In the quiet hours of breastfeeding my third child, I reflected on how different this postpartum experience felt, not just from my first, but from what I was witnessing around me. While the postpartum period is often painted as a time of joyful bonding, my lived experience revealed something deeper and more complex: a journey shaped by cultural traditions, migration, and systemic shifts. With my first child, I returned to my parents’ home to be cared for by my mother and sisters for 40 days. From the smell of canjeelo (fermented pancakes) in the morning to taking regular naps with my baby and receiving emotional support, I was held by the women in my life. This experience felt both sacred and ordinary, rooted in the Somali tradition of afartan bax.

In Somali culture, an umul, a freshly postpartum mother, is cared for with deep intention and reverence. Unlike Somali, which centres the postpartum woman with the word umul, English lacks an equivalent. This absence reflects more than language, it signals a cultural gap. A missing collective ethic around mothering the mother. An umul is encouraged to rest, recover and be fully supported until her afartan bax, a 40-day period that honours both her healing and her journey into motherhood. This kind of postpartum care isn’t unique to Somalia. In China, it’s known as zuo yuezi or “sitting the month,” and in South Asia, it’s called chilla, both centering the mother with warmth, rest, special foods and generational care. These cultural traditions remind us that postpartum care isn’t abstract; it’s lived. It takes form in what we eat, how we’re treated and the space we’re given to rest.

To better understand these traditions and what they offer us today, let’s explore three core areas of postpartum care across different cultures: food, care, and rest.

Food: Nourishment as Medicine and Memory

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Across cultures, food in the postpartum period is more than sustenance; it is a language of love and recovery, passed down from mother to daughter, aunty to niece and sister to sister. Meals are prepared not only to nurture but to warm the body. Whether it’s canjeelo, the spongy, slightly sour fermented pancakes and spiced milk tea in Somali homes, panjeeri, a nourishing blend of ghee, nuts, seeds, and jaggery in South Asian kitchens, or broths simmered with red dates, goji berries, turmeric, and ginger in Chinese and Vietnamese traditions, these meals do more than nourish: they rebuild strength, support milk flow, and protect the healing body from within. In Morocco, slow-cooked stews like rfissa and warm teas steeped with healing herbs carry the same intention. Warming ingredients like turmeric, cardamom, cumin, fenugreek, and ginger appear repeatedly, each one chosen with care, with a simple aim: to nourish, energise, heal, and reconnect the new mother to her community.

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These dishes are often cooked by women who understand that what a mother eats in these first fragile weeks matters just as much as how she is held. After my third baby, a Moroccan friend made me sfouf, a semolina cake with fenugreek. It became my daily comfort, dense, nourishing, and energising. Sfouf was both a treat and a revelation. In the hazy early days after birth, I had little appetite, but being fed these lovingly prepared meals made me feel deeply nourished and cared for.

Care & Rest: Rituals of Holding and Healing

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While food nourishes, it is the rituals of care and rest that allow healing to take root. Massages, belly binding, herbal baths and being relieved of daily burdens are often carried out by women from one’s own circle.

In a world that glorifies doing it all, these cultural traditions remind us: postpartum is not a time to bounce back, but to be still. Choosing rest is not laziness, it’s reverence.

Across Somalia, South Asia, Vietnam, China and Morocco, postpartum care holds rest as sacred. Belly binding supports the uterus and reduces bloating, warm oil massages soothe sore muscles and staying indoors is encouraged. In Somali households, guntino wraps and soft hands of aunties bring physical and emotional healing. In Vietnamese and Chinese homes, mothers avoid wind and cold, layering clothes and limiting bathing to protect the body’s fragile balance. In Morocco and India, the air is filled with the scent of herbs used in steams and baths. Women are cared for in lively homes where meals are cooked, older children are looked after and the new mother is left to bond, sleep and simply be.

These practices aren’t just physical, they are deeply relational. They recognise that healing doesn’t happen in isolation. When a mother is allowed to rest without guilt, held by the rhythms of her community, it becomes easier to listen to her body, to feel grounded in her new role, and to soften into this tender season.

