Dear All,

Just wanna share our horrible experiences (or izzit pure bad luck) with 3 different confinement aunties.....


Confinement Auntie #1

芬 姐 (Fen-jie) from Taman Ehsan, Kepong
Full Name: Low Poo Fan
Hong Leong Bank Acct #: 347-5-06283-7
HP: 012-3282953
Price: RM4300 + RM200 (Hong Pao)

This confinement auntie was recommended by another confinement auntie. My wife was due for delivery in end-Sept, hence we booked her services in June and have paid her RM500 deposit to her bank account. Just one month before delivery (in Aug), we received a phone call from Fen-Jie, asking us to confirm the baby's actual due date.

We told her, it would be end-Sept, cannot confirm actual date, even the doctors cannot guarantee a fixed date since its going to be natural birth. Fen-Jie told us that she wants to go on a holiday to China with her friends in Sept, and she is worried that she may not come back in time to do the job. We told her that it is so last minute, it would be hard for us to find another confinement auntie and since she has already took our deposit and gave her commitment, she should not go for holidays.

3 days later, Fen-Jie's husband called up and told us that she really needs to go for the holidays to China, since its a family trip. He even told us that in case our baby is born earlier, just ask someone to look after first, and when she comes back, she can continue to do the confinement job. WTF, we told him this is so unprofessional and definitely not acceptable!

Another 2 days later, Fen-Jie's daughter called up and ask us the same stupid question, "What is the actual delivery date of your baby?"
Later in the conversation, she started to turn nasty and said that if we cannot provide her with a fixed date, it is not her responsibility to confirm if her mother (Fen-Jie) can do the confinement job at end-Sept... and blah.. blah.. blah.. Basically, at the end of the conversation, she said her mother really needs to go to China and basically its our problem to find our own replacement..


With barely a month to the delivery and so last minute, it would really hard to good confinement lady outside, we decided to try finding one from a proper confinement centre. After looking at a few establishments, we decided to go to Peiling / Daveleen (www.moms2b.com/). Another big mistake!

Price: RM 4600 for 28 days work (will get RM 300 rebate if we purchase RM600 worth of "useless" Peiling products


Confinement Auntie #2
Full Name: Chow Kwai Kuen from Ipoh
HP: 016-5667093

Day 1, we picked Auntie #2 from Peiling/Daveleen centre from SS2. On the first day, she started complaining that she is tired and overworked, as she has took on other confinement jobs 3 months in a row. She even complaint that she is only paid RM3000 from Peiling/Daveleen. Usually she will take jobs from outside which pays her much higher. (* I guess she has no outside job that why she went back to Peiling/Daveleen).

Basically, her services for the 1st 2 days was only mediocre. Other than looking after the baby, she only needs to cook 2 meals per day for 2 person. My wife cant take chinese herbs, so she didnt need to boil any herbal soups etc.. Most of the time, she will be looking at the TV, even during feeding day. Day 3 onward, she started to be really lazy and sloppy. The kitchen wares were not cleaned after cooking, and often left overnight till next morning. Baby clothing were only washed once a day, by then its hard to remove the milk stains. Milks bottles were not sterilized, only clean when all 6 bottles were used up.

Hygiene was so bad, we had to tell her several times, that after doing cooking or household chores, she needs to wash her hands thoroughly before touching the baby. She always complaint that she is tired, but she will be watching TV from morning to night. Day 6, we discovered that in the morning that there are plenty of shit in the baby diaper. She didnt even clean the baby bums properly and she gave the excuse that its dark at night and cannot really see the shit. All this while, we have to tolerate her "shit" just for the baby's sake

On Day 7, she told us that she cannot work anymore and wants to go back to Ipoh (*We suspected that she may have found another outside confinement job).. and she wants us to tell the centre (Peiling/Daveleen) that it was not her idea not to work, but we wanted a change. WTH, we called up the centre and complained that the auntie doesnt want to work anymore. Either refund us the money or provide another confinement auntie immediately. Peiling/Daveleen told us it would take 1 day to find replacement. Hence we have lost 1 day, since the centre is not going to compensate for loss time.


