Creating Your Own Postpartum Meal Plan

There’s lots of advice and many opinions out there on what you should eat postpartum. In my opinion, the meals that, 1. are homemade and 2. actually get eaten, are the best ones. That’s why making your own postpartum meal plan is the strategy you should use to prepare your freezer for coming home with a new baby. You can customize based on exactly what meals you need most, what you know your family will eat, and what ingredients are in it. Plus, with a little planning, you can make and store the meals on your schedule so you aren’t scrambling at the end of pregnancy to get things put away. Read on for my tips on making a detailed plan to stock your freezer for when your new bundle arrives!

making a Postpartum meal plan

How many meals will you make?

If it’s your first baby, I would suggest putting away two weeks’ worth of meals especially if you know you won’t be getting any meals from friends, family, or your church. This includes some sort of tentative plan for every meal during those two weeks. Having a plan is crucial for avoiding meal making stress in those first few, very special days postpartum. Plus it helps you stay out of the drive thru and the take out line!

If you’ve done postpartum meal prep before or this is not your first baby, you’ll know how many days/meals you need to be able to get back on your feet AND not feel stressed out by making meals. For me, having freezer meals even when I was back on my feet for both babies was super helpful for getting back into the swing of things.

Either way, you should evaluate how much freezer space you have for storing meals. I personally was able to fit 2 weeks worth of meals in my side-by-side refrigerator freezer with a little bit of effort. But be warned, you don’t want to cook a whole bunch of food just to not have room for it!

Side note – if you are lucky enough to have a husband who loves or even doesn’t mind cooking, that is something to think about when deciding how many meals you want to put away. I can’t say that is the case with my husband.

Meal count Calculator

Once you’ve decided how many days you want to have meals for, you need to think specifically about how many of each meal you want stored. I found with both of my babies that I needed less breakfast than I did dinner because breakfast was much easier and faster for my husband to fix. I also found that I didn’t really need to fix lunch meals because I just planned on using leftovers from the dinner meals. However that might not be the case if you have multiple children.

TIP: It would be much easier to prepare double or even triple of the dinner meals to cover lunch with leftovers instead of making individual meals for each mealtime.

• # of days you want breakfast meals for
• # of days you want lunch meals for (regardless of whether you’ll double batch or make something separate)
• # of days you want dinner meals for
• # of snacks you want x # of days you want meals for = total # of snacks to make
• # of desserts you want x # of days you want meals for = total # of desserts to make

Add all of these totals together and make sure you’ll have enough room in your freezer to fit it all. Then write down the numbers for all of the meals/snacks/desserts so you can decide what to fill the plan with!

What meals should you make?

These are the meals I used when I prepped for my first and second postpartum.

Breakfast Ideas

I will say, casseroles are much easier to make for freezer prepping. However, my husband and I both found that the individual sandwiches, pancakes, etc. are so delicious. There are pros and cons… but you really can’t go wrong!

• Breakfast casserole
• Baked oatmeal
• Breakfast sandwiches
• Pancakes
• Sausage and Egg Roll Ups

Lunch ideas

As I mentioned before, I did not make lunch meals because I didn’t have enough freezer space for it. If we didn’t have any leftovers from dinner the night before, we’d fill in the gaps with snacks. We also used one of the following options because they didn’t take up extra space, were easy to fix, and/or were shelf-stable.

• Chicken salad using canned chicken (you could use pre-prepared chicken that you store in the freezer instead)
• Egg salad
• Scrambled eggs
• Sandwiches

Dinner Ideas

• Chicken Pot Pie 
• Shepherd’s Pie
• Quiche 
• Chicken Noodle Soup 
• Taco Soup 
• Chili
• Beef Stew 
• Chicken Enchiladas
• Tacos
• Steak Fajitas
• Sloppy Joe’s
• Burgers
• Pizza
• BBQ Sandwiches

Snack ideas

• Oat Balls
• Granola 
• Cinnamon Raisin Bread
• Banana Bread 
• Sandwich Bread

Dessert ideas

Let’s be honest, we all want to have dessert, especially when hunger is fierce in those first few weeks postpartum. Opting for homemade is a great idea for enjoying some treats while still avoiding processed foods.

• Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
• Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Snickerdoodle Cookies
• Peanut Butter Cookies
• Brownies

When should you make the meals?

The best time to begin prepping the freezer meals is as late as possible to avoid freezer burn and also as early as possible to space out the work. So never… Just kidding! It’s difficult to make extra food when you’re nearing the end of pregnancy and just want to sit down and rest. So starting before you hit that point is worth it, even if your food is not as fresh as it could’ve been. With that being said, my recommendation would be to start no later than 28 weeks, or the start of third trimester.

Session Method Vs. Make double method

I have always used the “session” method for meal prepping for postpartum. I’d pick several days that I wanted to get the cooking done and I would cram it all in to those days. My first pregnancy I did it over only 3 or 4 days. My second pregnancy it took about a week total.

I found that even when I spaced it out over more days in my second pregnancy, it was still very difficult. Not only was I still very pregnant, but my toddler struggled through those long days where I was mainly working in the kitchen the whole day.

My advice, and what I plan to do in future pregnancies, is to cook the meals in your plan throughout the end of pregnancy and make double so you can eat one half and freeze the second half for postpartum. That way you avoid the decision fatigue of what to make while you are unmotivated to cook at that point in pregnancy AND you get one of the meals on your plan knocked out. It’s also helpful to space out the cooking because you’ll figure out what you use up to make room in your freezer and be able to decide how it would be best to organize it all. That said, you can plan to do it either way so you have plenty of postpartum meals prepared!

Start date calculator

Session method

If you decide to use the session method and cook the meals separately from your normal cooking at home, use the following calculator to determine when to start. Don’t be overambitious with the number of meals you can make in a day. I’ve made that mistake and it’s not fun for your pregnant feet at the end of the day. Be realistic with how many you think you can do. It’s better to start the whole process earlier than to be miserable while you’re doing it.

TIP: It’s helpful to think about grouping similar meals together for your sessions so that you can use the same ingredients in that one particular cooking time. Cuts down on dishes and streamlines the process. For example, if you’re making a bread, prepare all the bread dough you’ll need for the plan then since you’ll have the ingredients out.

• # of meals/snacks/desserts to make ÷ # of meals you can make in a day = # of days to complete all cooking

Make double method

This method is more straightforward. Once you’ve determined how many meals/snacks/desserts you want to freeze for your plan, that number is the number of days you’ll use to calculate when to start.

Putting it all together

After you know how many days it’ll take you, decide how many sessions or make double days you want to do per week. Now you can calculate your start date!

Here is an example of how to determine when to start meal prepping for postpartum. Say you want to be done by 34 weeks and it is going to take you 14 days to make all of the meals. You know you can do at least two cooking days per week. So you would count backwards by the number of weeks it takes to cook all the meals. In this case, it would take 7 weeks so you’d start at 27 weeks.

Congratulations on your new little one! I hope this was helpful for your planning and that you feel confident and prepared with your custom postpartum meal plan. It was such a blessing to have these meals prepared when I had both of my babies and I hope it is for you as well!