11 days of nightmares from a confinement lady

For Chinese, we have a tradition of hiring a confinement lady to take care of the new mum and the newborn baby. Her task is to handle the baby so that the mum can have a good rest after the birth trama. She will also have to cook and doing some cleaning. 

My wife's confinement lady came to our place on 2 Jan 2011. 

Once she unpacked her bag, she proceeded to the kitchen to familiarise herself and tidy up the place. I must say that she is very neat and tidy.

During dinner that day, she told me and Kaye that she was having a bit of sore throat and could not share the confinement food with my wife. Thinking that it is just a minor issue, we told her that she can cook separate dishes for me and herself. (Confinement food are very heaty.) Well unknowingly, we have just stepped into the beginning of our nightmare.

Once we knew that she was having sore throat, my wife provided her with lozenges, and Lo Han Guo to sooth the sore throat. However, her sore throat went on to develop into cough as she was unable to resist the temptation of eating chilli and sambai. She pushed the blame to me that because I ate chilli, I tempted her to eat too. I had to constantly remind her to take her medication every meal as she kept forgetting.

We were very worried that her cough and sore throat would affect our newborn baby, hence we bought face mask for her to use whenever she handles the baby. Yet again, she refused to put them on while handling the baby!

(@_@)" She was risking my baby's health!

Before confirming this confinement ladies, my wife told her that she was required to do marketing unless my mum or mum in law was available to help. Instead of doing so, she wanted me to run the errands to buy rice, sauce, bread and even vegetables. Her excuse was that she didn't know where the supermarket was. 

(=.=)" what an excuse...

Her third day of work, she told us that the bread was bought for us was going to expire and has about 6 pieces. Both Kaye and I did not want to waste the food, so told her that we would help to finish up bread.  After that incident, she took

the liberty to stop preparing breakfast and assumed that bread would be our breakfast from that on. Apparantly, my wife should be taking hot dishes even for breakfast.

(>.<)" she was just too lazy to prepare cereal for my wife. 

She saw that I have been waking up in the middle of night to feed Elric and assured us that we could just past the load to her. Yet one night, we were both awaken by Elric's cries at about 3am, while she was still snoring away in the room. Despite us liting up the room to feed, she woke up only after we were done with changing diaper for Elric.You know what's the best part? she asked me, "Oh... you mean the baby cried?"

My wife couldn't take it... and took pictures of what she did.^o^

start of feed... *snore*

during feed... *snore*

end of feed... still... *snore*

Isn't she amazing!??!!??

Both my wife and I were dumbfounded by her irresponsible behaviour but that was not all. On another occasion she left Elric topless and alone on the mobile changing station by the window side without even the safety buckle on. We were shocked by what we saw, I quickly swaddle him up as the wind from the window was very strong. When questioned her about this matter, she just said that she was sun bathing him and she would check on him every 5min. 

That was certainly a lie since she did not even notice me going into the room, swaddling up Elric and removing him from the window. Kaye then informed me that this confinement lady had previously warned her never to leave Elric unattended on the mobile changing station as it is very dangerous. What then was she doing??? 

Grrrrrr.....#*(>_<)*#

We were at our breaking point and spoke to the lady who made the referral. She finally managed to arrange another confinement lady for us. Honestly, we couldn't wait for her to leave. :(( So on the 11th day, we sent her off straight after breakfast. :p

We learnt the hard way how important a good confinement lady can be!

So in the next post, I will be sharing with you on choosing a good confinement lady. 

Thanks for bearing with my lengthy, whiny post! :p