First Forty Days

The Essential Art of Nourishing the New Mother

• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori & Chang
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781613129418
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Gynecology, Obstetrics & Midwifery

The first 40 days after the birth of a child offer an essential and fleeting period of rest and recovery for the new mother. Based on author Heng Ou's own postpartum experience with zuo yuezi, a set period of "confinement, " in which a woman remains at home focusing on healing and bonding with her baby, The First Forty Days revives the lost art of caring for the mother after birth. As modern mothers are pushed to prematurely "bounce back" after deliver­ing their babies, and are often left alone to face the physical and emotional challenges of this new stage of their lives, the first forty days provide a lifeline—a source of connection, nourishment, and guidance. The book includes 60 simple recipes for healing soups; replenishing meals and snacks; and calming and lactation-boosting teas, all formulated to support the unique needs of the new mother. In addition to the recipes, this warm and encouraging guide offers advice on arranging a system of help during the post­partum period, navigating relationship challenges, and honoring the significance of pregnancy and birth. The First Forty Days, fully illustrated to feel both inspiring and soothing, is a practical guide and inspirational read for all new mothers and mothers-to-be—the perfect ally during the first weeks with a new baby.

A

MY EXTENDED CHINESE-AMERICAN FAMILY INCLUDES quite a few legendary characters, but few can match my Auntie Ou for sheer personality. She is a phenomenon to herself: a petite dynamo of a woman whose passion for her art of Chinese healing is as strong today as when she first began practicing in the seventies. Auntie Ou can diagnose you with a glance at your tongue and her fingers on your pulse. Her no-frills clinic in Oakland, California, hasn’t changed a bit in decades. Its jumble of herb jars, meridian charts, and medical textbooks will never need a makeover, because she is renowned, along with my other aunt and my uncle, also acupuncturists and herbalists, for her ability to help women with every aspect of their reproductive health.

Of equal renown is the fifty-four-day stint of zuo yuezi that Auntie Ou did after the birth of her daughter Wendy, back in China. Zuo yuezi, sometimes translated as “sitting the month,” is a very Chinese tradition: a health and wellness protocol that is devoted to the needs of the new mother and that starts within minutes of baby being delivered. Lesser women than she would follow this protocol for a mere thirty days—approximately one lunar cycle—but Auntie Ou, the descendant of many Chinese healers, took it to the next level. For almost two months, she will proudly tell you, she stayed indoors with her newborn, sheltered from cold and wind; she ate two pork kidneys a day to rebuild her jing, the life essence stored in her own kidneys; and she dutifully drank whatever healing soup or tea her mother-in-law served. She also refrained from bathing or washing her hair for a whole month, as tradition dictates. Auntie Ou firmly believes that this dedicated confinement care in her twenties—“confinement” is the most commonly used English translation of zuo yuezi—is responsible for the vibrancy, resiliency, and youthful good looks she enjoys today, in her mid-sixties. “I took care of myself postpartum, that’s why I’m so strong,” she likes to say, as her arthritis-free hands deftly cut up a chicken for the pot and her face displays its notably wrinkle-free glow.

This maternal endurance feat was a secret to me as a child. Although I could often be found hovering at my aunts’ and grandmother’s sides in the kitchen when my brother and I visited from St. Louis, devouring everything they told us about healing with herbs and food, and fascinated by the skillful way they combined ingredients in the pot, I never heard Auntie Ou speak about the ancient ways of mother care. Until the day came that I gave birth myself.

By this time, I was living quite a different existence, six hours south and a world away from my Chinese-immigrant relatives. After graduating from art school, becoming a graphic designer, and subsequently traveling and working overseas, I’d settled in Los Angeles to start a family. “Traditional” wasn’t exactly a word that described me; “free spirit” might be more like it. I’ve never liked constraints or been good at following rules. And as a first-generation Asian kid from Middle America with a strong case of wanderlust, I have always been the bohemian black sheep, an outsider wherever I go. I’ve learned to embrace that—traveling at the drop of a hat, exploring back alley street markets, and merging into new cultures and peoples to discover how they live. This freedom from convention has informed my cooking and my whole approach to business and life. My heritage surrounds me like incense smoke—memories and inspirations guide much of what I design and cook—but in everyday life, I wear flip-flops and I like to surf.

