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Home › Articles › Postpartum Issues › Maternity Meals

Maternity Meals

Surviving the First Weeks at Home with Baby

By Renee Roberson

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Frozen Meals
In the weeks leading up to your due date, you can make an extra batch of certain meals and freeze them. Examples are baked ziti, lasagna and burritos. That way all you have to do is thaw the meal in your refrigerator overnight, pop it in the oven the next night and dinner will be ready in about an hour. If you don't have a large freezer with your refrigerator, you might want to consider purchasing a small shelf freezer to put in your garage or outside storage area. Later, you can use it to store meat and other frozen items you may choose to buy in bulk.
Stork Clubs
Many women are catching on to the idea that new mothers desperately need help with the cooking in the first few weeks home. Mothers groups and communities are forming "stork clubs" where women sign up to make meals for each other when a member returns home from the hospital. You can join a mom's group in the months before your due date, so get yourself on that list! You will have to return the favor on an occasional basis, but it will be worth it. If a stork club has seven or eight people in it, that's at least a week's worth of meals for you –and you've made some new friends. That's what Michele Weir of Cornelius, N.C., did in the months before her son Ian was born.

"Being a first-time mom, I had no idea how taxing motherhood would be, especially since I'm breastfeeding," says Weir. "The hospital really spoils you, and it's not until you get home that you realize it's a coordinated effort to take care of a baby. The dinners provided by the stork club allowed me to worry about one less thing." Weir adds that she would now turn away some of the presents she received from friends in exchange for a healthy meal.

Janine Nikkel from Baltimore, Mich., says no one brought her family any meals following the brths of her first three children. "That is now my biggest 'new baby' gift," she says. "For everyone I know who has a baby, I make two meals and freeze them in disposable dishes and take them a week after the baby arrives home."


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