What I made or bought, and then actually used to prep for postpartum life

I was lucky enough to go on parental leave three weeks prior to my due date. Some of this was annual leave, and it felt a little strange to be finishing work possibly so long before I actually gave birth. It’s not uncommon for your baby to wait another week or two after your due date, so it could have been ages before I actually had a baby to show for my parental leave. However I’m really glad and grateful that I was able to take this time. I was feeling pretty knackered and physically uncomfortable by this point, and I was looking forward to not worrying about taking a lie-down when I needed it, or having to get up early in the mornings!

I was also really looking forward to doing some prep for postpartum life. I knew that things would be really hectic after the baby was born, whenever that was and however that happened, so I was keen to do whatever I could to make that time easier. As you might expect of me, a lot of this focused on food. I knew I wouldn’t have or want to spend much time on cooking, so it seemed sensible to bank some supplies. This was a mixture of cooking and buying things in. For this post, I’ll share what I made and purchased, and how I actually faired with these when the time finally came to use them! Some of the things I made I wouldn’t really recommend bothering with, but others came in super handy.

You can tell I made these in the last few uncomfortable weeks of being pregnant, because I didn’t take any photos!

Oven pancakes

I had tried these only shortly earlier in my pregnancy on the recommendation of a friend. This recipe is by the wonderful Nadiya Hussein, and you can find it pretty much all over the internet, but I used the version here on the BBC website. I’m not a fan of peanut butter, so I swapped this out for more jam (I used both strawberry and raspberry), which seemed to work well. For me they turned out denser than a decent pancake, but they still hit the spot that pancakes do, and were really tasty. When I was pregnant I had been eating them with a side of defrosted frozen berries, but this seemed a bit time-consuming for post-baby. In the early weeks when my partner was still at home I didn’t actually eat these at all, as I was just eating cereal (big piles of Weet-bix eaten as quickly as possible between feeds and naps!). However, they came into their own once he had returned to work. They were the perfect breakfast which I could prepare quickly, and then eat one-handed if I needed to hold the baby or try to multi-task while catching up on chores. Plus they’re delicious enough that it was still a bit of a treat to eat them, and it was great having something tasty and comforting to eat when I was super tired. I’d definitely recommend making these!

Cauliflower soup

I made quite a few soups in the run-up to giving birth (as you’ll see!), and it’s a habit I’ve continued postpartum. This is one that I ate more of, or at least more easily, while my partner was still at home. When it was just me and the baby, hot soup doesn’t really seem like the best lunch option for one-handed eating. So my tip for this is to drink it from a mug, and get used to drinking it lukewarm! I don’t like eating/drinking hot things when I might be holding her, as I worry about dropping them on her. So this is a lunch by yourself or from a mug option.

The recipe I used is by Cookie and Kate, and it’s brilliant (find it here). Cauliflower is a slightly divisive vegetable – I know it’s not many people’s favourite. I do like it in most forms, but this is probably the best way to eat it! It’s deliciously creamy, smooth, and coincidentally vegan, depending on what type of butter you use. This has become possibly my favourite soup of all time, and it’s one I’m still making regularly. It’s the perfect way to up your intake of this very healthy vegetable.

Roasted red pepper with onions

This was a bit of a fail, prompted by a glut of red peppers/capsicums (I’m British so will likely keep referring to these as peppers!). I was trying to think of things I could do that would make for quick meals, only requiring some pasta. I improvised this, chopping the peppers up into fairly large chunks and roasting alongside similarly prepared red onions, all doused in olive oil. It’s not something I would normally make, so it was a bit of an experiment. It smelled great when I cooked it, but I’m afraid this is one that has remained in the freezer. I didn’t quite think it through as a complete meal, so there have always been easier options for suppers. So my tip from this would be to not bother making things if you don’t normally eat them!

Tomato soup

Sadly this ended up being another bit of a fail! I improvised this based on my regular soup recipe, just reducing the amount of stock. I still managed to use too much stock, so it came out rather watery. This made it hard to blitz away the skins from the tinned tomatoes I used, so I tried passing the whole thing through a sieve. This definitely worked for removing the skins, but it was a bit of a faff, and the mixture I was left with was very runny – more like Cuppa soup than the hearty ones I was used to. I have since refined my attempts a little and made some more successful versions, but it’s safe to say that this didn’t come in handy in those early weeks.

Zucchini slices

This is a classic Australian dish, and I used (I think!) the recipe found here. Australians really like making anything and everything into slices. A lot of their ‘national dishes’ can be seen as slices of some kind – from Lamingtons to Rocky Road and savoury options like this one. It’s not a recipe I had tried before, but I had lots of zucchini (or courgettes as we call them back home) that needed using up, and this seemed like a relatively healthy way to get a lunch high in protein and with some decent vegetable content. It was really easy to make, and the only variation I made was to not add bacon. It was another thing I didn’t eat much until it was just me and baby, when the one-handed lunches came into their own. It was super tasty, and it’s definitely something I’ll be making again when I get another zucchini glut. It can’t be said that the zucchini really comes through much in the flavour – it’s more like a cheese quiche really, but it made for a delicious and easy lunch.

