Food is such an important part of pregnancy. And as your due date approaches you want to be thinking more and more about getting your home stocked with food for when the baby comes. Mind you, the newborn does not need the food as they just need their mother’s breastmilk for the first 6 months, but the parents definitely do. Seeing as both parents will not be sleeping a ton, they will be burning off more calories just by being awake more. Add to that the stress of caring for a newborn and breastfeeding (which burns about 500 calories extra each day!) and you will have very hungry parents who have little time to cook or shop. Now this is where the prepping comes in handy, very handy!
Stock the Freezer as if it were doomsday
Kale Rice Casserole – Easy, Vegan, and Delicious!
Editors Note: This was written right after the baby was born but is being posted 7 months later because babies. You. will. have. no. time. Make the food! 
Okay so I exaggerate, but you still get the point. One awesome thing that we did was get a stand-alone freezer. Even though our refrigerator is relatively large, it was still extremely limiting in terms of how much food we can store. We would shed a rueful tear every time we were in Costco and couldn’t get a bunch of the frozen goodies because we knew we didn’t have enough space in our freezer. Now we are able to take much better advantage of sales on frozen foods since we have room for them. Pro tip: get an upright freezer instead of the chest freezer. Reason being is everyone I’ve talked to who owns one says that you end up “losing” lots of things at the bottom of the freezer because you can’t see or reach them easily. Having a vertical opening freezer allows us to see everything we have effortlessly and also just makes it much simpler to use each time.
Cook up some casseroles
This sort of ties in to the previous point but it’s one thing to have a bunch of frozen ingredients and another to have a precooked meal that just needs to be popped in the oven. From about week 34 or so you can safely just double a recipe for dinner and freeze the second batch. Buy a bunch of disposable pans at the supermarket so there is no cleanup afterwards. Once the baby is out and about, it will be such a joy not to have to think about cooking. Plus this way you’re eating wholesome homemade food instead of store bought frozen meals since even the best ones have obscene amounts of sodium. Your hungry stomachs will thank you.
Vegan Meal from HomeChef – Pumpkin Gnocchi with Sage Brown Butter — So Good!
Sign up to a food delivery subscription
These are actually pretty neat and there are a bunch to choose from. Basically, they are subscription services that bring complete but unprepared meals to your door. The ingredients are premeasured and the exact sizes you need for the recipes that they provide, you just have to combine and cook them. It’s not as good as having frozen home cooked food that you just need to heat up but it beats the hell out of having to go shopping! Plus a lot of the recipes use fresh produce and are very healthy. So far we’ve tried Blue Apron, Plated, the Purple Carrot (which is a completely vegan option!), Home Chef, and HelloFresh. They all have vegetarian options and we have had no problems veganizing them into delicious meals. Also since there are so many competitors, there are bunch of deals going around all the time allowing you to get them at discount prices.
P.S. We have discount codes for you for Home Chef and HelloFresh — click the links above to save on your first box!
Quality snacks
Meals are great for when you can get them but sometimes you just don’t have the time or ability to eat them. This is where some good high quality, high calorie snacks handy. I’m not talking about crackers but more along the lines of nuts, seeds, granola, etc. Grabbing a handful of almonds or sunflower seeds gets you a whole bunch of healthy calories in about two seconds flat. It gives you the necessary nutrition to keep going without collapsing until a more opportune time comes along for an appropriate and complete meal.
Utilizing these tricks has saved us a ton of trouble and has kept our energy and moods up with our newborn. If you have any tips of your own, please let us know in the comments!!!