Complete Postpartum Prep Checklist for New Moms

Hello and welcome back to the Postpartum Prep Podcast. My name is Caridin, I'm your podcast host and your guide to preparing for a smoother start to life after birth. Today we're doing our weekly Q&A episode where I answer three of your questions here on the podcast.

This week's episode theme is all about creating a postpartum prep checklist. Our first question is, what should I include in my postpartum checklist? For this question, I thought I would give you a little peek into my postpartum plan template, which is a resource that I use with pregnant families who are doing a postpartum prep session with me. And this template is 18 pages long, so it's really comprehensive and it really breaks down all sorts of different areas into detail.

We're thinking about practical preparations, we're thinking about ways to support your emotional well-being after birth, we're thinking about your relationships, but I wanted to walk you through the main categories in this template to give you an idea of all the different areas that you can include in your postpartum prep checklist. The first is creating a list of all the different types of professional support that you might need after birth and actually putting in their contact details, finding their emails or phone numbers or however you get in touch with them if you wanted to book them after birth. So you have all these different sources of professional support all in one place.

It's really easy for you to not only know what support is available, but just making it as easy as possible for you to actually get in touch with them after birth. So you know who's there to support you and you're not searching for ways to get in touch with them, you're easily able to just reach out. You're also going to want to include in your checklist building up your wider support network, so that could look like creating a list of all the family and friends that you want to get in touch with before birth and say, hey, would you be willing to help me out with XYZ after I give birth? Or even if you don't have something specific for them, just asking them kind of generally, are you okay if I reach out to you after birth if I need anything? Starting those conversations now is going to set you up for a way smoother transition after birth.

You can also start looking for mom groups in your area so you can start creating connections with other moms and a lot of mom groups will also be more than happy for you to join them while you're still pregnant. So you can already start building up those relationships and actually so you can actually get a glimpse into what life with a baby is really like. The next area on your postpartum prep checklist is going to be planning for your self-care after birth.

This is going to include things like planning for like logistically, how are you going to be able to get enough rest after birth, as well as other care essential needs like nutrition, hydration, and personal hygiene. This is also where we're going to start thinking about your emotional well-being. So you might even want to make a list of things that you know are just really emotionally supportive for you.

You might also start thinking about what returning to exercise could look like for you and what professional support you have access to to help you with that transition back into exercise after birth in a way that's not going to actually take you further back in your postpartum recovery. This could even just look like looking if there are any postpartum exercise classes in your area. The next thing on your postpartum prep checklist should be thinking about your relationship.

That might look like just thinking about how might you set yourself up so you can prioritize that connection in your relationship after birth. So that might be just simply making a list of your favorite ways to connect together as a couple. So when you do have time together after birth, it's easy for you to just remember what did you used to do before you were a mom and dad.

And for some couples, that's as simple as just watching a TV show together in the evenings. For some couples, it's bigger things. So just having that list can really help to remind you.

Now, another part of postpartum prep as a couple is going to be working on your conflict resolution strategies, working on your communication as a couple. And you don't have to do that alone. You can look for support, whether that might be seeing a couples counselor, whether that's just talking to your friends who are already parents and asking them what's helped their relationship.

Now, the next area on our postpartum prep checklist is going to be preparing for sleep. You're going to want to talk through, and again, this comes back to your partnership and working together as a team, you're going to want to talk through what might our responsibilities look like, especially overnight when it comes to sleep. Do we want to plan ahead for any kind of support when it comes to sleep? Do we have anyone who can come during the day to help take care of the baby so that we can nap in the day if we need to? And postpartum prep for sleep is, of course, also thinking about the baby's sleep space.

Do we have a safe sleep space set up for baby, whether that looks like preparing a crib or a bassinet safely, or whether that looks like preparing your bed for safe bed sharing. And in fact, I always recommend, even if you are going to be using a crib or a bassinet, even if you have no intention of bed sharing, I always recommend that you still prepare your bed for safe bed sharing. And at the very least, just know what the bed sharing safety guidelines are.

