Hi pinkberries84,
I just delivered last Nov and had engaged a confinement lady for that 1 month. Personally, I think its good to have a confinement lady, esp for 1st time mummies like me. She helped me to take care of baby, bath her, clean her, feed her and also render advice when we're unsure if she's ok. Besides that, the confinement lady will also take care of the mummy, cooking for her, cleaning the house, boil water for bathing, cook tonic etc.
I had an emergency c-sec and engorgement after I discharged from the hospital. I was so overwhelmed with the birth as well as the bf-ing. Thank goodness, the confinement lady is around to help me with baby and the household while I can concentrate on recovery and bfing / pumping of milk.
My parents were initially against us engaging the confinement lady before I delivered. My mum wanted to do the confinement for me, but we were quite insistent on engaging as we fear that she cant cope and her last experience on handling babies is 30yrs ago, so we're worried about conflict of opinion in handling baby too. And true enough, after my confinement, my mum admitted that its really alot of work (cooking, cleaning, take care of baby etc). She was quite glad that we had the confinement lady as she was able to coach her on handling baby before going off. And that alot of things had changed from olden days like feeding breastmilk, last time there's no such thing as pump, not to mention having to warm bm, and even making fm, last time they need to shake the bottle really hard to mix the powder and cause a lot of bubbles in the milk, now the fm just need to rub slightly inbetween the palm and the powder will dissolve and mix well (less air/bubbles in the milk), also she had never use disposable diaper in the past too. So she had time to slowly catch up during that 1 month.
Do consider getting a confinement lady if finances permit.