I was really happy that my mom came to visit. She stayed with me for three weeks and we spent alot of quality time together. She cooked for me and did all the chores around the house. My main job was to just feed by baby, rest, recover and even play piano and do scrapbooking. My dad joined us for the last week too. It was really awesome watching him hold his very first grand daughter and paying so much attention and singing to her.
I did a quick search on google using the words - chinese ginger vinegar post partum
and I got quite a few hits.
http://www.citytv.com/vancouver/news_23706.aspx
I've taken an extract from this article below... but yah, I think it's partly the food but moreso the moral support from my mom and Brian's mom, cuz culturally that is the primary role of the mother of the new mother, to come to my house and take care of me and my household while I am busy taking care of my new infant.
In this way, I spent so much time with my mom, chatting, watching her cook and clean, and just seeing a super woman do all these things and have time to read, check email, go shopping.. and I realized, wow it is possible, I can do this too. So I guess I've been lucky and I never really got the blues. The baby never stressed me out, but I think it was more Brian. Not on purpose, but I think I myself was struggling with my new identity and how to balance the responsibilities and expectations of being a mother and a wife. I was probably just too sensitive or I gave myself too much pressure or read too deeply for hidden meanings... and I exploded at him and cried. I can only count three times when that happened and I've been fine since, so I'll just blame it on my hormones.
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/food/8f033e/8F033E06.htm
4. Foods Thought by Mothers to Promote Milk Secretion
There were four kinds of foods that mothers perceived as their first choices for improving the secretion of breast milk:
a. Concentrated soups made from pigs' legs or tail bones cooked with either beans or peanuts or from fish tails boiled with papaya or coconut. Forty-five per cent of the mothers in this survey said that these white, milky emulsions were effective for them .
b. Just after delivery, or at the beginning of breast-feeding (these mothers begin nursing shortly after delivery, thus providing their infants with the anti-infective protection of colostrum), a concentrated soup is made from pigs' legs boiled with ginger in vinegar without water. Sometimes hard-boiled eggs are added, or rice wine is used in place of vinegar. This soup can be preserved for a long time and thus may be eaten daily in different amounts after heating. All mothers claimed that they like to eat this soup, and 23 per cent of them suggested that, in their experience, it was quite effective in promoting milk secretion.
c. Salt-preserved marine fish, including small fish that are often eaten with the bones, are a very common food in this sub-tropical part of China. This food provides animal protein and many minerals and was reported to stimulate the mothers' appetite. Fourteen per cent of the mothers emphasized its effect.
d. Some mothers use traditional Chinese herbs such as the seeds of the wolf-berry (Lycium chiensis), the danggui (Ligusticum actilobum), shouwu (the tuber of fleece flowers), and weishan to make soup with fish, meat (pork), or poultry. These medicines are recognized as tonic drugs, because they are expensive and not all the mothers can afford to use them.
No comments:
Post a Comment