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Reclaiming the Collective

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What ties all these practices together isn’t just warmth or ritual, but a shared understanding that postpartum care is not meant to be endured alone. Across continents and generations, women have always known that recovery requires softness, slowness and support. These traditions are not about perfection, they are about presence. About being witnessed and nourished. But for many of us navigating motherhood today, especially in the diaspora, these practices are becoming harder to access. And where communal care recedes, something else inevitably takes its place.

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The traditions built on collective care and interdependence are struggling to survive in new contexts, particularly for those of us navigating postpartum in the diaspora. Migration, the rise of nuclear households and changing understandings of kinship have pulled many away from the intergenerational webs that once held them. Even in my own experience, though I was still taken care of by family and community during later postpartum periods, I noticed a sharp contrast between what I lived and what I saw online. On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, self-sufficiency, boundary-setting, and “protecting your peace” dominated the conversation. While these ideas can be empowering, they often reinforce hyper-independence, pushing mothers to do it alone or to outsource care. And in the absence of close-knit support systems, the market steps in – transactional, costly and emotionally detached.

What was once a familial duty is now outsourced to paid professionals. It takes a village, but if yours is missing, you’ll need a budget to replace it.

This shift, fueled by capitalism and Western individualism, has made postpartum care a commodity available only to those who can afford it. Even traditional care rituals have been co-opted. In East Asia, confinement centres offer curated postpartum care, but at a steep price. Social media influencers have turned shared wisdom into paid courses and products. And so, the communal becomes commercial. By treating postpartum care as a personal commodity, we risk abandoning the collective structures that ensure equity. Mothers with less income or social capital are left without the safety net that tradition once provided.

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It’s not only our systems of care that have changed, but our mindset has too. We’ve been conditioned to see independence as strength and to view accepting help as a sign of weakness. But that narrative never fit my reality. I found my strength in the community. Welcoming my family, friends, and neighbours into my postpartum space didn’t drain me; it sustained me. It helped me guard myself against postpartum depression and reminded me that being held is not a burden, but a blessing. Vulnerability invited reciprocity; when I opened myself to others, they responded with care and presence.

This mutual care is not just cultural, it’s spiritual. Islam teaches that community is a trust, an amanah. We are accountable not just for ourselves, but for each other. The Prophet ﷺ likened believers to one body: when one part hurts, the rest responds. Postpartum care, then, is more than kindness; it’s a spiritual responsibility. To support a new mother is to fulfil a part of our faith. And to receive that care is not a weakness, but a recognition that we were never meant to do this alone.

In contrast, the world around us glorifies self-sufficiency. We’re told to do it all alone, to be strong by refusing help. But Islam offers a different wisdom: accepting support is part of what makes us whole. Of course, non-medical professionals like doulas, postpartum caregivers, and lactation consultants provide invaluable care, often filling the gap when family or community support is missing. Their expertise, earned through rigorous and often expensive training, plays a vital role in maternal wellbeing. Still, there’s a kind of care that cannot be taught or paid for: the quiet knowing of a friend who has witnessed your life, the instinctive tenderness of a sister who sees what you need before you speak.

The market can offer guidance, even comfort, but it cannot replicate the depth of connection found in longstanding relationships. And this isn’t just a romantic ideal, research shows that emotional and practical support from trusted personal ties significantly lowers the risk of postpartum depression[1]. Yet capitalism continues to frame this tender period as a performance of recovery rather than an experience of rest. The result is a model that values productivity over presence, pushing mothers to “bounce back” instead of simply recovering their full strength.

However, something is shifting. On platforms often complicit in commodification, there’s also rediscovery. Women are reclaiming traditions; belly binding, afartan bax, chilla, zuo yuezi – not just as products, but as memory, as belonging. When we open our homes and hearts, we aren’t just supporting individual mothers, we are restoring our culture. One where care is reciprocal, recovery is not rushed, and motherhood is honoured, not managed. As I navigate this third postpartum journey, what anchors me most is knowing I’m not alone. Whether it’s the neighbour I can call on or the steady presence of my family, I am held. Not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. This assurance reminds me: I don’t have to brace myself. I am already surrounded and ready for whatever this season brings.

Reference:

[1] Social support, stress, and maternal postpartum depression: A comparison of supportive relationships – ScienceDirect

Hafsa Mustafa

Bringing Back Communal Postpartum Care in a Capitalist World