So it was a surprise when the ancient ways of China showed up at my door. One day after my newborn daughter Khefri and I returned home from the hospital’s birthing center, Auntie Ou arrived to initiate me into zuo yuezi with her grown daughter Wendy by her side. Fresh off the bus from Oakland, their arms were filled with groceries they’d picked up in downtown LA’s Chinese markets. Wrinkled chicken feet and knobs of fragrant ginger; bottles of rice wine and bags of peanuts; flaky, jade green seaweed and voluptuous papayas—and the pièce de résistance, some scary-looking pig hooves. They cheerfully yelled at me to stay in my room with the baby and marched into my kitchen to set up camp. With a clang of pots and pans, they began the process of making the traditional dishes that would restore me after birth.

I quickly discovered that Auntie Ou’s “confinement care” came with a set of commandments: For one week after birth, I was to eat especially slowly, because my digestion was weak, and prioritize soft, traditional foods like black sesame with rice powder and ginger or congee with black sugar. Absolutely no cold food or drinks were to pass my lips, because these would slow down the circulation of blood necessary for optimal healing. After one week, I could graduate to eating the special postpartum soups they were creating from long-simmered bone broth and fish stock—these would help amplify and enrich my breast milk and balance my hormones so that my mood stayed elevated. Meanwhile, I was to stay in bed—or close to it—at all times, keeping my activity levels ultralow, and clothe myself in thick woolen socks, a cozy hat, and extra blankets so that my body stayed very warm. My computer, cell phone, and even my beloved tower of night-table books were hidden away, so that I wasn’t tempted to distract myself when I should be sleeping.

According to Chinese medicine, birth is a shift from a yang state, in which the pregnant woman’s body is warm with the high volume of circulating blood and full due to the presence of baby in her womb, to a more yin state—the empty and cold counterbalance to yang. Women in general tend to be quite yin by nature; after birth, the sages say, this yin tendency is exaggerated, and combined with the depletion in energy levels after the efforts of delivery, it makes the new mother especially susceptible to exhaustion or illness. Exposure to drafty air, eating chilled or heavy food, and overexerting myself would make it easier for “cold and wind”—two of the “six evils” that adversely affect our health—to penetrate my body, said Auntie Ou as she tucked me into bed with baby Khefri. According to Chinese medicine, lingering cold and wind are responsible for many of the maladies that mothers all-too-often report: headaches and period pain, joint pain, and depression. By staying calm and quiet during this vulnerable postpartum period to conserve my precious chi or “life force,” and by rebuilding my constitutional jing energy with nourishment, I could sidestep those disturbances and sail smoothly out of pregnancy and birth and into a lifetime of healthy mothering. As an extra protective step, my feisty auntie clucked her tongue at too many visitors like a watchful guard at the castle doors. She kept a pot of germ-fighting black vinegar on the stove to purify the air as well, just as her grandmother and great-grandmother had done before her for women in my shoes.

Black sheep or not, who was I to argue with Auntie Ou? I was weary, sore, and consumed with getting the tiny newborn in my arms to nurse and sleep. Besides, like most pregnant women I knew, I had invested plenty of planning into having a healthy pregnancy and birth, but self-care after the delivery registered barely a blip in my mind. I had assumed that after a few days of postdelivery R & R, I’d be getting back to the normal responsibilities of life—shopping, cooking, cleaning, working—just with an adorably dozy newborn wrapped on my chest. A modern, independent woman like me, I guessed, was supposed to get back in the saddle quickly. Plus, family and friends would be waiting to meet my daughter. Didn’t I owe it to them to be shiny and presentable so they could celebrate with me and claim their photo op with baby?

My aunt’s old code of feminine knowledge put the kibosh on those assumptions. “Confinement” reduced my universe to three essential to-dos: recovery, rest, and feeding my baby. As I rode the waves of joy and tiredness and fumbled my way through the first weeks of breastfeeding, I had to unlearn everything I had thought about a woman’s responsibility to others. I was humbled by how little energy or attention I had for anything as productive as making a meal for myself—or even making the bed—let alone hosting well-wishers! I surrendered to my aunt’s edicts gratefully.

