I didn’t believe in postpartum confinement, until I lived it

When I had my second baby in Singapore, I agreed to a Chinese confinement period mostly because it felt easier and I was intrigued as to if people could actually spend 40days at home and rest.

We were living there at the time, far from family, and I was exhausted in advance just thinking about how I would manage two children. Confinement was presented to me as practical. Meals. Help. Structure. A plan. I didn’t approach it spiritually or ceremonially. I approached it like a tired woman trying to survive postpartum with a toddler already in the house.

I didn’t expect it to change me.

For those unfamiliar, traditional Chinese confinement, or “zuo yue zi,” is a period of roughly thirty to forty days after birth where the mother rests, stays largely indoors, eats warming foods, avoids cold, and is relieved of household responsibilities. The logic behind it is rooted in restoration. Birth is seen as depleting. The body is open. Rest and recovery is not something you squeeze in between errands.

Coming from a Western lens, especially one that prizes independence and productivity, I found parts of it confronting. The dietary rules felt specific and sometimes arbitrary. The insistence on warmth felt theatrical in humid Singapore. The emphasis on staying inside clashed with my instinct to prove I was coping.

But what I couldn’t argue with was the rest. Someone else cooked. Someone else cleaned. Someone else held the baby so I could sleep in the middle of the day without apologising for it. The house kept running and I was not the engine.

After my first baby, I had done what many women do. I tried to bounce. I went for walks early. I hosted visitors. I convinced myself that movement equalled recovery and that competence was strength. I didn’t collapse, but I also didn’t fully land. I was back in the world before my body and nervous system had caught up.

The second time was different. For weeks, my only job was to feed, sleep, heal, and adjust. I wasn’t asked to optimise or perform resilience. There was an assumption that birth required a withdrawal from normal life, not a quick reentry. No one congratulated me for doing laundry. No one praised me for multitasking. The expectation was that I would be horizontal more often than not. Something in me softened under that structure.

It wasn’t indulgent. It wasn’t spa-like. It was slow in a way that felt unfamiliar and, if I’m honest, initially uncomfortable. I had internalised the idea that being capable meant being upright. That asking for help meant weakness. That productivity was the measure of coping.

Confinement interrupted that narrative. I started to notice how different my recovery felt. My bleeding settled without drama. My milk came in without the engorgement and frantic edge I remembered the first time. My mood felt steadier. I wasn’t euphoric, but I wasn’t frayed either. I felt held by the container of it, even when I rolled my eyes at certain rules.

What changed most, though, was not my body but my perspective. I realised how little structural protection postpartum receives in the West. We romanticise newborn fog but offer almost no scaffolding. We expect women to host visitors days after birth, to answer messages, to return emails, to prove they are “doing well.” We treat postpartum as a private adjustment rather than a public responsibility.

Living inside confinement showed me that rest can be cultural, not just personal. That recovery can be protected rather than squeezed in. That slowing down does not mean stagnating.

I don’t follow every confinement principle now. I don’t avoid cold drinks or stay indoors for forty days. But I have never forgotten what it felt like to be structurally allowed to rest. It shifted how I support postpartum women in my work. It shifted how I talk about recovery. It shifted the bar I set for myself. Most of all, it made me question why we celebrate endurance more than restoration.

Birth depletes. That’s not weakness. That’s biology. And pretending we can power through the depletion without consequence is not resilience, it’s conditioning. We carry that conditioning with us through parenting.

Singapore didn’t make me traditional. Confinement didn’t make me rigid. But it did show me that rest is not optional if we want mothers to remain intact.

I didn’t fully believe in confinement before I lived it. Now I believe in structured rest in a way that feels almost radical.

And I’m not sure I’ll ever unlearn that.