Postpartum Traditions From Around the World
Almost every culture on earth has a tradition for the mother after birth. Forty days. Three weeks. One hundred days. Different lengths, different names, different foods and herbs, but a shared belief that the woman who has just given birth should rest, be fed, be warmed, be touched, be tended to. She is not expected to perform recovery. She is expected to receive it.
The modern Western postpartum, by contrast, is largely an absence. A short hospital stay. A six-week check. A pressure to bounce back into a body, a role, a working life that the rest of the world would still be protecting her from.
These pages exist as a small library of postpartum traditions I have learnt (and am still learning) about, drawn on, and quietly woven into my practice. Whatever heritage you carry, I hope you find some of it reflected here. If you carry no living tradition of your own, you may find one that speaks to you anyway. There is wisdom in all of them.
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.
Traditions Held on This Site
Nine of the world's wonderful postpartum practices, each with its own page.
Jaapa
The forty days, rooted in Ayurvedic wisdom.
Warm oils, belly binding, simple digestible food, and the saying that the first forty days will shape the next forty years. Known in Ayurveda as Sutika Paricharya, "care of the new mother." One of the oldest continuously practised postpartum traditions in the world.
Continue ReadingLa Cuarentena
Forty days of rest, closed by ceremony.
Observed across Mexico and much of Latin America. Forty days indoors, often with rebozo wrapping, supportive abdominal binding, and the closing ceremony known as la cerrada that marks the end of the postpartum opening.
Continue ReadingZuo Yuezi
"Sitting the month."
Thirty days of warming foods, herbal soups, and protection from cold and wind, drawn from Traditional Chinese Medicine. Often supported by a pei yue, a hired postpartum specialist, or by the new mother's own mother-in-law.
Continue ReadingOmugwo
The grandmother moves in.
The maternal grandmother (or mother-in-law where she cannot come) takes residence with the new family for one to three months. Hot water therapy, pepper soup, abdominal massage, and inherited knowledge passed hand to hand. Practised across Nigerian communities, with parallel traditions among the Yoruba (Itoju Omo) and the Hausa (Wankan Jego).
Continue ReadingChilla
From chehel, the Persian for forty.
A forty-day period of seclusion, warmth, nourishment, and family care. Observed across Iranian and Pakistani households in different forms, sometimes called sawa mahina, "five weeks," in North India and Pakistan.
Continue ReadingSamchilil
"Three sevens," the protected twenty-one days.
Twenty-one days of rest, miyeok-guk seaweed soup taken several times daily, and protection from cold air. Part of the wider tradition of sanhujori, Korean postpartum care, which now also takes place in dedicated sanhujoriwon centres.
Continue ReadingPantang
Forty to forty-four days of confinement.
Drawn from Malay traditional medicine. Bertungku, a warmed stone laid on the abdomen. Bengkung belly binding, the long cloth wrap that has crossed into Western doula practice. Herbal baths, jamu tonics, and warmed foods.
Continue ReadingSatogaeri Shussan and Ansei
"Returning home for birth," and the rest that follows.
The pregnant woman returns to her mother's home for the final weeks of pregnancy and stays for the first month or more after birth. Ansei, peace and quiet with attentive care, traditionally one hundred days, more commonly thirty in modern Japan.
Continue ReadingSebooua and the Arba'een
The seventh day, and the forty.
Sebooua marks the seventh day after birth, a family gathering and naming ceremony. The arba'een, from the Arabic for forty, is the longer rest that follows. Observed in varying forms across North Africa and the Levant, often woven through Islamic practices around nifas.
Continue ReadingBegin Your Postpartum
If one of these traditions is yours, or if you have begun to wonder what your own postpartum could look like, the next step is a quiet conversation. There is no pressure on either side.
Mothering the Mother