In Chinese culture, food is love and bossy treatment means you care. Homemade chicken soup and goji berry tea are as nurturing as kisses and hugs. The care I received from my female relatives in those first uncertain weeks as a mother carried me forward on a fueling wave of food, and held me in a net of support. When they departed after a couple of weeks—the busy Oakland clinic demanded Auntie Ou’s return a little earlier than she would have liked—they left a freezer full of soups, a pantry stocked with teas, and careful instructions to continue this conservative routine of rest, minimal activity, and reliance on my husband and friends to serve me with food, water, and kindness for at least two more weeks, and ideally longer.

Now happy to comply, I noticed how the commitment to slowing down my life had opened a new space for me to hear my body’s signals. Chills could be resolved with a pot of warming red date tea; anxious thoughts could be soothed with comforting chicken porridge. The tools I needed to maintain myself were within reach in my kitchen. And, at about week six, I detected a shift: I felt more energized and capable, confident that my daughter and I had found our groove. We were ready to step out from the cocoon and start this mother-baby gig for real—one “baby” step at a time.

The births of my other two children over the subsequent five years brought very different postpartum experiences. My second daughter, India, was born at home soon after I launched a new company. Caught in the rush and convinced I was Supermom—maybe I really had been fortified by the first round of zuo yuezi—I literally forgot that earlier education. Wearing India in a sling against my body, I jumped back to my desk five days after delivery, sustaining my business while rocking my infant. Soon enough, though, my euphoria gave way to anxiety and a fatigue I couldn’t shake. I had lost connection to my intuition and let my head overrule the signs from my body. Thankfully, the sight of tiny India’s sleeping face on my chest gave me a wake-up call. I, too, required a sweet and gentle routine of slumber and food.

After the birth of baby Jude three years later, an unexpected curveball hit my family. My marriage ended and I found myself tending to my little boy and two young daughters as a single mom. Caught in emotional free fall, I fell into an easy trap for the self-reliant modern mother: the belief that as long as my children were safe, fed, and loved, I could soldier through any suffering of my own. Plus, by baby number three, it felt almost embarrassing to ask for assistance. This time, it took the wise eyes of my visiting midwife to detect how this deeply taxing time had invited a “coldness” to settle into my body and my surroundings, creating a physical weakness and a sense of withdrawal that she found deeply concerning. Suddenly remembering my aunt’s warnings about warmth, and shaken by how little I’d noticed this prelude to depression, I accepted my midwife’s prescription of hot soup and homeopathic remedies and rallied the energy to build a circle of support around me. I reached out to girlfriends to request urgent help. These women became my family in this time—a village of sorts—and with their deliveries of food and help around the house, and their gentle companionship, my body, mind, and spirit began to warm up. This time, it took me a little longer than six weeks to find my center again—demonstrating that it can take quite some time for true healing and adjustment to click in.

My three postpartum experiences became my greatest teachers. They woke me up to the range of potential for today’s postpartum mother, from being fully nourished in the weeks after delivery to becoming worryingly starved. And they brought into focus a dilemma that goes under-discussed in the excitement around pregnancy and birth. A mom-to-be is surrounded by countless resources and support for almost ten months of pregnancy, but once the umbilical cord is cut, the attention shifts almost completely to baby, and she can easily feel dropped. Ironically, it is precisely this time that her well-being must come first. She is the source from which all life springs. But if her cup runs dry, then nobody drinks.

My mission became to fill that cup for the new mothers in my life. The most supportive thing a woman and her partner can receive in those wild and unpredictable early days postpartum is the thing that can most easily fall through the cracks: food. If sustenance keeps coming, the challenges of suddenly having a baby are daunting, but doable. If it doesn’t—everything’s tougher. Yet who in this moment has the time and energy to plan shopping and cooking? Too often, mom ends up hunched over the kitchen counter feeling woozy with hunger, piecing together a meal of tortilla chips and cheese, or rifling through takeout menus before exhaustion hits. Though she might have spent months taking utmost care of her nutritional needs while baby was in utero, her well-being often goes out the window once he is out of the womb.

