Baby: 30-Day DIY Confinement Herbs with Lao Ban Niang

Whether you’re DIY-ing your own confinement or hiring a confinement lady, one thing that you can’t miss out on for a traditional confinement is the herbal soups.

As a noob living with two unmarried aunts with no mom or mom-in-law for help, I decided to remove the hassle of reading up and mixing-and-matching my own confinement herbs by turning to the experts. My convenient one-stop shop for confinement herbs is Lao Ban Niang, a traditional Chinese medicine retailer with more than 30 years of experience in the industry. Their physical stores are in Albert Centre, but you can also shop and order from their online store. Browse their confinement sets here.

I’m trying out their 30-days Confinement Herbal Soup Package, which comes in a nifty carry box with each day’s herbs packed neatly and labelled individually. For this particular package, you also get two boxes of Sheng Hua Tang (生化汤) on top of the 30-day herbs. I thought it’s very reasonably priced as compared to other similar sets in the market. What I really like about this convenient package is that I just need to deal with one box of pre-packed herbs a day, without worrying about the quantity to include in my soup. Simply remove daily box from fridge, empty contents into pot, add meat/veg, top with water and cook.

Plus, the essential thing for me is that each box comes with printed and easy-to-understand instructions on how to use the herbs. It’s not like they just sell you the herbs and provide verbal information which you’ll probably forget after some time. I was impressed with the accompanying details: Steps on how to cook the herbs, which box to take for Day 1 to Day 30, the individual components of herbs and what they do for your body (down to the weight in grams!) and even separate instructions to follow depending on whether yours is a natural or c-sect delivery. So if you gave birth naturally, follow instructions for ‘Natural Childbirth’. If you gave birth via c-sect, follow instructions for ‘Cesarean Section’. There’s no confusion. And yes, instructions are in both English and Chinese.

A sample of the quality herbs that are included in the 30-day package (also in English):

It’s really easy to prepare the soups. You can either cook on the stove top or use your slow cooker. What I did:

1. Rinse herbs and add into slow cooker.
2. Add choice of meat (pork ribs, lean meat, veggie based or fish based soups are all ok – chicken/black chicken can be added after the first week)
3. Add water and cook for 3-4 hours on auto-shift or 7 hours on low.

And my piping hot soup is ready! I have it for both lunch and dinner and get one component of confinement food out of the way. And I repeat step 1-3 for the next day.

I’m very thankful that I’m well taken care of during my confinement period even when I don’t come from a very traditional family. Convenient confinement packages like these take the pain and confusion out of confinement so I can focus more on my baby girl!

To get your own confinement herb packages, visit Lao Ban Niang at their physical stores or browse their online store. Free delivery in SG with orders over $150.

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Disclaimer: I received the 30-day Confinement Soup Package for review purposes and received no monetary payment for this review. All opinions and comments on my blog are my own unless you bribe me with a lot of money, cash only. But until now I haven’t accepted any bribes yet which is worth trading my 良心 for to say something is good when it sucks. Unless you really got a lot of cash to spare, like A LOT, 收买我吧.