Confinement lady - A nightmare from Hell (Part 3)

Continuation from Part 2 ....

Confinement ladies have this tendency to try very hard to differentiate themselves and distance themselves from maids. It is as if they are trying very hard to position themselves above the maids (basically, all they wanted to put across is that they are not maids but professional and experienced personnel with the knowledge and experience to handle new born babies and their mommies)....

The first rule which they always try to establish the moment that they arrived is that they DO NOT and WILL NOT cook for the maid as well! The first confinement lady we had for Ryan tried to establish that but she was still reasonably friendly with our Indonesian maid. Mdm L stressed this as well. We have no problems with that and we took the extra precaution to warn our maid to stay out of her way for at least a month to avoid conflicts. BUT CONFLICTS there WERE APLENTY and this was when they could not even understood a word each other were trying to say....

One morning the confinement lady BARGED into our bedroom and angrily declared that she wanted to leave immediately. When my wife asked for the reason, she claimed that the maid eat her food! She claimed that the maid took her food in front of her! With a face as black as charcoal, she stormed back into her room, slammed the door shut, locked it with the baby Chenya inside! She basically sulked the entire day.

When we went down to the kitchen, the rice was left untouched (half way eaten) with her vegetables on the kitchen top. When we questioned our maid, she said she could not understand why the confinement lady was so enraged. We asked her whether she took the food from the confinement lady and she said yes but she said did asked! She said, she was trying to be friendly and had asked the confinement lady whether the food cooked was nice and took one piece to taste!

Anyway, in order not to make things worse off and not to stress any parties, we managed to pacify Mdm L and the maid.

Then comes the non stop complaints by Mdm L on how lazy and bad the maid was. She told my wife that my maid secretly crept into the baby's room and play with the baby and doze off in front of her and was caught by me. In actual fact, I was looking for the maid and found her playing with the baby in the baby room. (The maid adores the baby because she reminded her of her own daughter back home). Back stabbing and more back stabbing throughout the 28 days....

On another occasion, she angrily complained to my wife that the maid refused to let her use the kitchen and she is NOT cooking anymore! And we have both a dry and a wet kitchen! We asked the maid and the maid clarified that she merely try to ask the confinement lady whether she has finished using the kitchen because she has to cook for Ryan. Sigh.....So we divided and allocated the kitchens, the wet for the confinement lady and the dry for the maid!!!

The maid is without complaints either....

Every morning she would show me the dustbin of the amount of cooked rice that the confinement lady is throwing away. (The confinement lady refused even to leave the left over cooked rice for the maid to eat or fried but instead prefer to throw them away and she has been throwing away cooked rice for the entire 28 days!!!)

And the maid retaliated by purposely keeping pots and pans or containers that she knows the the confinement lady needs. So, when Mdm L can't find them, she would angrily complained to me or my wife ..."You go and ask YOUR MAID where she keep MY Pot. I can't cook without it!"

I jusy could not understand why they simply could not work together especially the maid is there to help her and to ease her workload. With the maid, she would not have to wash the baby's clothes, the mommy's clothes and the baby bottles. All these were taken care of by the maid. In fact, the confinement lady took all these for granted so much so that whenever she cleaned baby Chenya, she would simply just dump all the soiled clothes at the baby's room door to be picked up by the maid. She doesn't even have the courtesy to take it down to the wash area for the maid to wash....

Everytime, she finished cooking, there is literally no wet or dry kitchen in the house..... there are ONLY two VERY Flooded and WET kitchens!!! And the maid would be on standby with a mop sitting at one corner to wipe it dry the moment she finished her task....

Next...are they as knowledgeable as they claim they are???