Sitting the month with Susie Lau - how she’s feeding her postpartum body

You know you’ve hit a low point when you’re crying because Ocado has run out of taramasalata. And you’ve schlepped to the Turkish corner shop and they too have run out of tubs of pale, pink, fishy goodness. How else is my double-pronged, feeding-on-the-couch operation supposed to function? One arm holding the babe while he sucks the life out of me, the other dipping scraps of pitta/ salt and vinegar crisps/any sort of carb vehicle into said tub of tarama in order to bring umami meaning back into this mundane existence — which consists mainly of stopping a baby’s cry by yanking my boob out of a very functional bra (although as an aside note, British maternity lingerie brand Six totally buck that ugly nursing bra cliché).

Everybody bangs on about pregnancy cravings, but nobody tells you that hunger pangs while another human being is feeding off you are even stronger. The kind of sustenance I’m craving doesn’t run along the lines of sofa-bound comfort eating — biscuits, slices of buttered toast, mugs of tea (as nice as those things are). Instead I find myself drooling over things that are forbidden in Chinese culture, as I vaguely adhered to the dos and don’ts of the postpartum confinement period known as ‘sitting month’.

There is no way that I’m going to literally sit at home for a month, not venturing out and not washing my hair (so as to prevent the cold outside elements from ruining my ‘chi’). But as my mother so kindly came around like some stock Chinese soothsayer character offering all her postpartum food wisdom and Tupperware boxes full of grub, I thought I’d at least abide by some of the sitting month food rules. Unless you’ve grown up with an East Asian mother berating you for eating such-and-such a food because it’s too ‘hot’ (read ‘unhealthy’) for your chi, it can be tricky to get your head around the concept of what’s ‘hot’ and what’s ‘cold’. When we delineate food as ‘warming’ or ‘cooling’, it’s not necessarily got anything to do with actual temperature. Green tea is considered to be ‘cold’. Crisps are ‘hot’. It’s a sort of vague holistic way of attributing balance to your diet.

A postpartum body is apparently meant to be at risk of being ‘cold’, so to warm it up, you’re meant to stuff yourself silly with sweet ginger soup boiled with red jujube dates and goji berries, chicken braised with sesame oil and — brace yourselves for the appetising mental image — pig’s trotters boiled in black vinegar and yes, more ginger. To an unsuspecting onlooker, the murky dish of gelatinous meat swimming in dark brown liquid isn’t dissimilar from what emerges in the third stage of labour, which was perhaps triggering for my partner (and no, I did not eat my placenta — but fair dos to those who do).

As Mama Lau has come calling on a regular basis with her cauldrons of ginger soups and pig’s trotters, I’ve quietly considered wrecking my chi by dream-drooling over some big cold food no-nos — namely raw things, seafood and spicy food. Those dreams consist of platters of oysters, mega-spicy Sichuan dry-fried dishes laden with chilli and monstrous plates of clams with spaghetti. The exception to my month of ‘warm’ food eating is those tubs of glorious taramasalata. Forgive me, Mama Lau, for I have food-sinned. I’m finally done with sitting month, so you’ll find me gorging at the sushi/oyster bar as we get into the full swing of this festive month of gluttony.