Confinement Auntie #3
Full Name: Mdm Liew / Lieu
HP: 016-4513878

This auntie is equally lazy as the previous one. First day come, told us that she has been working as a house-keeper for some rich man, no need to work, always got servants or maid assigned to her. To the extent, she said the Centre only told her that her job is to look after the baby and there is no mention that she needs to cook for the baby's parents or do any house works. It is only when we threatened to call the Centre to seek clarification on her work scope that she reluctantly agreed that she will cook and do some basic house chores out of goodwill! WTF!!

As mentioned earlier, this auntie is equally lazy, she doesnt watch TV often, but talking on the handphone most of the time. For the 3 weeks period, she only visit the market twice, only cooks 2 dishes per meal (1 meat + 1 veggie), lunch and dinner. Keep telling us, young people should not to eat so much. For breakfast, keep telling us to eat bread.. and said its more healthy!

Basically, her services became more and more sloppy towards the end. Kitchen wares and Milk bottles were not washed properly. Our baby is colic and almost every hour whenever the baby cries, she wants to feed the baby! We had to stop her and demanded that she sticked to the feeding schedule to once every 2-3 hours.

She is just plain lazy and always trying to find short cuts. My wife caught her a few times when she left baby unattended in the living room and she went to sleep in her bedroom. Hygiene also became from bad to worse, didnt clean baby bums thoroughly after diaper change. First few days, she prepare a warm pail and would use cotton with warm water to clean baby's bums. After that, she only casually use wipes only and didnt apply nappy ointment after every diaper change. Once again, we have to tolerate her "nonsense" just for the baby's sake

On the last night of her service, my wife and I were both awaken by the baby's crying. My poor baby must be crying for a long time, his eyes were all red and voice already coarse... and to our horror, the auntie was sleeping like a log. We literally had to wake up her up and told her baby was crying!


After such horrible experiences with confinement aunties, we have concluded that hiring the right confinement aunties really takes luck, either hit or miss! If you have decided to hire a confinement ladies, here are some basic tips based on our experiences:

----

Tip #1 - Hiring a CL from outside (i.e. freelancer)

- Most of these freelancers do not have proper training or experiences. A vast majority of them are baby-sitters or domestic helpers who are generally paid around RM1k-2k per month.

- Attracted and lured by the temptation of current market rate of RM4k+ for CL, they will try their luck and claim to be baby expert or gurus! After discovering that these CL are newbies and even if you kicked them out after 1 week, these aunties would have already pocketed at least 1k, as well as free food, drinks, tonic and lodging etc..

- If you are seriously thinking of hiring a CL from outside, make sure you seek references from the right sources, i.e. credible word-of-mouths from 1st hand experiences from someone you know and can trusted. Do not trust the recommendations from another CL!

----

Tip #2 - Hiring a CL from Confinement Centres (i.e. Peiling/Daveleen/others)

- If you are thinking of hiring a CL from these Centres, think again!! These CL are no better than those freelancer CL.

- Most of these Centres charged RM4k++ and they only pay their CL about RM3k, which means the Centre pocketed about 1k+ as commission.

- These Centre CL are basically left-overs, and since they cant get any confinement jobs on their own outside (which paid about 4k++), they will have to seek job from these Centres which pay them only about 3k++.

- If you are thinking that hiring a CL from these centres are more reliable and if anything goes wrong, you can complain to the Centre! Wrong! Think again! These Centres do not really care about your complaints, and they know its mostly a one-time deal only.

- If you wanna change CL halfway, the Centre will just arrange another replacement which may take 1-2 days depending on availability. You will have to absorb the loss time, the Centre will not compensate you additional days.

- If the 2nd CL is another hopeless screw-up, then its just too bad. You just have to take the shit for the sake of your baby!

----

Tip #3 - Going to stay in at Confinement Centre

- Staying in at these Confinement Centre is costly. Market rate ranges from RM7000+ to 10,000k depending on package.

- Try to personally visit these Centres and be sure to to seek references from the right sources, i.e. credible word-of-mouths from 1st hand experiences from someone you know and can trusted.

----

Tip #4 - Buying useless confinement stuff from Confinement Centre

- If you are engaging any services from Confinement Centre, you can be 100% sure that the sales person will try to persuade you to buy a tonne of useless stuff ranging from rice wine, sesame oil, women's tonic, baby oil, pillows etc!