Again, like I said, even if you have no intention of ever bed sharing, the reality is most families do end up bed sharing, even if they had no intention of bed sharing. And it's always better to at least have that information on your side of how to bed share safely. In case you ever do end up needing to use it, it's better to have that information than not have it, and risk bed sharing without any safety guidelines in place.

The other thing that I find often trips people up is what your baby should wear to go to sleep. So another part of your postpartum prep, one more thing to add to your checklist, is just figuring out, even a quick Google search can usually help you with this, but what should my baby wear to sleep for the temperature of my home? And remembering that even in the bedroom, not every area of the bedroom is going to have the same temperature. Sometimes there might be a draft in some places, or the AC doesn't hit some places, so you can even test in advance.

Often, most baby monitors nowadays have a little temperature, have a thermometer, so you can set your baby monitor up in the baby's sleep space and figure out what the temperature is in your baby's specific sleep space. When it comes to bed sharing safety guidelines, my go-to is always the SafeSleep7 by Lelatchegli. I think it's a really easy, clear-to-understand guide, so I'll make sure to link that in the show notes.

The next area on your postpartum prep checklist is going to be preparing to feed your baby. And this can look like learning, actually, what strategies you might need to know about before you start feeding your baby. It can also look like gathering your supplies that you'll need for feeding your baby.

And it can also look like, again, going back to the very first thing I mentioned, understanding what sources of support there are for you. The next thing on your postpartum prep checklist is something most people already have covered, and that is buying all the essential kit that you'll need for your baby. This one should definitely be a whole other episode, because it could be a very long episode talking about what you do and don't need to buy for your baby.

Let me know if you're interested in that episode. You can always send me a DM on Instagram with any episode suggestions. The next thing on your postpartum prep checklist is going to be preparing your meals after birth.

Whether that just looks like thinking through, am I going to have freezer meals, or am I just going to get meal delivery service, and do I need to budget for that? If it is about, if you are going to be cooking freezer meals, then you're going to need to create a plan about how you're going to go about cooking those freezer meals. But the last part about cooking is thinking about after birth. How are you going to delegate responsibilities for the cooking after birth? Are you, as a mom who's just pushed a baby out, or who is recovering from a major abdominal surgery, are you going to be the one going into the kitchen to reheat those freezer meals? Or are you going to have someone else responsible for it? And do they know in advance, this is one thing that you need to put on your checklist, do they know in advance that they're going to be the one responsible for that? And this brings me also to housework.

Is the next thing on your postpartum prep checklist planning through what housework might look like after birth? In my postpartum plan template, I encourage you to write a list of what daily tasks need to be done every single day, delegating those tasks out. Not you. You're meant to be recovering from birth right now.

If you have anyone else, this is going to be their responsibility. It's not your responsibility to be doing housework after birth. So figuring out who else is going to help you with those daily tasks, those really essential things that just have to be done every day, like loading the dishwasher.

For some people, depending on if you have pets and stuff, it might be vacuuming every day and who's going to be doing those things? And also doing this for weekly tasks, if there's any weekly tasks that you know need to be done every week. The next thing on your postpartum plan checklist is going to be thinking about older children. If you have any children, if you have any kids, toddlers, any other babies, thinking through a care plan for them after birth.

Getting all your ducks in a row to make sure that they're taken care of after birth and you have the support that you'll need. Same goes for pet care, if you have any pets. This is going to be part of your postpartum plan checklist, is checking off, have I delegated responsibilities for who's going to be taking care of my pets after birth? Do I need to actually look for outside support or is somebody in my home able to help me? If I am going for outside support, do I need to budget for that support or do I have friends or family who would be willing to help? Which brings me to the next thing on your postpartum plan checklist, which is have I communicated with all the people who are planning to visit after birth? Have I communicated my boundaries to them? Another thing you can add to your checklist for this area is going to download my postpartum prep pitfalls guide because in there I have some templates.

