Quick disclaimer: I am not receiving any money, gifts, kickbacks, pats on the back, high fives, or any incentive for mentioning the products or websites in my blog. I am simply trying to share my experience.
Your baby will be born whether you’re ready or not. Some come early, and some come late. How prepared you are for baby’s arrival depends on you! I became obsessed with making sure that all of my cute little duckies were in a row. A few factors played a role in my obsession: the first was that my husband and I moved to Oregon in May of 2016; where I became pregnant in May of 2016. I stopped looking for a job and we decided that I would be a stay at home mom. This meant that I could spend an embarrassing amount of time getting lost in Pinterest. We also bought a house when I was six months pregnant. What were we thinking? I don’t know. It made sense at the time. Thank goodness we had made some friends who were willing help a pregnant lady and her husband with a head cold move in the beginning of the worst winter this area had seen in a decade.
I looked through countless posts on Pinterest about women who had filled their freezers with meals to heat up post delivery. Some great ideas were to have slow cooker parties, making casseroles or other easily heated meals, and creating meal trains. Meal prepping saved me and my family from having to go out and buy groceries when all we wanted to do was rest. I barely had enough energy to get up and go to the bathroom, I wasn’t going to go grocery shopping or spend time in the kitchen when I could be with my sweet little baby!
Slow cooker parties are wonderful if you or a friend can organize one. Each person in attendance brings enough ingredients for every attendee to go home with the meal that they chose. For example, there were four ladies in attendance at my slow cooker party. I made sure to bring enough ingredients to make four meals with. We all sat around chopping our meat, veggies, and measuring our other ingredients while enjoying cocktails (and mocktails) and catching up. At the end we each went home with four different meals that we could throw into our slow cookers and enjoy at a later time. The one thing that I forgot to bring was a permanent marker. This was super important but mom brain took over and it completely slipped my mind. The permanent marker is used to write down how to cook your particular meal. We listed what the meal was, whether it needed to be cooked on high or low, and for how many hours. One of the meals that I was given was so good, I ended up saving it on Pinterest and have made it multiple times since.
I spent the better part of a day putting together casseroles, stuffed peppers, and other meals that could be stored in the freezer. I attached post-it notes to the covers of the disposable pans so that my husband could warm them up in the oven for us. I decided to go with disposable pans because I didn’t want to do any dishes, and neither did my husband. Even though it took hours of planning, shopping, chopping, and assembling, it was completely worth it in the end. It also gave me peace of mind that we didn’t have to worry about what we were going to eat as I am the one who meal plans, grocery shops, and cooks for our family.
I didn’t do a meal train, but when a friend was expecting, she had one set up for her. She mentioned when she would be available to receive the meal, and also let her friends and family know when they didn’t want any guests to come over and visit. You could still drop off your meal that you prepared for them, but they wanted quiet time with their new baby. Friends and family would sign up for certain days so that everyone didn’t show up on the same day and overload their freezer. You could also set up 9×13 visitation. Friends and family can come over and visit with baby but they need to bring you something in a 9×13 pan.
Anything that you can do to prepare yourself for when baby arrives will be worth it! I can’t begin to tell you how glad I was that I spent a few hours shopping, slicing, dicing, bagging, and storing meals in the freezer. I wanted to spend all of my time relaxing with my newborn and not cooking in the kitchen. Instead, I could have my husband throw something in the oven or crockpot and enjoy a nice home cooked meal.
the rambling housewife blog 