- As first-time parents, we were quite inexperienced and overbought a tonne of useless stuff based on so-called professional recommendations. Most of these items are really overpriced and you can easily get similar products at your local pharmacy or medicinal shop.

---

Hope the above tips helps! Good luck!

This post has been edited by SuperKL2020: Dec 2 2014, 10:28 AM

So sorry to hear of your unfortunate experiences with confinement ladies. It is quite common to hear of these and this is really scary. Really depends on luck. Some of my friends decide not to have any confinement aunties for their subsequent pregnancy due to bad experiences in the past.

Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

Too many bad comments on CL these days. Getting a good one is like 1 out of 30. My guess is either she is new or she really pationate abt babies.
Yes its true that during confinement there are pantang that mom kenot touch water , do work and stuff but honestly a lot of old days mom nvr bother abt it and still do house work as usual. If possible of coz follow 100% of the pantang.
If can afford the luxury then hire CL no matter if it cost Rm10k per month, to be exact 49 days .
If kenot then ask own mom or MIL help but of coz the mom has to be the one jaga bb most of the time.
Or another option without mom or MIL, which is catering for confinement food either delivery or self pick up. This method the husband might need to help on the food and some heavy housework, the wife will 100% taking care of bb.
My experience 1st son my mom cooked. 2nd and 3rd sons MIL cook. Husband help on housework. All of them 100% i take care day and night besides their bathing time.

This post has been edited by D10yrspain: Nov 29 2014, 02:35 PM

I would think that 99% of confinement lady had migrated or work in rich family...unless u can pay 7+k for confinement lady. 3k SGD = 7.5k MYR

imagine the auntie / female whom used to work in restaurant get rm1k - 2k....now got opportunity to take care baby and earn rm 3k-5k....good money, right?

This is so true. Which is why I still prefer to opt for someone cook for me, the rest tried to settle myself. Its my babies anyway and anyhow also must learn how to jaga them. Especially if breast feeding, when CL malas not willing to feed bb midnight with the pre-stored breastmilk, she will have tons of excuses telling you to breastfeed directly during your night sleep. This did happened before to some forumner .I just don't see the point having CL.
I tried talking to aunties and makcik neighbouring everywhere, it seems that the old days most of them do confinenent themselves or with help of someone just cooking.
Nowadays anything to do with pregnancy until confinement is all reaping off ppls money. Just spend wisely everyone.

This post has been edited by D10yrspain: Nov 30 2014, 11:16 AM

this is beyond terrible..

Thanks for sharing. Indeed i had a bad experience with Daveleen Ctr by their sales person attitude when my wife and I went survey. So we decided not to take them. Someone even told me that their confinement centre located not far from their office is equally worse. A house with many partitiions, so u can hear the noise from next door. Imagine you are trying to rest but dont have the proper place to do so.

Someone should really tell the owner how bad really is their service.

Hi UpCar

I received your report

Btw this thread is not suitable to merge with the current one up there since it's not a recommendations thread.

There are also other 'beware : confinement ladies' thread around, with equal importance.

Anyhoo, this thread will serve its purpose when someone Googles the name or bank account.

so sorry to hear the troublesome CL from you. like what u say, depend to luck also. My 1st baby CL is quite old but handle thing very professionaly. when our 2nd baby come, the 1st CL told us she retired liao. I know she not lying because she walk also got problem liao. so no choice we had to find other. We found a lady A which tell us her glory baby sitting and cooking glory like macam a KING, we drop her booking fee 500. she act very professional, come paid us a few visit to remind us to buy this and that thing that we need to use. 2 week before due, this lady A pop up suddenly say that she cant take the job BUT dont worry, she will find a replacement lady for us. ok, replacement found. as my wife was natural birth, after delivery done we straight away drove to the ladies B to fetch her. Gosh!! she ta pau all her belonging like macam wanna go holiday. everything went normal in the first week. i had some light chat with this lady B cause i wanna know her background. so, she tell me she actually dunno who is this lady A, it was her her her her frend who recommend her to us. ding dong ding dong, the i know oredi actually lady A was actually a MotherF$$$k agent who cheat on customer like me and also the CL like lady B. Because lady A told us the price is 3500 for 28 days, but lady B told me she only receive 3000 as the payment which we pay direct to lady B. the booking of 500 is gone to the lady A, which had at all done nothing other than pay some visit to us to sweet talk us and find other replacement. well, this lady B is also got a bad habit, watching TV, dvd, housekeeping like just simply simply sweep the floor. thus dust below table sofa never touch, i start complain to her she should do proper job otherwise i just pay her lesser. Boh pian, i just try my luck threathen her. sekali she also scared and start do the work deligently. Sometime i feel pity to her, but i always tell myself i pity them who pity me? i kena conned who is going to pity me. lucky found replacement, if not i think i myself will be confinement man liao.
So, best of all luck to wanna be parent.

