Alright everyone, I’ve been meaning to share with you all my postpartum meal plan in case anyone would find it helpful. So, today is the day! I don’t know about you, but I find it extremely hard to think of meal plans that I’m happy with unless I get a little inspiration somewhere… So, here I am, hoping to provide you with what I often hope to find on the internet myself!

For a postpartum meal plan, here are some things I try to think about:

1. Easy prep for my husband
   It’s important to me to pick meals that are easy to pull out and prepare quickly, so that my husband doesn’t have to do very much. He has a heart of gold, but cooking isn’t exactly his comfort zone. Plus, he already does so much else to help me post-baby! The last thing I want him to worry about is preparing food for our family.
2. Quality food
   I like to make meals that are healthy, homemade, and special (something we can all look forward to)– in my opinion, that is a must!
3. Large quantities
   My goal is generally to have enough food prepared so that in the event of a difficult recovery, we have enough to carry us through for a while. I typically shoot for preparing 2 weeks worth of dinners (14 meals). That may sound intimidating, but if you make large batches of each thing, you can pretty quickly stock your freezer with a lot of meals.

Prepare for the weather

In addition to the above, my ideal self would aim to try to have things that will be weather-appropriate. For example, I find that hot soups and stews in the middle of the summer are not usually the most appealing. I also find that something which has to be baked in the oven on a hot day wouldn’t appeal much either (since it will just heat up the house).

In the summer time, I would hope to have crock pot meals that require minimal work for my man and minimal heat for our house.

During the winter, I would try to aim for minimal work for my man and maximum warmth for the house (we live in the old, drafty kind).

That said, I totally bombed in that department this time around! Our baby is due early August, so still in the summer months. Yet, when I went for making this meal plan, all I wanted was baked everything slathered in cheese. Also, the convenience of large batches of soup to make and then freeze were so tempting… So, I caved and did exactly that. Come my postpartum recovery this time around, you could probably expect to find me sitting in front of the air conditioner with a bowl of hot something and a glass of ice water.

Ah, well. I guess that is how it is this time!

What you will need for this postpartum meal plan list:

Freezer space

In order to prepare a postpartum meal plan of this magnitude, you will need a large deep or upright freezer of some kind. This will not all fit into your fridge freezer! If you don’t have a deep freezer, then carefully pick things from your list that can stack compactly together in foil trays and don’t worry about preparing what you can’t store.

Storage containers

Since I want to keep cleanup to a minimum, I usually like to get disposable containers for this. To eliminate waste, you can of course use your own dishes. Just keep in mind that if you have them all sitting in the the freezer full of food for weeks, those containers will not be available for other cooking until you empty them again.

To make the foods on this list, you will need the following storage containers:

• Foil pans/trays
• Large ziploc bags
• Freezer safe plastic storage containers
• Masking tape or painters tape & and a sharpie, to label things and write preparation instructions on them. I usually use painter’s tape, since it’s cheap and comes off easy when you want it to.

Ingredients

I recommend that you carefully go over your recipes ahead of time to make sure you pick up everything you will need!

Time

Since I know that the best and most likely time to go into labour is between 37-40 weeks, I always plan to have everything ready and prepared by week 37. Also, not wanting to do too much in one week, I arrange my regular meal schedule a few weeks before that time to include the things I wanted to make for my postpartum meal plan.

Good planning

Plan your time! I like to make large batches; enough to serve the day I made the meal, and enough to freeze ahead for later. I aimed to make at least 2 meals worth of each thing for the freezer, since batch prep is easier than a million smaller projects!

Without further ado, here’s my list for baby #2!

1 – Birthday Muffins (2 kinds)

I made these first my first baby as well, and I think I want to make it a tradition for every birth. The day a baby is born might be their most exciting birthday of all! So, I wanted to make muffins (instead of cake) to celebrate, just to enjoy with coffee and celebrate the sweet blessing of new life in our family.

For this baby, I made:

• Banana Bran Muffins
• Sweet Potato Chocolate Chip Muffins, made with my own pumpkin purée instead of sweet potato.

I packed and froze these muffins into rectangle plastic containers.

2 – Sourdough Bread (4 loaves)

You can grab my favourite, beginner friendly sourdough bread recipe here! I love this one, and it’s actually really easy as a beginner recipe!

For this baby, I made 4 loaves of sourdough bread to last us a little while. If you’ve never made sourdough before, you can check out my sourdough starter tutorial to get yourself rolling! And, if getting everything together in time isn’t working out well enough to make real sourdough, you can always check out my Mock Sourdough Bread recipe to make the cheater’s version (pictured below).