Banana muffins

The choice to make these was born mostly from the fact that I had a load of old bananas to use up (can you see a theme here?). Normally I might make banana bread, but I wanted something I could easily freeze in single portions, so I went for muffins. I had in mind that they’d be a healthy breakfast or quick snack, so I used wholemeal flour. If I’m totally honest these weren’t a great success; they stuck to the paper cases a lot so were quite messy to eat. I wasn’t that excited to eat them, but they were tasty enough, and they did fulfil their purpose.

Orange and chocolate muffins

Chocolate and orange is one of my favourite flavour combinations – my mum always sends me big boxes of jaffa cakes from the UK for my birthday and Christmas. For these ones I went for chocolate chips in a plain orange batter – no cocoa powder. This made them feel slightly more acceptable to eat for breakfast or just as a snack, and they were really tasty. They were the perfect little pick-me-up for when I fancied something sweet but not too rich. Strangely I pretty much lost all interest in chocolate after my baby was born, but these were still acceptable! I think this is the recipe I used: In the Kitch Chocolate Chip and Orange Zest Muffins.

Broccoli and spinach soup

The quest to find healthy things continued, using broccoli from our veg box and spinach from the garden. We don’t always have great success growing vegetables, but the spinach is very dependable, and we always have more than we can use. In the end this wasn’t my favourite soup – I used some of the stalks of spinach and it did end up being a little stringy. I think I just prefer broccoli in a solid form too! Roasted or stir fried it’s great, but in liquid form is loses a bit of its appeal. However, it was a healthy, relatively tasty soup to see us through, and a good way to cram in some nutritious vegetables without having to worry about prepping them.

Celery soup

This soup was a surprise hit. I’ve only very recently come round on celery, having absolutely hated it as a child. It does have a subtle and slightly strange flavour which I think takes some getting used to. It’s a good thing I’ve finally come to appreciate it, as we are often sent huge bunches of it in our veg box. At this point I was running out of vegetables but still keen to keep stocking the larder, so I turned to this unlikely vegetable, which I had an abundance of. Celery isn’t an obvious choice for soups, however it turned out very tasty. It was essentially just like a very strong stock, with some potatoes to add bulk, but it went really well with some cheese on toast, and again, made for an easy way to up one’s vegetable intake.

Doughnut muffins

This is an old Nigella Lawson recipe, which I took a slightly lazy approach to. I followed the recipe up until the point where you make them actually like doughnuts, by coating the exterior in sugar. I also didn’t use mini-muffin tins, just cupcake ones. In spite of all these swaps, they were still pretty tasty. I made the mistake of using strawberry jam, which resulted in them being just a bit too sweet. I think the tartness of raspberry jam would have been more balanced.

Mashed potato

I absolutely love mashed potato, and as much as I’d like to say I made this so I had a side ready to go for something else, in reality I made it because I knew I’d want to just comfort eat it by itself at some point. It actually lasted longer than I expected, and it wasn’t until I was at home by myself that I got round to eating it. But I’m so glad I made it – the delicious, creamy, buttery mix was just what I needed to power through those tiring early days by myself. 10/10 would recommend!

We Bar None

I’m very sad to report that We Bar None has closed down. They have been my favourites for a long time (you can check out my first review of them here), and they have become even more so during my postpartum period. I have lost count of how many of these I have eaten! My two favourite flavours are Turkish Delight and Coconut, which both seem to work well with the other ingredients. They are made of dates (which are supposedly good for pregnancy and breastfeeding), cashews, and various seeds, so unlike many bars, you feel confident that you’re getting healthy, natural foods. The best thing about these for the postpartum person is that they’re healthy, delicious, surprisingly filling, and you can eat them with one hand! They’re the perfect breastfeeding snack, and have helped me power through long days of pumping and feeding. Now they’ve gone out of business, I’m going to try to make my own version somehow. Although I expect they would end up being far more expensive! As you’re unlikely to be able to buy these yourself, I would just recommend finding a wholefood bar which is a convenient size and which you would be happy eating over and over. Numerous times I ended up having a couple of these bars for lunch as I didn’t get a moment to myself, and they taste good enough that I didn’t mind!

What worked?

If I had to do this again (which isn’t out of the question!), there’s not that much that I would change. I might tweak the recipes for certain things, but I would still make lots of soups, and the mashed potato. I think I would focus more on meal replacements than snacks, and more on savoury things. There are lots of meals I cook on a regular basis that are suitable for freezing, and filling the freezer with these would be helpful for the early weeks when you’ve not got much energy or time for anything else. Even now, several months down the line, I am into batch cooking, and freeze a lot of things. It’s quite easy to find healthy snacks pre-made: even if We Bar None has shut down, there are still plenty of similar enough things that could satisfy your cravings for something sweet and filling. But suppers, lunches, etc are harder to buy straight replacements for (assuming you don’t want to just buy ready-meals, which I tend to avoid where possible). So filling the fridge and freezer with tasty, vegetable-based food that you’ll look forward to eating, and won’t need much prep, would be my approach next time round. For snacks, just make sure you can eat them with one hand and you’ll be fine!

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Postpartum is a crazy, special, wonderful time, and it’s nice to spend as little as possible of it on boring things like figuring out what to eat! What was your approach? And if you’re planning now, what things are you looking forward to? Thanks very much for reading!