showed me what recovery could look like. I not only want a flexible birth plan but now will be making a post partum plan as well. Definitely plan to be a stay at home mom in the near future with my own business so doing this will be very possible and I am now going to do research on other post partum care in other countries to come up with my own plan.

As an American who had four kids and who is married to a medical professional I love this. I believe we have a ton to learn from ancient medical practices. We are what we eat. Nutrition is so important. I also breastfed all of those kiddos.

I think this would help so many many mothers. To make food, take the baby so you can sleep, and that the person know so much so they can answer questions the mom has, and help her with breastfeeding. That is so much taking off the shoulders of a new mom. The main complaints i have heard from new moms is not being able to sleep and breastfeeding is so hard and frustrating. They usually think they are not a good mom if they struggle with breastfeeding. I think if everyone had someone like this woman with them the mom would  feel so much better.

I’m always so impressed with how new moms are cared for and supported in the east.  It was absolute heck for me in the west.  8 weeks of sleep deprived maternity leave and then back to work.  I would do things differently if I could go back in time.

I would think that part of why many western cultures don’t do the month’s confinement is more because the society we have isn’t set up to. In many places, if the mother has a job, then she may not be able to take all that time off without losing the job, and there is even less for the father (if any at all in some places, though it could also be a money issue. No work, no paycheck or too many days off and they could risk losing their job) so she might be all alone with the baby. That combined with the media and rhetoric of the superwoman mother who can “do it all on her own, without any help”  We have nearly completely lost the whole it takes a village mentality because right now, many of us don’t have villages. And there is definitely a lack of support for new mothers since, as you said, it’s more baby focused (something I am observing highly in the US right now. There is a severe lack of care in that area nationally, focusing on the baby and not the people who actually birth the baby). I think given proper opportunity there would be many mothers in the western world who would love a chance to do something like this, because right now it’s just not very feasible.

Man, I would have loved that wrap after my C-section, blew some staples because of a sneeze and the area got infected. This looked lovely, she has full support and can lean into motherhood with confidence and joy.

I’m from Kuwait. We do have similar thing here. It lasts for 40 days. No shower for 10 days. No cold direct air. Mom and baby should keep warm and covered. No cold food or drink, No certain foods. Lots of meat broth, protein, ghee and herbal soup. Mother and baby should not be left alone at any time.  Mother and baby would have certain massages with oils.
It got less common nowadays with the youngsters. But the health and strength of my sisters who has this vs their daughters who didn’t is so obvious. The old people knew best.

I Love Most of this but having someone else take care of my baby for the first month is something I would never want (I had a baby last year). I definitely agree that we don’t give enough attention to the mothers here in the west and I would love to learn more about the traditional Chinese medicine as a midwife myself.
In an ideal world, my first month with a baby would be having someone stay to make all that amazing food, help me with the recovery, clean the house, run errands and so on and even hold the baby here and there, but the bonding, the breastfeeding, the skin to skin, spending time with my baby 24/7 I wouldn’t change that for the world.. as exhausting as it may have been, it’s also a magical time! Where im from it’s also common to take parental leave for 1-2 years so it’s insane to me that some women go back to work after just 4 weeks as I’ve read in the comments! That should never be the norm :(

Interestingly, regarding hair, I noticed quite a few of my grey hairs turned back brown again during my pregnancy. After the baby was born, my hair started turning gray again. It was wild finding hair that was gray on either end and brown for a few inches in the middle.

Interesting video. It’s amazing what different cultures and attitudes toward medicine can learn from one another.

In Pakistan, we have similar concept of 40 days called chilla. It actually helps so much in healing if your family is supportive and lets the mother rest. But many people are becoming insensitive of a new mother's needs

I'm a fan of Taylor and when she introduced this practice I was super interested and I'm not pregnant. I'm Latin and yes it's called "la cuarentena" but here in Puerto Rico we've becomed to "western" too. I wish lots of practices of "la comadrona" we're preserved/kept in practice.

Man, this is not confinement. This is legit help. I wish. 😢 I wish. 😢 and maybe then I wouldn't have had PPD.

I saw this video when it first came out, and I loved it. I'm not going to say I think everything in it is perfect, cause that's stupid, but to have someone to help and to take care of you just makes so much since to me, I think we are severely lacking in support for pregnant women and new moms, we don't even have consistent maternity leave where I am so. Yeah.

This video is GREAT! I follow @Taylor_R and I thought her video on Chinese confinement really teaches alot of valuable information. By you going over it, from a doctors view point is even better! GREAT JOB!!!!

Three months after my son was born I began to experience very bad endometriosis symptoms. Because I was breast feeding there was not a lot more options for outside of what I was already doing (hormonal IUD). My FNP/Midwife suggested I looking into TCM was a way of alleviating my symptoms. My TCM practitioner was amazing, basically had me doing a lot of the confinement things (no cold food, limited time outside, special food and "tea") to "warm" me up and help my stagnated chi. After 3 months I was pain free and was able to stop most of the treatments. I was able to maintain being pain free for almost 3 years.

This makes so much sense since is the mother that gave birth, lost a lot of blood, is wounded from the act, and is in a very fragile state both physically and mentally. Sure the baby is very important but with the right care, will be fine.