Preparing for postpartum? My Traditional Chinese Medicine Pregnancy & Postpartum Guide helps you navigate each stage of recovery with week-by-week guidance, therapeutic soups and teas, food therapy principles, and practical tips to nourish healing with confidence. Because postpartum isn't about bouncing back—it's about rebuilding well. 🩷
This is the final leg of the journey for Chinese Confinement #7.
If you've just started reading, you can find Chinese Confinement: The Early Days as pre-reading leading up into this post.
This page is about Chinese Confinement in the final days. From here on forward, it's all about ensuring the body is pumped full of herbs, heat and healing ingredients that help the mother "seal" her body and make her "wholesome and strong" again. The soups and meals here are packed with serious herbal, healing and heaty additives and not to consumed by the faint of heart. It is completely and entirely customized for the confinement mommy (unless the recipes indicate that other people can drink it too), but it really is more heaty and healing than your average soup. Some recipes even require double-boiling to preserve the concentration of healing qualities.
Every postpartum journey is unique, but healing follows a natural rhythm. This simple roadmap introduces the four stages of recovery in Traditional Chinese Medicine, helping you understand what your body needs most each week. Explore the complete guide for detailed food therapy, soups, teas, and practical support. 🩷
As your body becomes stronger, your soups and teas can gradually become more nourishing and restorative. This stage focuses on rebuilding Qi, Blood, and Kidney Essence while supporting long-term strength, vitality, and resilience. Richer herbal chicken soups, black silkie chicken, oxtail, fish, sesame, walnuts, and Chinese yam are traditionally used to replenish what pregnancy and birth have depleted. In this guide, you'll find purpose-driven recipes for every stage of recovery, with clear explanations of when to use each one. These featured soups are just a glimpse—the complete guide includes all the recipes, preparation tips, and TCM principles to confidently support your postpartum journey.
Here are some soups and teas to help you as you finish your confinement!
thanks for all this info! i didn’t know there were 2 phases
Thank you for the informaiton on the confinement. All the soup recipes are very good, but PLEASE TAKE OFF this the picture of a baby hold by his/her neck… very bad picture…offended to all mothers.
Please see the picture on this page:
https://www.thechinesesouplady.com/chinese-confinement-the-final-days-day-13-30/
Dear Kelly,
Thanks for your response and no offense was intended. The photo of the baby is how you hold the baby (by the chin, not the neck) as a burping technique. This is commonly practiced around the world. For more information on this type of technique, you may want to read up here:
http://kidshealth.org/parent/pregnancy_center/newborn_care/burping.html
http://www.happiestbaby.com/burping-with-the-best-of-them/
Or, if you search “burping newborn techniques by the chin” you will find a host of information and perhaps can get a better understanding of this. I would recommend you read up.
Appreciate your support and thanks for your comments!
Lisa