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I am cantonese so I know my mom will make "ginger vinegar" for me. And probably lots and lots of homemade soup w/ fresh ingredients. DH is kind of Fujianese (they were from province close by), for my SIL, my MIL had made her tons of fresh killed chicken soup.

Did following these rule help you recover faster or look better? I always believe that do help you in some ways but not showering and washing hair is probably the part I can't deal with!

I'm korean, and I ate miyukguk everyday, didn't drink cold water/bevarages, and only left the house for doc appts for the first three weeks (sam-chil-il)... I did shower and took baths too.

I think all of it (baths included) helped with my pp recovery and no long term side effects from L&D and will likely follow the same in the future.

I have never heard of this... fascinating! I will have to look into it.

I couldn't do anything like this if I wanted to. I'll probably take it easy the first couple weeks, but I don't have the luxury of taking a month and not going anywhere. I still need to get DS from school.

I'm Chinese, and didn't really "sit month", but my dad did make food that encouraged it so lots of ginger was added to foods. I showered daily, and felt like it helped keep my nether regions clean which helped with the healing. If I didn't use the peri-bottle to rinse, the stitches felt itchy and painful. I don't drink cold water, so that wasn't an issue. I'd start laundry (put stuff in the washer), but my mom would transfer them to the dryer and fold them for me. I left the house a few times, but my parents aren't super superstitious so they didn't mind.

@locavore_mama: My mom serves as our doula, so she was with us for a couple of weeks before/after DD's birth, but honestly I would have preferred to have more time just with my little family. Even though my mom and is wonderful and means well, things were just more of a production than I wanted them to be after DD was born. My MIL, on the other hand, is useless. She straight up told me that she was coming to see her granddaughter and that she wasn't interested in helping. She is a wonderful, generous woman, but she is also completely self-centered and has no idea what is appropriate when visiting new parents. I really hope we will be in a much bigger house with LO#2 is born... more space would make things much easier.

@snowjewelz: A lot of women follow the no cold foods/drinks thing when TTC, too.

I find this fascinating! I couldn't imagine doing a 'sit month'. Just for perspective for those of you who have nothing to compare to, I did none of these things, as my culture (to my knowledge) doesn't have any specific anything regarding post partum recovery. (I'm just a Canadian white girl of british decent). My recovery was super duper easy with DD. I showered about 10 hours after she was born (and as often as possible after that, usually every other day) drank ice water every time I sat down to nurse, ate whatever was easy to get to etc. I did have my sister with me during the days for the first week and DH was home from work at night. Family also brought food when they came to visit so I didn't have to cook.

So interesting! I always think its really cool how a lot of asian cultures (from what I've read?) have similar arrangements and how much the mom's mother is involved. I think the no-showering thing I wouldn't be cool with though, I'd be up at 3am sneaking a shower

I sort of wonder though, in cultures where this type of thing is more prevalent, are husbands/dads expected to be less involved? Or is that the norm? On one hand having your mom sort of wait on you and nurse you through the first month sounds kind of awesome. But on the other hand, I feel like that would take a lot of bonding time away from my husband and LO. We plan to hole up, just the 3 of us, for the first week to figure out our lives as new parents… and I'm not sure that is the best course physically, but emotionally it makes the most sense to me to have some private time for our new family without intrusion from our parents.

I ate all the food my mom made me, but showered, walked around, did chores, etc. With DS I took a walk to Target in the cold. Oops. Mom was not pleased. Haha.

I can't imagine not showering for a month after having a baby. Especially having had a c-section, it's important to keep yourself clean, I think. And I lived on giant jugs of ice water. I was so thirsty and needed tons and tons of water. TBH, I'm a lot more concerned with my own comfort than my mom's opinions. Maybe I'm a bad daughter, haha.

I was looking at the blogger bee's profiles and after some random clicking came to this!

http://www.hellobee.com/2011/12/22/sitting-the-month/