The first six weeks of a baby's life are a hugely unsettling time for everyone involved. While Mums will want to be spending all their energy focused on the baby, a little planning will go a long way towards keeping the rest of the household running.
Plan ahead for the newborn and you
Cooking, cleaning, even showering can sometimes be a struggle when you're meeting the needs of a newborn baby. Harness your nesting energy before the baby is born to cook meals that can be frozen, them microwaved back to life. Package them in one and two person serves, so there are some for the times when finding something to eat for lunch is a challenge.
Factor in that you might be very hungry if you're breast feeding, so pop in a little extra - if it doesn't get eaten at dinner, it might work as a midnight snack for late night feeds.
If your freezer is too small for more than a couple of meals, ask friends to store food for you and bring it with them when they visit. Or better still, ask them to cook and store the food. If they have children, they will understand what a difficult time those first weeks are. And if they don't, then they probably have more time and energy than you will!
Preparing the older siblings for the new baby
Making plans for older siblings, particularly toddlers, for the early weeks of a newborn's life are as important (maybe more important!) than plans for the baby. Not only will the practicalities of finding someone to look after the older child, but helping them to understand what's happening without feeling upset or rejected is very important.
Plan early who is going to look after the older child. If it's a grandparent, for example, arrange a few trial runs for the toddler to stay with that person in the months before baby arrives. That way a 'holiday' with Grandma and Grandpa won't seem like such a shock when you're in hospital. It's also a good idea to plan for a back up baby sitter - illness or other emergency can happen to anyone.
Reading books about what happens when new babies arrive in a family might also ease the adjustment. There are plenty of titles available, good ones are Za-za's baby brother by Lucy Cousins and Cuthbert's Baby by Pamela Allen.
Get it delivered after delivery
New mothers sometimes take weeks before they can get out of the house with the baby, let alone manage a full shopping trip to the supermarket. The inevitable sleep deprivation will mean that those trips will be filled with forgotten items, emergency breast feeds and lost car keys.
A good way of avoiding the hassle of supermarket trips is to shop online, saving time and often money by helping you to resist impulse buying. But online grocery shopping, the first time at least, can be very time consuming. Before the baby arrives, try to set aside 30-40 minutes to set up a 'master list' on one of the shopping websites. Include on it everything you would regularly buy, even if you don't buy those things every week. That way you can use the master list every time you need to shop, deleting the items you don't need. Another good tip for online shopping is to choose a long delivery period - you pay lower fees if you leave a window of four hours for delivery - making online shopping a much more thrifty option.
Groceries are not the only things that can be delivered, of course. Almost everything is available on the internet and, if you're going to be home a lot more often, then delivery is much easier than going out to shop. If you're worried about couriers knocking and waking the baby during precious sleep time, ask the courier to send you an SMS when they get to your door to avoid knocking.
Discuss your newborn with other Essential Baby Mums.