I packed and froze my bread in freezer safe ziploc bags.

3 – Chicken Broth (Several meals)

I once shared a post titled “10 Ways to Save Money on Food,” with tip #5 being how to make meat stretch over several meals. This is exactly what I did here with chicken. I cooked the meat for other things on my list, and used the broth to make soup. I find simple, seasoned chicken broth with rice to be an easy fall-back food to have on hand, especially with a little one who enjoys eating it. Check out my money-saving post (above) for directions on how to do this!

I froze my seasoned chicken broth in freezer safe plastic containers.

4 – Butter Chicken (1 meal)

Butter Chicken is something I had already had in my freezer, and I decided to save it for after the birth. So, onto my list it went! Leave me a comment if you’re interested in having me post this recipe!

I froze this meal in freezer safe plastic containers, with reheating instructions on my meal plan list (posted on the fridge for my husband).

5 – Shredded Beef Shepherd’s Pie (1 meal)

Again, here’s something I hadn’t planned to make, but I happened to have some leftover mashed potatoes and beef one night and I figured I might as well. Again, no recipe posted here (yet) – but let me know in the comments if you’d like to learn how to make it.

I froze this meal in foil pans with lids, doubled layered with a plastic bag on the outside to keep a better seal. Baking instructions were listed on the pans themselves (with painter’s tape).

6 – Chicken Enchiladas (3 meals)

Here’s why I needed the cooked chicken from before! These are tortillas stuffed with peppers, jalapeños, cilantro, cheese and chicken. They are then covered in tomato sauce and baked with cheese all over them. I love them, and figured they’d be something to look forward to! We may pick up some pre-made salad to go with this meal once baby is here.

I froze this meal in foil pans with lids, doubled layered with a plastic bag on the outside to keep a better seal. Baking instructions were listed on the pans themselves (with painter’s tape).

7 – Manicotti Lasagna Roll-Ups with Roasted Veggies (2 meals)

These are delicious. I had intended to make manicotti for this, but the grocery store didn’t have the shells. So, instead I purchased lasagna noodles and rolled the filling into the centre. Then I lathered them up in tomato sauce, covered them in cheese, and baked them for dinner… And I am now delighted to say that there are enough of these in our freezer to feed us twice once baby arrives!

As a side for this dish, I dry-fried a bunch of red peppers, zucchini, and eggplant, and then I tossed them with salt, pepper, olive oil, fresh minced garlic and fresh chopped parsley. These are all in trays, covered with foil, and ready to be revived in the oven.

This meal was again, frozen in foil pans with lids, doubled layered with a plastic bag on the outside to keep a better seal. Baking instructions were listed on the pans themselves. (Again, with painter’s tape.)

8 – Stuffed Peppers and Mashed Potatoes (2 meals)

This is one of my mom’s recipes which I totally love. Also, since I knew shepherd’s pie has mashed potatoes and freezes super well, I figured I should try making mashed potatoes to go with the stuffed peppers. It should work! My potatoes are in separate containers from the peppers, ready to go into the oven beside them.

Tip: I like to fry the peppers before I bake them, but I didn’t want to fry them once they’d been stuffed, since that would partially cook the meat before I froze it. So instead, I fried the peppers, cooled them off, and then stuffed them with the meat mixture to put into foil containers for the freezer.

I froze this meal in foil pans with lids, doubled layered with a plastic bag on the outside to keep a better seal. Baking instructions were listed on the pans themselves. (Again, with painter’s tape!)

9 – Taco Soup

This is a hearty, chilli-esq. soup recipe that can go in the crock pot early in the day for an easy supper. Again, I don’t have the recipe posted – but I might be able to change that if you ask! Taco soup is served with shredded cheese (also in the freezer, ready to go), and tortilla chips.

I froze this meal in freezer safe plastic containers. Reheating instructions were posted on my meal plan list (on the fridge for my husband).

10 – Rice Instructions

The last item on my list is directions for cooking rice (to serve with soup or butter chicken) in the microwave so that James can do it that way and not worry about rice cookers or stovetops or anything like that. Leave me a comment if you want these instructions as well! All you need to prepare for this step is uncooked, dry rice and a microwave safe large glass bowl.

It feels good to be ready! My freezers are full and my list is posted on the fridge, complete with instructions for my sweet husband James. <3

That’s all for today, folks! If you are interested in my postpartum meal plan from my first baby (this list is from my second), I still have that too – so let me know in the comments if that should also go on the blog!

Thanks for stopping in- I hope you found this helpful!

–Naomi

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