Post-natal Care in Indonesia

Throughout my pregnancy, I heard several women talking about something that sounded pretty magical.  After giving birth, you could hire someone to come to your home every day to cook food specifically for women recovering from childbirth, give you a post-natal massage, and prepare a steam bath with traditional herbs meant to restore the body to full health. When this regimen was finished, they would then wrap you up "like a mummy" as one friend explained, so that your stomach would return to it's original size. Here in Indonesia, this special post-natal care usually lasts for 40 days after giving birth.  Women don't really leave the house, and family members or household staff help them take care of other household duties as well as other children.  To be honest, this arrangement sounded way better to me than the typical way that American women recover from childbirth.

Since I was having the unique opportunity of giving birth in Indonesia, I wanted to give the traditional regimen a try and see if it really did help with the recovery process.  I talked to several Indonesian friends about it, got a number for a company that sent out women trained in this process, and set up my post-natal spa treatment to take place a couple of weeks after I gave birth, and to coincide with my mom's visit.  The whole regimen would take two hours per day, and the only way for me to be able to have that kind of time would be with my mom's help taking care of the kids.  I also cut the length of the treatment down from the traditional 40 days to 5 days.

When the day arrived for me to receive the first treatment, I was really curious to find out what would take place.  When there was a knock at the door, I opened it to find a middle-aged Indonesian lady armed with a small backpack who didn't speak a word of English, but spoke to me as though I was fluent in bahasa.  She was wearing the traditional hijab and she unhurriedly sat on my living room couch while I hurriedly finished my lunch, which I'd been instructed to eat before the treatment began.

Once upstairs, she opened her backpack and removed a small tape measure.  She proceeded to measure my stomach in three places, and record the measurements in her phone.  I could only assume she was going to do before and after measurements to see how the treatment worked.

First, she gave me a massage, which was definitely the best part of the entire treatment.  The massage lasted a full hour and a half, and she was determined to work out every kink of every muscle in my body! After the massage, she boiled a pot of water on the stove with some herbs inside.  Shen then had me sit on a chair with the pot of steaming herbs underneath me, and created a tent around me using saris.  Once I was ensconced in the cloths, she lifted the lid off the pot and steam filled the tent. She would periodically touch my skin, I wasn't sure why, maybe to figure out how much I was sweating, and she would ask me if it was still hot.  Finally, at some point she determined I'd sweated enough toxins out of my body, and she opened the tent.  I was left shivering and covered in sweat, which she then wiped down with a washcloth, using the hot water from the pot.  I felt like she was my mother and I was a child, the way she wiped me down front and back, and then patted me dry.  She was very endearing with her exclamations of delight at how much I sweated and her laughs as we stumbled around our language barrier together.

Receiving the steam bath treatment in my cocoon of saris.

After that, she mixed a white powder with water to create a paste.  I asked her what it was and she told me, but I didn't understand what she said.  First, she rubbed it on my stomach to keep my stomach cool and to help it not itch after she wrapped it. Then she had me lay down and she wrapped what I can only describe as a corset around me from my hips up to my chest, and tightened the strings through it.  When she had pulled and jabbed until it was tight, she had me stand up and pulled and jabbed some more until I felt like I couldn't move.  She then took a long strip of cloth like a scarf and wound it expertly around and around me, twisting it in the front tightly and pulling it around my back over and over again, until I really did feel like I was wrapped up like a mummy.  Somehow, with her wrapping and pulling she made my stomach disappear, and so did my breath.  There was absolutely no way I would be able to have bad posture or bend from the waist.  It felt kind of like I was sitting in a very straight backed chair.   She was delighted with the results however, and instructed me to wear the wrap until the next morning.  Yikes.  I didn't know if I was going to be able to do it! She then took some more of the paste and rubbed it on my legs and forehead, to keep me from something that I can only describe as "dizziness" although I don't think that's really how it fully translates into English.

She left with a cheerful smile and told me she'd see me tomorrow.  After she left I wondered how in the world I'd be able to keep the wrap on until the next morning.  But I was determined to try; I really wanted to see if the traditional method worked.  I did manage to keep it on the first night, and after a while I really didn't notice it.  But I couldn't imagine wearing it for 40 days, it impeded my movement way too much.

The next day she returned.  One of my favorite parts of the whole experience was the fact that usually about half-way through the massage she would strike up a conversation with me in bahasa. Usually, I don't get a lot of opportunities to speak bahasa for an extended period of time, and although it did make the massage slightly less relaxing, I still appreciated the mental exercise of trying to follow along with her conversation and respond appropriately.  Many times I just guessed, sometimes I had no idea what she was saying, but I also enjoyed the rare moments of understanding.  That second day, she wrapped me so tightly my ribs hurt.  About an hour after she left, I removed the scarf and the corset.  It was too much!

I managed to stay wrapped up for 3 and a half out of the 5 days, and that was about all that I wanted to attempt.  The price for beauty, or a flat stomach more quickly, was too high for me.  It did seem like my stomach was smaller, and on the last day, she did the final measurements.  Her delight and exclamations of praise to Allah at the change made me laugh.  She gave me a high five with a big grin on her face, and I felt a real sense of camaraderie with her.  We had done this together!

After the final day of the treatment, we took photos together; she and my mom, the three of us, and me and her.  Her endearing warmth and humor made me thankful for the whole experience, and the opportunity to just lay around for two hours every day probably did help with my recovery.  It's hard to tell what healing occurred as a result of time versus as a result of the treatment, but I did feel healthier, stronger, and more physically rejuvenated after the five days.  I also felt culturally satisfied: although my Mom and I didn't venture out into Indonesia while she visited, we managed to have an adventure within my own home.

Thank you, Mom, for watching these crazies so that I could have this experience!

Hooray for Mom/Grandma!