1. Food Prep

The last thing you want to do while you’re recovering from birth and learning to navigate life with a newborn is to try and answer the question ‘what’s for dinner?’

This is extra true if you’re breastfeeding, which requires an extra 400 calories and 4-8 more cups of water a day.

Food prep can be as simple as collecting your favorite recipes for your partner or it can mean prepping and freezing ready-to-heat meals.

A crockpot is a great option for postpartum and there are even cookbooks just for crockpot cooking!

A quick Pinterest search will get you lots of hits for things like ‘making 20 frozen meals in under 4 hours’ which I’m looking forward to trying. It can’t be all crockpot all the time after all.

On a related point – snacks!

If you don’t usually go for pre-made snack options this is the time to embrace them.

Party plates of veggies and dip, or meat and cheese are a wonderful way to keep whole foods on hand. Granola bars, fruit, protein shakes, trail mix, pretzels, and a little bit of something sweet are all good too.

Don’t forget toddler-friendly snacks if you have older kids, putting things where they can get them themselves will save you a lot of up-and-downing.

2. Meal Train

I got introduced to this website by a friend of mine who utilized it with the birth of her daughter and, y’all, I’m OBSESSED.

If you’re lucky enough to have a support network during postpartum chances are you’ll have at least one or two people ask if they can bring you food. But then you have to coordinate when, and what, and do you have any allergies, and will they be coming in to visit or just dropping off some snacks, etc, etc.

Mama, that is too much. Enter Mealtrain.

Mealtrain is a website that’s made to do all that coordination for you. You get to set up a calendar, draw up base rules/expectations, and you can list any allergies or preferences!

For example, I can list my gluten allergy and specify that dropping off food does not mean dropping in to visit and hold the baby.

Another feature I like is that it lists what other people are bringing. That means when you click on the calendar to sign up to bring a meal you’re able to see that on Tuesday someone is bringing pasta and on Thursday someone else is bringing lasagna, so hopefully you won’t get the same thing every night for a week!

My sister is going to be handling and coordinating my Mealtrain this pregnancy so that I can focus on both of my kids. It’s an absolute gift to have someone else handling it.

3. Lower Expectations

If the only thing you do, every day, for the first few months is to keep everyone alive and fed – mama that is good enough.

There will come a time when you start feeling human again and you can get back into those routines of limiting screen time for older kids and getting out of the house for playdates.

But the first month? Or three?

If bedtimes are out the window and you find yourself putting on Disney movies at 3 am because your newborn woke up your toddler, that is okay.

Postpartum in the United States is a joke – from a lack of time off, a lack of care for the mother, and a lack of financial support. Most countries in the world provide not only paid maternity leave but also paid paternity leave (and subsidized daycare).

On the other hand here in the US:
-In my first pregnancy my husband got 3 days off, without pay.
-With my second pregnancy, he’s getting 5 days off, without pay.

There’s no way that I’ll be back to ‘normal’ after 5 days, and it’s unrealistic to think I could.

So this is me, telling you, that it is okay if everything is a mess for a while because postpartum is hard and you’re doing great.

4. Mom Friends

One of the biggest differences for me between baby one and baby two is knowing other moms.

There’s a lot to be said about having friends that you can invite over postpartum who have been-there-done-that recently. Friends who understand that you are only wearing half your nursing bra and an adult diaper and do not care.

If you don’t have any mom friends, or if you’ve been struggling to find moms in your area that you have things in common with, I recommend checking out the app Peanut.

Peanut is like Tinder but for mom friends. You make an account, write a little bio, select some general interest categories – and then you’re off!

There are chat boards as well as private chat functions between moms so even if you don’t want to go meeting strangers off the internet (reasonable) it can still be a great resource for asking other moms in the same life stages questions or offering advice.

I’ve met some great people through Peanut and especially with Covid shutting down storytimes and playgroups the last few years it has been a real lifesaver.

5. Optimizing your Environment

There’s a lot of talk during pregnancy about getting the nursery ready but chances are you won’t actually end up spending that much time in there.

If you think about where you spend time in your house when you’re sick or tired I’d bet the answer is either your bedroom or your living room. Instead of focusing all your attention on the nursery take some time to make your spaces comfortable and accessible too.

In my house that looks like making space for a basket of postpartum necessities in the bathroom.

Simplifying the toy storage in the living room for my toddler and adding chargers next to the rocking chair and the couch.

Also, getting a rocker. Gliding rockers are fantastic in the first few months of having a baby – I found mine on the Facebook marketplace from another mama who no longer needed it.

In the bedroom, I have all my extra-comfy and nursing-friendly clothes set aside as well as a side crib with a big ol’ basket of burp rags. I also installed a shelf directly over the crib and next to the bed for snacks, water, and my phone.

A basket of nursing supplies and diapering things you can move easily around the house with you is also a good idea!

Think about where you’ll be spending time when you have visitors or where your other kids need supervision most often and create spaces in those locations where you can be comfortable.

Bonus: Anti-Depressants

I struggled horribly with postpartum depression and anxiety with my firstborn so when we decided to start trying for a second baby I knew something had to change.

Depression isn’t a new issue for me but postpartum really made it clear that I needed to step up my coping mechanisms for it. I was fortunate enough to be able to get an anti-depressant prescription last summer and it has been life-changing for me.

I didn’t realize how much energy I spent just fighting my brain before starting medication. It’s helped me to be a better mom for my son and I’ve got high hopes that it will help with postpartum as well.

The newborn stage is hard and if you find yourself struggling it’s important to talk to someone about how you’re feeling.

Postpartum depression affects 1 in 7 women within the first year after birth and those rates get higher if you experience birth trauma or lack support postpartum.

There’s no shame in needing help and support after having a baby.

That’s perfectly normal.

It’s the way we treat mothers here in the United States that is the outlier.

What do you think?

Did I forget anything? What is something you swear by for postpartum?

Comment below and let me know!

If this is your first time having a baby check out my post What No One Told Me About Postpartum or if you’ve got a toddler at home check out my companion post Prepping for Postpartum: Toddler Edition