It's all completely free, it's a free guide and the templates are also free to help with communicating with potential visitors that might be coming to visit you after birth. I have a template in there about communicating boundaries and I have a template in there about communicating expectations about what they can do when they come to visit you. And then the last thing on your postpartum prep checklist is planning for your return to work.

Depending on when you're actually returning to work, this might be a very, I'm returning to work around this time next year and that's as far as you need to go. If you're returning to work much sooner though, especially if you're returning to work within the first six weeks after birth, then this is something you're probably going to already have been starting to think about. Do you have childcare lined up? Do you have a plan for when it comes to feeding your baby? Those are the kinds of things that you'll start thinking about when it comes to returning to work.

Those are the kinds of things that you'll probably start thinking about as part of your postpartum planning process when it comes to returning to work. Okay, so that's our first question answered. What should I include in my postpartum checklist? I've walked you through as many things as I could think of.

The next question that we had is what postpartum items are really necessary and what's not? And so this question is really asking about all those items that people say you need after birth. Do you really need them? What do you need and what don't you really need? So I thought the best way to answer this question is to go through a list of the things that people typically tell you you need after birth and give my opinion on whether or not you need them. So I literally googled postpartum items and a list in Google, it auto-generated a list of postpartum care items so I thought I would just go through this, give my opinion.

First thing is nursing pads. Yes, yes, yes, yes. This is one of the most overlooked things actually when it comes to postpartum items is nursing pads because if you don't know, your breasts can actually leak milk after birth even when you're not feeding your baby.

And so nursing pads, you wear them inside your bra to catch the milk. And because I see it on this list, I'm going to touch on nursing bras. Well, I actually am going to have an episode coming up about nursing bras and whether or not they are really necessary so I'm going to save that whole conversation for a future episode.

But I will just say long story short, you do definitely need, it doesn't have to be a nursing bra, but you do need some kind of comfortable, as comfortable as possible kind of bra because think about it, if you're leaking milk overnight, you're going to be having to wear nursing pads overnight so you need to have a bra that's so comfortable that you can sleep in it. You need to have a bra that's not only so comfortable you can sleep in it but so comfortable for your breasts which might be feeling really tender especially when your milk first comes in, they might be feeling a bit engorged. You need to have something that is going to be able to grow and stretch with your breasts and also stretch back into, stretch back, what's the opposite of stretching back? Return back into place? Because your breast size, even throughout the day when you're breastfeeding, your breast size can fluctuate so something that can shift and move and grow and shrink, I guess is the word, back with you as your breasts grow and shrink throughout the day.

Okay, the next postpartum item on the list is a peri-bottle. I have mixed feelings about peri-bottles. Some people love them but I also heard this story from Olivia Hinge.

I think she's Olivia Lactation Consultant on Instagram. She told a story about how because peri-bottles started to become a thing, by the way, if you don't know what a peri-bottle is, it's like a bottle that you hold, it has a long kind of nozzle so you can spray while you're going to the bathroom, you can spray water so some people say it really helps them to feel more comfortable while they're using the bathroom after giving birth but what I was going to get to, the story Olivia told was that when peri-bottles came from the USA, when they became bigger in the UK, they started noticing that moms were having trouble with healing after birth. I'll try and link her, I'll try and go back and find her actual Instagram post so I can link it in the show notes but long story short, moms were having trouble, more trouble with healing down there after giving birth and they realized it's because they were using the peri-bottles to spray water and then because you're wearing a pad to catch the bleeding after birth, the water was kind of getting trapped and causing all sorts of issues with healing after birth.

I'll find her reel so you can go and check that reel out because I'm sure she gave a much better explanation but I guess long story short, if you are using a peri-bottle, a risk reduction strategy might be just making sure you're dry, you're not putting your underwear with a pad back on while you're still dripping wet. The next thing on this postpartum items list is disposable underwear. This was actually another thing that Olivia mentioned and this, I think it was in the same reel, this reel like blew my mind.

