Yoga and cheesecake for new mums in plush Chinese ‘sitting centres’

Shanghai (AFP): Yoga class starts shortly, the pristine massage centre is open for business and cheesecake is served on a platter of pastries and fruit.

And then the muffled cry of a baby emerges down the hallway. The setting may resemble a five-star hotel, but this is a “sitting centre” on Shanghai's outskirts where mothers pay up to 70,000 yuan ($11,000) a month to stay with their new-borns.

Chinese culture dictates that mothers confine themselves after giving birth, also known as a “sitting month”. Such confinement was once widely practised in many areas of the world and continues to be popular in other parts of Asia.

But as incomes rise in China, the sitting month no longer means being cooped up at home without bathing or visitors.

“We prefer to find a professional facility to take care of our baby. We have no experience in taking care of the baby or ourselves after birth,” said Yu Xueting, 34, a first-time mother, her weeks-old son “Kangkang” lying contentedly beside her. Both appear well looked-after at the private Lake Malaren International Postpartum Care Centre in a modern building embellished with turrets and intended to mimic old northern European architecture.

Mother and son are accompanied at all times by a nanny who sleeps in the same room. Numerous specialists, nurses and cooks are on hand. A photography studio captures those precious early days of life, while a “Mother's Classroom” runs lectures for new mums to learn how to care for their baby - and themselves.

Dads can stay too, but usually just visit. Yu, who works for IT firm Hewlett-Packard, said the lengthy stay “liberates our family”. “If we do it at home (take care of the baby), then the whole family can't sleep well.

I can take maternity leave, but my husband needs to go to work.” “Sitting month”, or “Zuoyuezi”, stretches back to about 200 BC and the Han Dynasty, said Elizabeth Hui-Choi, a lecturer at Hong Kong University's School of Nursing.

Empresses would be well looked-after following childbirth, including a special diet and lifestyle to restore their “broken” body and prevent future illness, said Hui-Choi. “They believed that treating the mother well would also bring good things to the baby, and it is still believed to be that way.”

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) “also plays a very important part” in how most Chinese women still think after childbirth, dictating they should eat more of certain foods, such as ginger, and cut out others such as fruit, she said.

Some stop showering, washing their hair, or even brushing their teeth for the month, and won't venture outside -- TCM says these can upset the body's balance.

Yu did not wash her hair for a week, but doctors told her that was unnecessary and the centre recommends a more scientific approach that blends TCM and Western medicine.