I almost gave birth alone.
At 9pm, a midwife informed me I was only two centimetres dilated. Contractions had begun to crescendo and I didn’t have the breath to insist on being taken to the delivery ward. She gave me a Panadeine Forte to ‘help me sleep’ and asked my husband to go home. Instead, he sat in my room and let me use his hand as a stress ball as my contractions crashed towards labour. My baby girl was born just after midnight.
Sydney was in lockdown. Visitors weren’t allowed in the postnatal ward, and the hallways were empty of any Chinese aunties with flasks full of slow-cooked congee.
I was going home to a different kind of confinement, the ancient Chinese kind. I had long been suspicious of zuo yuezi, the cultural practice of retreat after childbirth. As a second generation Australian, the idea that Chinese women should be made to stay indoors for 30 to 40 days after birth seemed like imprisonment. Before becoming a mother, I had hiked the Kokoda Trail, run half-marathons and even climbed Mt Kosciuszko while pregnant. The thought of being confined raised my hackles.
Confinement seemed like superstition. Now that modern medicine had reduced the risk of maternal death in childbirth, it was unnecessary. The more traditional expressions of confinement, like not washing your hair or bathing in herbs, seemed antiquated.
When I first stepped out of the hospital, I felt frail. Like a creature born trembling, without fur or feathers
But when I first stepped out of the hospital, I felt frail. Like a creature born trembling, without fur or feathers. In those early, tender days, I shuffled instead of walked. I couldn’t turn myself in bed without wincing. When I breathed in, there was a strange chill in my chest that the nurses could not explain. It was like the toil of pushing out my baby had left a draughty tree hollow under my lungs. My qi, the life force pulsing through my body, was running low.
Normally, my mother’s sisters, uncles’ wives and cousins would have all descended on my home with rites and recipes. In the pandemic, my mother and mother-in-law visited on their own.
I drank hot water infused with plump, sweet dates, goji berries and longan to replenish blood I had lost, never tea or coffee. My mother simmered her Chinese herbs - huang qi to restore my immune system and dan gui to prevent blood clots and replenish vitamin E. They brought soft notes of earth and wood into the kitchen.
My mother-in-law slow-cooked pork knuckle soup in dark vinegar and sugar, and it was rich with restorative collagen. She made nourishing chicken soup with gingko seeds, young lotus roots or baby corn for breastmilk. No garlic, onions or chilli to avoid overstimulating my baby. Sesame oil was splashed generously in the dishes to expel wind. And of course, ginger. Endless, potent old fibrous ginger featured in every dish, every soup. Not young ginger, but the battle worn kind that had lived life. Ginger that had seen things.
My only responsibilities were to breastfeed and recover. I let go of the reins of my household. The mothers gently carried my baby away after breastfeeding, giving me the gift of sleep.
In China, my mother had trained as a gynaecologist and obstetrician as well as in traditional medicine. She left a promising career to follow my father to Australia at a time when few people were able to leave the mainland. Her pregnancy was a far cry from my generation’s experiences of glossy baby showers and gender reveals. She worked at a sock factory being paid six dollars an hour. When the superintendent realised that she was pregnant, he arranged a chair for her. He was bemused to see mum reading medical textbooks during her lunch break.
My mother didn’t have her own mother or sisters by her side when I was born. My parents lived in a student share-house as my father finished his studies. My mother took great pains to always comfort me before I cried so as not to disturb the housemates. She had assembled a village of sorts through new friends she’d made in Australia, but the food they brought her broke all the laws of confinement. She boiled water for herself to at least obey the prohibition of cold drinks. She went back to work before I was three months old, promising to herself that her daughter’s experience would be different.
Within confinement’s small universe, I was submerged in a contemplative stillness
My mother was now a respected acupuncturist, specialising in women’s health. Through the haze of sleep deprivation, I was conscious that this time with her was precious, so precious. I wanted to preserve the birth stories of the women in my family that she ladled out so casually.
Within confinement’s small universe, I was submerged in a contemplative stillness. I stared at my neighbour’s magnificent gum tree. I noticed how the branches caught the sunlight at different times of the day.
I had accepted the permission to rest and a monastic space was created in my mind. I rode the slow, daily rhythms of ingredients chopped, a table laid, dishes packed away, laundry.
The price for protection from the loneliness of early motherhood was control. When a village raises a baby, that baby also belongs to the village. I wondered if confinement still cushioned women from postnatal depression if they had simmering conflict in their families.
By the end of the 30 days, my physical tears had healed. I no longer stepped about gingerly. Some fiercely independent non-Chinese friends went to the beach as soon as they could or were otherwise determined not to let a baby stop them from returning to old routines. But I did not feel pressure to ‘bounce back’ to my old body or pre-pregnancy productivity.
Confinement had acknowledged the radical transformation within me, like tectonic plates shifting beneath the Earth. I was being put back together in a messy and sacred way to be more vulnerable, streamlined, powerful. A version of myself was birthed through a labour no less painful, and I had these women as my witnesses.
Jennifer Chen is a second generation, Australian Chinese poet and lawyer. She writes on themes of social justice, domestic violence, mental health and family .
This article is an edited extract from an entry to the 2021 SBS Emerging Writers' Competition.
