Chilla: The Persian Forty Days
"She is not alone for forty days."
The word chilla comes from the Persian chehel, meaning forty. It names the forty-day postpartum tradition observed across Iran, Pakistan, parts of Central Asia, and through the wider Persianate world. In some Pakistani households it is called sawa mahina, the five weeks, but the period itself, and the principle behind it, is the same: a window of vulnerability for the new mother and the new baby, in which they are kept warm, kept fed, and kept never alone.
Why forty
In Persian thought, forty is not an arbitrary number. It recurs through Persian poetry, Sufi spiritual practice, mourning rituals, and the wider rhythms of cultural life. The chilla period draws on the same understanding: that forty days is the duration required for something to be made or unmade, and that the body of a woman who has just given birth is in exactly this state.
Inside the home
The new mother stays at home for the full chilla. She is not received by visitors who are not close family, and she does not go to public gatherings; in many households she does not leave the house at all. She is kept warm, often with her head covered, and protected from draughts and from the cold air that Persian and Pakistani traditions both treat as physically harmful in the postpartum body. The women of the family, principally her mother and her mother-in-law, attend to the household work. She rests. She feeds the baby. She is held by the company she keeps.
The seventh day
In many regional traditions, the mother does not bathe through the first seven days. On the seventh, she is bathed for the first time, usually by her own mother or a senior woman in the family, and her body is massaged with black seed oil or another warmed oil chosen by the household. The seventh day marks a quiet first threshold within the longer forty: the moment the body is touched again, oiled again, gently received back into the world of ordinary care.
What she is fed
Food during chilla is warm, energy-rich, and intentionally restorative. Kachi, a sweet wheat-flour porridge cooked in ghee with cardamom and almonds, is the most iconic postpartum dish, eaten through the early weeks. Chicken broths simmered with herbs are taken daily. Almonds, pistachios, and dates are offered for strength. Lamb stews and rich Abgoosht-style broths appear regularly. Cold drinks, raw foods, and foods considered cooling, including beans, onions, and garlic in many households, are kept back from the first weeks.
The oils and the herbs
Black seed oil, sometimes called kalonji oil, is the central postpartum oil, used both for the seventh-day massage and through the wider chilla for the mother's body. Saffron is taken in small amounts with milk for warmth, energy, and steadiness of mood. Cardamom and fennel are used in nourishing teas to support digestion and lactation. Most chilla herbal preparations are family inheritance, passed mother to daughter, with regional variation across Iran, Pakistan, and the Persianate diaspora.
What chilla teaches every mother
The teaching at the heart of chilla is the one most modern Western postpartums have lost: a woman who has just given birth should not be alone. Not for an hour, not for a day, not for forty. There should be a person in the room with her. Someone who knows her. Someone who is not in a hurry to leave. The teaching is not that she be entertained. It is that she be witnessed. The forty days are forty days of witness.
On Working Across Cultures
For years I worked as cabin crew on long-haul routes. Alongside colleagues and the women I met in the cities we flew to, I noticed how differently people talked about new mothers, about grandmothers, about the weeks after birth. It was only after I had my own baby, and lost my mum in those first weeks, that I understood how thin our postpartum had become.
I am of Western heritage. The traditions held on these pages are not mine to claim. If you have inherited one, jaapa or zuo yuezi or omugwo or la cuarentena or chilla or another, your family holds it better than I ever will. What I can do is the work that makes space for that tradition to happen. The cooking and the cleaning. The herbal teas brewed to the recipe your mother sends. The warm oil prepared the way your maternal aunt tells me to prepare it. The nights when someone needs to sit awake with the baby so a grandmother can sleep.
We build your postpartum together. The shape comes from you. Plants of my ancestral lands sit alongside whatever your tradition asks for. Where my knowledge runs out, I learn from the people in your life who hold it.
What this could look like in your postpartum
If your family practises chilla and you would like a doula present, my role might be the holding one: making sure your mother or mother-in-law has what she needs, taking the night shifts so the senior women can rest, preparing the rooms, sourcing the oils and the ingredients for kachi and the broths. If your family is small, or far away, or unable to travel, I can step into more of the hands-on care: warm baths, oil massage, the food, the company. The principle at the heart of chilla, that there is always a person in the room with you, is the principle we plan around.
Some families wish to keep chilla close to its traditional Iranian or Pakistani form. Some want to weave it with British family customs in a way that honours both inheritances. We design your bespoke postpartum together.
Begin Your Postpartum
The Sacred Pause is my six-week postpartum offering, and a natural fit for a chilla-honouring postpartum. To talk through what your forty days could look like, book a free discovery call. There is no pressure on either side.
Mothering the Mother