confinement food catering experience

Traditional Chinese physicians believe that giving birth drains one's energy and blood, which in turn, weaken the health of a mummy. So we have this thing called "confinement period", which helps us replenish ourselves with good nutrition and plenty of rest.

Before I delivered Rynus, I ordered 2 weeks of  post-natal catering food from Natal Essentials. Since I do not have confinement nanny nor mother/mother-in-law to take care of me during my confinement period, I thought it's pretty hassle free to just order my food, as I knew I would be super busy with handling my new born, and cooking my own confinement meals with all types of  Chinese herbs, is just too painstaking.

But now I think back, if  you do get a little help from someone, a maid, a nanny,  or a relative, to settle your meals, then it's all possible to just DIY your confinement food. Problems with catering food (in this case Natal Essentials as that's the only one I've ever tried) are:
- You do not have too much variety, as they repeat the same menu on a weekly basis.
- You will definitely get certain food which you do not appreciate, be it that you don't like the taste and how it's prepared, or you simply do not eat certain types of food.

Of course in general, catering food has many other benefits, especially to first time mummies:
- hassle free, you don't even need to wash the dishes as they pack the food with microwave disposable wares, and deliver to you at your doorstep.
- dishes could look ordinary but they were specially prepared to fit the post-natal bodies, with less oil, salt and no MSG, at least that's what the caterer claimed.
- save you the time and $$ to buy those herbs which can really cost a big bomb.

I was too busy looking after Rynus after my delivery so I didn't manage to take a picture of the food from Natal Essentials. I managed to find a photo online just for reference. As you can see, they provide red dates tea and rice with every meal. The portion is big for me but there were not much greens most of the time.

Anyway my conclusion is, catered confinement food has very tasty soup, but it's just one portion per meal and in fact to boost milk supply, it's still better to take 2-4 times of  soup a day. As for other dishes, you can prepare more flavored ones easily for sure. So, order for the first week if you really need time to adjust to all the new changes, and challenges. Then prepare your own food as long as you have someone to help out with either cooking, or baby..