I guess when it came to some postpartum care items, I find that disposable underwear can be helpful because you are just bleeding so much and I even kept using it when I got my period. The first few periods that I had, maybe even for like the first year after birth, they were way heavier than they had been before birth or before I was pregnant and for at least one night during my period, I would use the disposable underwear again because the bleeding was just so heavy. And yes, I did use the disposable underwear while I was postpartum.

Going back though to what Olivia mentioned in her reel, I'm not going to repeat everything she says in the reel because I just want you to go watch that reel but long story short, if you're using disposable underwear, she recommends still changing it every two to three hours because the issue is with disposable underwear, people wear them for really long periods of time but this can increase your risk of developing an infection so just go watch her reel because she spells it all out for you in there. The next on the list is a nursing pillow. I don't think you do need a nursing pillow but some people do find them helpful.

I think that a nursing pillow gives the impression that there's only one way to feed a baby and it's sitting upright with the nursing pillow on your lap and that's just not true and in fact that kind of position is often not the most helpful for babies. I should definitely do a whole other episode on my thoughts about different nursing positions. One thing I will say about a nursing pillow, if you're going to be using a nursing pillow, try to latch baby on first and then position the pillow underneath them rather than putting them on the pillow and then trying to bend down, bringing your breast to baby while they're lying on the pillow and trying to get them to latch.

Try and latch baby first and then bring the pillow in to just give you that extra support once they're already latched. The next thing on this postpartum items on Google is a silicone breast pump. I see this everywhere.

No, this is... I can't think of a real good reason why I would ever recommend this to a mom. I know a lot of people like to use silicone breast pumps to catch the... You remember how I talked about your nipples can be leaking? Well, that's often especially likely when you actually have baby latched and on the other side, the side that they're not latched on, you can have milk leaking from that side and in even greater quantities when your baby's actually latched. So some people like to use a silicone breast pump because they can suction it onto their breast and collect the milk that's leaking from that side.

My caution with this though is silicone breast pumps are not like a passive milk collector. They are actually actively drawing out more milk than you would naturally just leak and this can lead to an oversupply of milk. I talk about how milk supply works in episode 10, so you can go back and listen to that episode.

But long story short, the more milk that you are drawing out, the more milk that you remove from the breast, the more milk it's going to signal to your body to make. Now an oversupply, it might sound great, right? You're thinking, wow, I want an abundance of milk to feed my baby. No, you actually want the perfect amount of milk to feed your baby.

An oversupply of milk can actually cause a lot of problems, a lot of problems. And so what I actually prefer when it comes to collecting the milk, because it is actually a great idea to collect all that milk that's leaking down because you can store it, you can freeze it, you can use it for whatever you want to use it for. It's perfectly good milk, whatever's leaking out.

So what I actually prefer to use are breast shells. So you put them inside of your bra, they're shaped like a shell. And they have a little hole for your nipple and they just sit there.

They're not suctioned on. You just put your nipple in and the milk drips down into the shell. You can collect it, you can store it, you can freeze it.

But you're not actively drawing out extra milk in the same way that wearing a silicone breast pump does. I also want to say, when it comes to breast pumps in general, it's not something that you really need to be focused on buying before you've even given birth. Because you just don't really know what your needs are going to be after birth when it comes to a breast pump.

Unless you know, like I'm sure there are some people out there who just know from day one they're planning on exclusively pumping. And also unless you're living in like a really rural area or somewhere that you don't have access to shipping or stores. I actually live in the Cayman Islands and I would say here it might be something that you would want to think about before giving birth.

Because we don't always have easy access to shipping and we don't always have a lot of the pumps in the store that I would usually recommend. But, so, depending on where you live in the world I guess. In many parts of the world it's pretty easy, if you do realise that you need a breast pump after birth, it's pretty easy to just send someone to the store or to order next day delivery.

Because breast pumps, not so much the silicone ones that I have been talking about, but just in general breast pumps can be quite expensive. And you don't want to be putting down all this money on a pump that you're either not going to even need or a pump that is not actually going to be the kind of pump that you need once you see what your situation is actually like once you're breastfeeding. The next thing on this postpartum care items list that Google suggests is comfortable clothing.

