Hey everyone!
As if having a baby is not a huge change in itself, something else that was very important to me was making sure that I was fully prepared for this baby. Around 28 weeks, I started making a list and thinking about how I wanted to prepare for baby boy and how to make sure my family was in the best spot possible so we could enjoy our time in the newborn bubble without having to worry about much else.
The first thing I wanted to tackle was making sure that we had everything we needed for Joshua, including having the nursery finished. We were very blessed to receive a lot of awesome items from family and friends as well as at my baby shower. When it came to getting major furniture pieces for the nursery, we decided to go pretty minimal. We got everything ordered and set up within the last 2 months of my pregnancy. I wanted to make sure that we didn’t have an overflow of stuff for him, because after having Sophie, Josh and I came to the realization that babies don’t require half of the stuff that other people convince you that you need. Getting the nursery sorted out, I made up a checklist of the necessities that we needed for our family!
Next, I wanted to make sure that the house was in a great spot when Joshua made his arrival. I tried to make sure that I was keeping up with laundry and dishes constantly (and not letting them pile up like we all do sometimes). I also had a list of what I wanted to get done around the house since nesting SUPER hit me this time around. I remember having it with Sophie, but not to the extent I got it this time!
After all of the nesting, next on my list of to-dos was making sure I was fully prepared with our meals! I think it is super important to plan out either a meal train or meal prep when you are expecting. Meal trains are awesome since you get help from your support system, and meal prep is great because you get to prepare healthy meals where you know exactly what is going into them, as well as being able to make whatever dietary specific decisions you need to. A great way to set up a meal train is by going to mealtrain.com. Here you can enter in all of your information, add what days would be helpful to receive meals, as well as allergies, dietary restrictions, and the best times to drop off meals. You can add or invite people through social media or email. This is a really awesome way to get that help that is essential in the very beginning after having a baby.
What I opted for was meal prep, because 1. I love to cook and 2. I found it super quick and easy to be able to open up my freezer and choose whatever I wanted to eat that day. I made breakfast, lunch and dinner options. I wanted to make a ton of different meals so we had healthy options so I wasn’t reaching for junk food after giving birth. Personally, I always feel terrible after eating a lot of junk food, so I knew that I wanted to be eating as healthy as possible, not only for Joshua (since I am breastfeeding) but also because I wanted to have as much energy as possible knowing that I was not only going to be taking care of a newborn full time, but a toddler as well. Minimal sleep and energy, mixed with junk food and feeling sluggish didn’t really sound appealing to me. (I will be posting a more in-depth post about my food prepping along with recipes!)
Lastly, I began planning out a thank you gift for all of the nurses and staff at the hospital who helped us during the delivery and recovery. The reason I like to do this is because all of these people have made it their life work to make sure that my baby and I are taken care of. That we are both healthy and that everything runs as smoothly as possible, and I find that beyond admirable. What I usually like to do is make cookies for everyone, and get a gift card for a coffee shop that is enough for everyone to get a little something. I have also seen other ideas where individual gift cards are given, and also chap sticks, tumblers, or facemasks. With something like this it all comes down to personal preference!
I hope this helped with getting ideas of some awesome ways to prepare for baby that definitely help out in the long run!
Click below to download my checklists of Preparing for Baby!
quirky & caffeinated 