Confinement Lady or Confinement Centre?

Seriously, do we really need a confinement lady?

I always wonder...why do Malaysian Chinese especially like to hire confinement ladies? The western countries, for example, never had them...and they survived. Who are these ladies? To put it simply, they are women (usually quite elderly) known to be experienced with taking special care of newborn babies and their mothers immediately after births. Some may call them confinement nannies or "pui yuet" in Cantonese which means "companion for the month". They will normally adhere to the Chinese traditional confinement practices which some may find rather 'ridiculous' or 'unbearable'.

Anyway, it never really occurred to me that I should get help during my confinement days as I've thought my mom will be there for me. However, when a friend casually asked if I'd secured a confinement lady, I was dumbfounded. I was 18 weeks then and was advised that since I'm a first-time mom and the fact that I'm having twins, the more I should consider hiring a confinement lady. I did panic for a while though...

I later discussed with my mom and she said it may be a good idea after all as she has no experience taking care of two newborn babies at one time.

So without any further delay, I started calling a few contact numbers given by friends, colleagues and a few recommended by the forums/bloggers. To my dismay, all of them are already booked during my birthing date. A few of them offered to attend to me for 2 weeks or so (they are trying to squeeze me in to fit their tight schedules) but after much thought, I'm not too keen. A few ladies simply told me that they do not even attend to twin babies. What surprised me most is the 'market price' for confinement ladies for attending to twins. It's between RM6500 and RM8000 for 28 days! That excludes the additional compulsory 'angpow' of between RM300 and RM500! My goodness! I'll be spending a fortune here...

While I'm in the middle of this craze, one of my sisters-in-law (she's pregnant too and she's just 2 weeks behind me on the due dates) suggested that we pay a visit to Gina's Place. It's a newly set-up confinement centre in Taman Yarl, OUG, since April 2014. My first response was negative! A cousin sister of mine has stayed at a confinement centre about 2 years ago with her baby girl and her experience was really bad with utter dissatisfaction. So needless to say, I have a pretty bad impression with confinement centres.

Although extremely skeptical, we went to Gina's Place to check out the centre. I went solely with the thought of accompanying my sister-in-law. Little did I know that I'll fall in love with the place! Haha!

Gina's Place has a quiet and serene setting that I believe I would enjoy during my confinement period. They are operating at a bungalow with 8 rooms to accommodate a maximum of 8 mommies at one particular time. Of course they also have a room or two for the nurses and maids on duty during the night shifts. The nurses are registered nurses and they work on 8-hourly shifts throughout the days. What I love most is the fact that they are 100% breast-feeding friendly. Gina is a lactation consultant herself and the nurses are trained to only assist the mommies in breast-feeding or feeding babies with expressed breast milk using not bottles, but syringes and spoons. The centre looks very clean indeed and they allow the husbands (only husbands!) to stay with the mommies throughout the 28 confinement days.

Now, to be looked after during confinement at a specialised confinement centre doesn't come cheap. I've discussed with hubby, taking into consideration of all aspects we could think of, and I'm surprised that hubby actually encouraged me to stay at Gina's Place. Hubby is quite concerned that I don't get stressed up after the births of our little babies as we would foresee some 'discomfort' or 'unwanted scenes' with having the confinement lady, my mom and his mom (together!) at our house during my most vulnerable days.

So, we have finally decided that I shall spend my confinement days at Gina's Place. My mom wouldn't have to worry whether she could cope with taking care of our two little babies after all...at least not for the first one month after their births.  I hope we've made the right decision and that I'll be able to share my beautiful experiences at the centre very soon.