If you’ve never been pregnant before, it can be hard to really understand how exhausted you’ll be until it happens to you — and how that fatigue will make even the simplest of tasks, like making dinner every night, seem impossible. When you’re pregnant, tired at work, and getting home early in the evening, you probably just want to put your feet up and watch TV, not spend an hour (or more) in the kitchen putting dinner together, right?
Fortunately, there are some things you can do to save time and make your life a little easier — both during your pregnancy and beyond. Read on for meal prep tips, advice for making healthy meals and suggestions for creating a meal plan for pregnant women that don’t require a lot of your time, and more.
Healthy recipes: Make a plan
Planning for after baby's arrival
8. Prepare easy meals to freeze.
The only time you’ll have less energy to cook than you do now? After baby is here. That means that you’ll still be using your meal prep skills — and it’s time to embrace freezer meals: meals that you prepare (and sometimes even fully cook) ahead of time so that all you have to do is stick them in the slow cooker or Instant Pot or heat before you enjoy. In those first weeks after bringing baby home, that will likely be all you and your partner have the energy to do.
“You can spend several hours in the kitchen cooking these meals all at once or you could spend the next three weeks cooking dinner several nights a week. Call me crazy, but I choose the freezer meals,” mom Erin Kelly wrote for Mom.com.
There are tons of healthy recipes out there perfect for freezing, from pasta to soup and everything in between.
But beyond the freezer meals…
9. Don’t be afraid to take family and friends up on their offers to drop food off
Get used to asking for — and accepting — help. Also remember, there’s no shame in ordering out during pregnancy or babyhood. All that matters is that your family is fed, and that you’re able to enjoy all those newborn snuggles and all the naps you can manage.
