At first I thought, I wouldn't be able to handle it because when I gave birth to my first child, someone else attended to me. Culturally, postpartum bath is usually handled by elderly women that have stopped childbearing or are advanced in motherhood experience. I had to try it myself by offering such caregiving service to my younger sister months ago by offering postpartum care to her as she delivered of a baby girl. I had to take it upon myself because there was no one else. My mum that would have done that had gone for vacation with my older sister. The second aspect was for me to learn and to get the experience of giving postpartum care to someone too.
After delivery, the new mother needs an adequate postpartum care such as birth baths, body massage, good timely nutrition, enough sleep and rest. An extra care and attention is necessary for a delivery mother to recover herself back after putting to birth.I boycotted my busy schedule, jumped through heavy traffic to get to my sister's house in another town away from where I live.
On reaching there, I started arranging her room and the baby sets to bath her. I boiled water for her bathe , while the postpartum food was cooked by a friend of hers. I started bathing the baby but you cant't believe I didn't know how to do it perfectly, someone else helped me bathe my Sharon till three months before I started bathing her alone, so somehow I'm still a Learner 😅😅 my sister came and took over from me, having noticing I couldn't bathe the baby as she would have.
I boiled water in a big iron bucket to give the delivery mum a hot bath with massage, this is the usual tradition using towel or heavy piece of rapper to soak in the hot prepared dettol water and press on the woman's belly and then all over the body for removing of blood clots and contracting her body back which expanded as a result of the pregnancy.The hot Bath also offer some soothing relieves from pregnancy stress.
I offered her hot pepper soup with boiled rice brunch. The significance of this type of light meal is to boost breast milk and the hot pepper soup to touch down her womb to remove left-over blood or stop blood clots.
This was the instant meal we could prepare at the time. It is very essential for a delivery mum. It has to be peppery and serves hot.
After I assisted her with all I could for the day I jetted off to my house at around 6pm. Somehow, I felt that wasn't enough but at the same I felt fulfilled by having this experience myself and it has taught me the deeper responsibility of caring for one another in needs. And I have also learned the intrinsic experience of motherhood and it's accompanying responsibilities. It was a very interesting experience for me
My introduction post link is here: MY FIRST INTRODUCTION POST ON HIVE