::A Geek in Korea::

One of the tenants of Korean pregnancy recovery periods seems to be, and please excuse my medical ignorance, that the comfort provided to a woman that has just given birth is inversely proportional to how it is supposed to impact her health. Korean women do not shower up to a week after their delivery. Being cold at any time is frowned on. The woman is never supposed to be exposed to wind. Ever. Any comfort you might try to take to cool yourself down or be more comfortable is frowned upon. Older Korean mothers go on for the rest of their lives chiding people who would dare flaunt this tradition because they have some ache or pain that lingers still from their supposed deviation from this recovery routine.

All this comes from the time where woman and baby were supposed to be locked away (for all intents and purposes) for the first one hundred days after a baby’s birth. Because of high infant mortality rates, women limited their exposure to the outside world and kept themselves and their babies in warm rooms all day. Back then, a sick baby probably would die of a common cold, so it was much more important to keep the baby and the mother as protected from the elements as possible. Now, it’s a little harder to justify some of the more extreme post-pregnancy traditions, but that doesn’t keep people from trying.

Glow’s Maternal Great Grandmother (증조 외할머니 chung-jo wae harmoni) is a dedicated old school Korean. She has her opinion and she shares it with everyone and anyone that crosses her path. She has a harsh, judgemental character that never allows her to leave a situation without putting someone in their place. My wife warned me that if she started raising any of her traditional concerns about our house or how we had set up the recovery room, I was supposed to just nod and go along. My wife said she could promise me that the hottest room in the house, where we keep the baby, wasn’t going to be warm enough.

Sure enough, when Great Grandma visited with some cousins, she claimed just that. “Can’t you turn on the floor heater? It’s too cold in this room for the baby! It’s so cold.” (It’s current temperature in the house is 28 °C in that room, hotter when there are more people inside.  The baby is wrapped in summer clothes and a blanket. She’s perfectly comfortable and not at all cold. Great Grandma wanted us to turn on the winter heater to make the room hotter than it already was too!

We sadly had to inform her that it was impossible to turn on the floor heater since we don’t even have hot water in the apartment. “Darn out luck, construction has knocked out hot water in the entire building for the past few months. We simply can’t crank up the heat any more Great Grandma! If only we could be so lucky as to recover in a room 35 °C and have to worry about dehydration and heat stroke every day too. Wow, imagine how great it would be to not be able to bathe for a week and sit in a room as hot as a sauna day in and day out. We’d be healthy for sure!”

Anyway, Great Grandma also told me not to let the dog in the room with the baby. I don’t know what they think we do when they aren’t here. Yoshi never goes into that room, baby or not. I’m sure they assume he’s a vicious killer just waiting to devour their granddaughter. Yoshi’s not allowed in any bedroom and follows that rule very well. I’ve never taken the dog in to see the baby. He’s content to sit outside the door and peer in. This is pretty much all my Korean-in-laws complaint about our house. They’ve never lived with a pet, so they think all animals are filthy and untrainable, and that dogs are best used for eating, not companionship. Only my wife’s cousins spent time with the dog as long as they spent time with the baby. They love dogs, but their parents think all dogs are vermin and act like they’ll be eaten alive when Yoshi sniffs them upon entry into the house. Yoshi was so happy that someone was paying attention to him for once that he played with them for a long time.

When they left, Great Grandma had covered the baby in two blankets. Glow was hot with her normal swaddling most days, but she was simply cooking under all those extra layers. We immediately removed them and thanked our luck that Great Grandma wouldn’t be contributing any more recovery tips.