Wanna share my experience too. I had a confinement lady before. I wil not recommend her to anyone. Ppl normally call her Auntie Winnie (Tan Poh Choo). Confinement month should be a relax and nice time to recover yourself from long pregnancy and intensive labour time ( be it c section or vaginal delivery). However, she just fail to meet the expectations. Reasons as below: 1. Create very negative aura in the house. Though she said she supported breastfeeding but she tried to intimidate you as you have insufficient breast milk, she has the tendency to introduce mix BF and formula milk. It just showed that she has very poor knowledge in breastfeeding. (Bm known to be easily digested and baby will hungry quickly ). She secretly introduced bottle feeding without my permission too. When I found out, she made a big fuss and said that I don't trustee her and she threatened to resign. She did also attempt to introduce pacifier in the early stage. 2. She is very emotional. When she didn't sleep well (I thought this should be expected ) she showed black face in the next morning. 3. Unprofessional . She thought confinement services is meant to make herself enjoyable. She wanted attention. Even in the morning when I asked about baby's night feeding frequency, she made a big fuss and complained that I only care for baby. During the confinement month, she threatened me about 4 times to leave the house as she is not happy to work. ( come on la, even when you are not happy at work you won't go in front your boss and tell the boss that you plan to resign) 4. Very talkative. She talked all the time. She talked about her past experience , her grew up stories and even cried when she spoke about it. Where my mind was on the baby and a relaxing time to rest , was forced to listen her stories. 5. Poor knowledge in handling baby and confinement food. When I asked her why some confinement food can be eaten some cannot , she get agitated and just said followed what old ppl said. She didn't know how to use warmer and didn't want to ask either. She shaked the breast milk crazily and I told her not to do that otherwise you spoilt the breast milk nutrition. She then said she used to prepare formula milk snc that was how she did. 6. Calculative and tend to take easy way out. Initially supposed to do my laundry but after that when I said she can let my hubby to do it. She just happily let go. During confinement month we tried to lessen her burden, e.g. My hubby will help to do baby's laundry, asking her to put the dishes to the dish washer. We have a part time maid. When the part time maid didn't throw baby's used pampers she will complain also. Even for boiling water and preparing a glass of tea for me , she made complain also as her previous employer has a stay in maid for preparing hot water. Time to time, I had to help her in preparing hot beverage for myself for breakfast. I did help out her to walk baby's bottles and breastpump assesories too as she was too slow in doing the house chores. On the last day, 28th, she wanted to leave early too, tried to avoid cooking red dates soup for me. But i insisted. She didn't prepare herbal water on the las day as she said is not required anymore snc it is not part of her job already. Night time feeding she tends to over fed baby so she can have a longer sleep. 7. Lost her primary focus. I have told her that the primary task in confinement service was to attend to baby needs but she spent most of her time in the kitchen though her cooking skills is so so only. Normally I just had 3 meals per day. She insisted we need to follow her schedule. She treated herself as boss in the house. We need to follow hers. Otherwise she showed her blackface and kept complained that it is hard to communicate with me. Most of the time I was the one who took care of baby and she just made the cooking only. 8. Worst of all, she said my baby is very difficult to handle. I would have thought all babies are different in their own way just that you need to understand babies cues and manage it accordingly. She made myself so badly that I thought I was not a good mum and I had done something wrong to the baby. All in all, she just made the whole confinement month a very stressful period to me and this affected my breast milk supplies. After this experience , I really think we need to be careful in selecting a CL. She asked for Rm5000 and one ang pow for her service. For what she has provided I would have thought maybe in the future I should ask for confinement food delivery instead.