The kitchen became my version of my auntie’s healing clinic. I cooked for women I knew personally but also for my girlfriends’ friends, giving food to moms however I could. With memories of soups and stews from my first postpartum experience dancing around my mind, I made specially crafted meals with traditional Eastern and Western ingredients to fortify and strengthen a body that is bruised and exhausted, and to encourage lactation and calm the nervous system. My dishes would include hits of inspiration from a trip overseas, or ingredients that called to me that week at the market. I’d then stir in a giant serving of care and tenderness, ladle it into jars, affix a label, and deliver the gifts with love. (If I could have bottled oxytocin—the hormone of love and connecting—I’d have thrown in a dash of that for mom as well.)

Within a few months, these ideas crystallized into a business: a postpartum food-delivery service that I called MotherBees. It proved surprisingly self-pollinating. One woman shared it with the next and our meals soon became popular baby shower gifts—something that would care for baby by caring first and foremost for mom. Sometimes, one or two weeks’ worth of MotherBees meals would be ordered by friends or family members as a way of enveloping a woman in a circle of love even when the giver couldn’t be there in person. As MotherBees grew, we delivered resources along with the soup, for no extra charge: a sore-nipple remedy picked up along the way, the names of postpartum doulas who were available to help, or connections to massage therapists or chiropractors or acupuncturists—or house cleaners!—who were tuned in to maternal needs. We became a hive of mother care that helped women get through their first weeks with baby more easily. Today, the business is expanding beyond California to include a line of healthy postpartum foods in packaged form that can be delivered to a mom no matter where she lives.

When I bring meals to a mother, I try to drop off the food unseen and slip away, leaving her fed but undisturbed. But sometimes I get invited in for a chat and a moment of connection. The women I meet have had vastly different births—at the hospital or at home, with drugs or without, vaginally or surgically. They are living in different neighborhoods, in different marital configurations, and with different resources available to them. Many are breastfeeding, a few are bottle-feeding, still others may be receiving breast milk from another mother to augment their own supply. But despite these differences, they are united by a common postpartum experience. The brand-new mom is dealing with change on every level—the shape of her family, body, even her identity has shifted, but nothing is yet defined. She is discovering that despite what she might have thought about the effort of birthing a baby, the period after labor is when the real work begins. And it is sweaty, achy, leaky-boobed work at that! It can also be lonely work. In current-day America, partners and family members often work long hours far from home, leaving mom and baby alone for most of the day. And friends don’t usually understand or remember what is happening back there in the postpartum bedroom, unless they have very recently been there themselves.

Add to that other common new-mom pressures like taking care of other children, worrying about money, and dreading the return to a job, and the total experience of the first days and weeks at home with baby can feel overwhelming. I have gotten used to exhausted moms opening the door and looking part awed and part shocked at what’s just befallen them. Over a cup of tea or bowl of soup at the kitchen table, they might say, half laughing and half crying, “Why didn’t anyone tell me it would be like this?”

I don’t say anything, but smile and push the pot of tea or bowl of soup closer. Have another sip.

Over the years of delivering my goodie-filled coolers of soups, teas, and smoothies, I’ve discovered that offering food to the new mom does more than simply fuel her cells. The giving part is just as important. It’s an exchange of energy and care that fills her up from the inside, making her feel stronger if she feels unmoored and uncertain; connected to others if she feels alone; and seen for what she truly needs, if she feels invisible or forgotten.

I have also pondered how the scale of possibility for a new mother has tipped so far toward isolation, exhaustion, and junk food, and away from hugs and soothing soups and stews. How did we forget to honor this fleeting period of time after birth and give it special treatment? How did we forget to put a system in place that ensured the community at large, and the mom herself, knew what to expect in the days after birth—and knew that consistent help would be there?

Caretaking traditions that were once second nature have gotten buried, remembered only by the elders in the family, and barely talked about by the young ones. But mothers need them now more than ever before! For one thing, most parents invest endless effort and resources to ensure the best starts for their children. But mothers need a strong start, too. The old ways teach us that the biggest investme...