How many meals should I cook & freeze before baby comes?

Donna C

New member
Planning about 8 different dishes to cook over the next 3-4 days and freeze (mostly crock pot stuff). It's not really a big deal to double a lot of these recipes while I'm at it - but I'm just not sure how many frozen dishes I'm actually going to need.

When your baby first arrived, just how busy were you? Like...do you wish you had prepared food in advance for the entire first month or two? Or were you finding that you had more free time to cook then you anticipated.

Not the most important question in the world, but I'd really appreciate your feedback :)

Thanks!
 
I was living at my mother in laws when I had my son so I did not really have to cook at all when he was born. I got very bored with that though because I had too much free time and she wouldn't let me in the kitchen to even do the dishes.

All in all it is really up to you. Some mom's have needy babies and others (like me) have babies that are pretty self sufficient and do not demand you every second of the day.

Now that I am in my own place (he is going to be 5 months on the 3rd) I am a stay at home mom and I can cook and get every thing done. If I were on my own when he was born though I probably would have had meals frozen as back up for days where I was too tired to cook.
 
I really didn't understand why everyone told me to freeze meals in advance. Yes you're very tired but the baby sleeps a lot and it didn't take too much effort to throw together a decent dinner every night.
 
It never hurts to freeze meals. Even if you aren't as busy as you think you might be (you really won't be busy..I promise..newborns sleep about 20 hours a day) it's still nice to have them prepared.

I would make however many you have room for. It's nice to just take it out, thaw it, and heat it.
 
If you can handle it- I would do a whole months' worth of dinners. Seriously, I was SO tired and worn out after DD came and thank goodness for our friends- they bought us a bunch of pre-made frozen meals that we just had to defrost, heat and assemble- lasted for two weeks. Just do as much as you can- it never hurts to have a quick-to-pull-together freezer meals on hand!
 
My daughter slept all the time for the first 2 weeks. She woke every 2 hours on the dot, ate for about 30 mins, then fell back asleep. If we were lucky we had 5-10 minutes of time when she was awake and not eating to talk to her and "play" with her. So, I had time to cook and clean after the first few days of recovery. Then at the 2 week mark, my husband went back to work and she started to slowly become more alert during the day. So from 2 weeks til now (3 months) I have been too busy to cook! So, on my husbands days off I cook enough for the week or eat frozen healthy choice dinners.

I would suggest making enough for the first few days while you are still recovering from the birth and you can rest. Then when you get time or someone can sit with the baby, after a few weeks, keep meals cooked and in the freezer all the time or stock up on frozen dinners. Or cooking things in the crock pot is REALLY easy for when the baby comes. Good luck and congrats!
 
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