Love your writing, love what you're doing. Thanks for sharing with authenticity and care, Clarissa. Glad you're honoring your own needs along the way. ❤️
Thank you so much for the amazing Substack entry, as well as the link to for a free reading of your New Yorker piece entitled "From Life in a Luxury Hotel for New Moms and Babies."
I love the concept of the Postpartum Hotel: An interesting application of traditional ideas applied to a modern idiom. As you describe the place, there seems to be a clinical coldness and impersonality to the experience that is hard to miss. If there were more structured opportunities to socialize with other mothers in group or even one-on-one settings, perhaps those connections might temper the experience, just as your own friendship that you forged had.
"...new mothers traditionally engage in zuo yue zi, or thirty to forty days of rest at home, pampered by family."
Oh, wow! I'm really excited that you're talking about this. As a postpartum massage therapist, our in-home postpartum massage services are considered standard as part of this recovery period. I also practice and teach Infant Massage to families, so your piece was so relevant to my actual life-work.
Most of our clients are people who've immigrated, as well women who were born here whose families have lived here for one, two, or even more generations, yet kept this tradition alive.
I've work with families from Italy, and I've been informed that the word quarantine comes from the Italian word for forty, referring to this apparently ancient 40-days-of-rest-for-new-Mom-time concept, and not isolation while sick with an infectious disease.
I've also worked with families South Asia, East Asia, as well as a few Central and South American countries. All practice this in-home "confinement" in some form, usually for about a month or forty days.
I do wonder how many other cultures there are around the globe that I'm not aware of that practice this in one form or another. The tradition seems to go way back, everywhere it's found.
"A week after I gave birth to my son, I lay face up on a heated massage table so that another woman could milk me. "
We practice breast massage as Certified Postnatal LMTs. As a Massage Therapist, it's not within the Scope of Practice to be really be thoroughly aware of the benefits of breastfeeding, which are many.
I guess your therapist is at odds with traditional Taiwanese culture on this point, as breast milk is regarded as liquid gold, essentially, and from your writings, I gather she didn't place sufficient value on your milk.
I am also a Certified Lactation professional; in that role, I'd say that any advice that discourages a mother from providing her own milk and give up direct or bottle feeding of your own milk is not helpful. If it's solely a matter of ease, there are so many benefits of human milk that formula cannot replicate that should be considered in balance.
However, your therapist might not have known all that.
As an LMT, her view is shared by women-therapists even here in the U.S. Our world culture is about an easy modern life, especially for the classes that can afford it.
"The experience was so indulgent that it felt wrong."
Is it not sad that our culture tends to facilitate women feeling this way? When would a human, during the normal course of life (excluding disease and acute issues) ever be in greater need of extensive help from others? Women are under-appreciated, and it's been internalized, even.
"Although it didn’t have a partnership with a Michelin-recommended restaurant, like some postpartum hotels"
So there's an entire evolved industry? I would have never known. Amazing what's out there in this vast world!
Welcome back. I missed you!
Love your writing, love what you're doing. Thanks for sharing with authenticity and care, Clarissa. Glad you're honoring your own needs along the way. ❤️
Thank you so much for the amazing Substack entry, as well as the link to for a free reading of your New Yorker piece entitled "From Life in a Luxury Hotel for New Moms and Babies."
I love the concept of the Postpartum Hotel: An interesting application of traditional ideas applied to a modern idiom. As you describe the place, there seems to be a clinical coldness and impersonality to the experience that is hard to miss. If there were more structured opportunities to socialize with other mothers in group or even one-on-one settings, perhaps those connections might temper the experience, just as your own friendship that you forged had.
"...new mothers traditionally engage in zuo yue zi, or thirty to forty days of rest at home, pampered by family."
Oh, wow! I'm really excited that you're talking about this. As a postpartum massage therapist, our in-home postpartum massage services are considered standard as part of this recovery period. I also practice and teach Infant Massage to families, so your piece was so relevant to my actual life-work.
Most of our clients are people who've immigrated, as well women who were born here whose families have lived here for one, two, or even more generations, yet kept this tradition alive.
I've work with families from Italy, and I've been informed that the word quarantine comes from the Italian word for forty, referring to this apparently ancient 40-days-of-rest-for-new-Mom-time concept, and not isolation while sick with an infectious disease.
I've also worked with families South Asia, East Asia, as well as a few Central and South American countries. All practice this in-home "confinement" in some form, usually for about a month or forty days.
I do wonder how many other cultures there are around the globe that I'm not aware of that practice this in one form or another. The tradition seems to go way back, everywhere it's found.
"A week after I gave birth to my son, I lay face up on a heated massage table so that another woman could milk me. "
We practice breast massage as Certified Postnatal LMTs. As a Massage Therapist, it's not within the Scope of Practice to be really be thoroughly aware of the benefits of breastfeeding, which are many.
I guess your therapist is at odds with traditional Taiwanese culture on this point, as breast milk is regarded as liquid gold, essentially, and from your writings, I gather she didn't place sufficient value on your milk.
I am also a Certified Lactation professional; in that role, I'd say that any advice that discourages a mother from providing her own milk and give up direct or bottle feeding of your own milk is not helpful. If it's solely a matter of ease, there are so many benefits of human milk that formula cannot replicate that should be considered in balance.
However, your therapist might not have known all that.
As an LMT, her view is shared by women-therapists even here in the U.S. Our world culture is about an easy modern life, especially for the classes that can afford it.
"The experience was so indulgent that it felt wrong."
Is it not sad that our culture tends to facilitate women feeling this way? When would a human, during the normal course of life (excluding disease and acute issues) ever be in greater need of extensive help from others? Women are under-appreciated, and it's been internalized, even.
"Although it didn’t have a partnership with a Michelin-recommended restaurant, like some postpartum hotels"
So there's an entire evolved industry? I would have never known. Amazing what's out there in this vast world!