Yes, 100% agree with this one. Also keep in mind when it comes to comfortable clothing you're also going to want to think, if you're a nursing you're going to want to think of nursing friendly clothing. Personally I am not a fan of clothing that's specifically designed for nursing.

But things like a t-shirt, things like button down shirts, things like dresses, smocked dresses are great because you can really easily just kind of pull a smocked dress down and it stays up on the side that you're not feeding on because of the smocking. Tank tops also work really great. Things to avoid, probably the main thing to avoid would be like a dress or a jumpsuit where it's got a high neck so you don't have the ability to just pull it down.

And if it's a jumpsuit you definitely can't pull it up. If it's a dress you're probably not going to want to be pulling your dress all the way up. The next thing on this list is a pillow.

Actually yes, so we talked earlier about nursing pillows. This one is literally referring to a normal pillow and I actually meant to say before with the whole nursing pillow thing, I am way more a fan, I mean if you want to get a nursing pillow you do, but I'm a big fan, even if you do get a nursing pillow, I'm a big fan of just having as many, as many, as many regular pillows as you possibly can in all sorts of different kind of thicknesses, densities, because when you're nursing you're going to want support all around you. Nursing is often like a full body experience.

You're going to want, you might want a pillow under your knee, you're probably going to want one behind your back, maybe under your arms, at your side, behind you, in front of you, everywhere. You can even put your baby on a pillow, like, just pillows, I'm a fan. And then the last thing on the list is breast milk storage bags.

I would actually say yeah, get some breast milk storage bags, even if you don't think you'll use them, but remember what I was talking about, about those breast shells, you can store milk from it. So even if you're not pumping, you can still get some use out of breast milk storage bags if you are collecting milk that leaks when you're feeding, the milk that's leaking on the other side when you're feeding. But actually, I might take this one back, just in terms of breast milk storage bags, this is kind of, that kind of essential where it would be fine to wait until after birth and kind of see how things go, and you don't necessarily need to start shelling out money on it before you've given birth, because it's the kind of thing that is, they usually even sell breast milk storage bags in supermarkets, so it's the kind of thing that's very easy to pick up after birth if you do decide that you need breast milk storage bags.

You don't necessarily want to have breast milk storage bags if it turns out you don't need them after birth, right? So maybe buy, like, a few, I don't know, that's, I'm going to leave that up to you. But those are my thoughts on what postpartum items are really necessary and what's not. The last question for today, also, by the way, I know I usually try and keep these bonus episodes to, like, 15 minutes long.

I was very aware when I started recording this episode it was going to end up being a way longer one, but I thought this was, like, a pretty comprehensive postpartum prep episode, so I'm just going to go with it, do an extra long bonus Q&A episode for you today. The last question for our episode today is, how do I prepare for postpartum recovery as a first-time mom? And I think a lot of places will tell you to think about, you know, gathering the supplies that you need for postpartum recovery. I think I covered quite a few in when I just went through that last list of postpartum items.

By the way, if you have any other items that you would like me to give my take on, feel free to send me a DM on Instagram and I'll answer if I can. But coming back to, how do I prepare for postpartum recovery as a first-time mom? So, first, gathering supplies, that's usually the kind of practical preparation that we tend to have already thought of. So, what I want to say is, when you're preparing for postpartum recovery as a first-time mom, the most common thing I've seen when I'm working with first-time moms and when I was a first-time mom myself is not really realizing how much rest you're going to need after birth.

And not knowing about how much, like, logistical planning that you might need to do ahead of time to make sure you've really set that time up to be a really restful, restorative, healing time for yourself. I talk more about this in my postpartum prep pitfalls guide, so if you haven't downloaded that already, I will link it in the show notes. And we have made it to the end of the episode.

Thank you so much for sticking with me for a slightly longer Q&A episode today, but I hope that it's given you some really practical insights, and just preparing for that to be a more restful experience for your postpartum recovery after birth. If you found this episode helpful, I would really, really appreciate it if you would head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave a review for the show. I am really trying to grow this show.

It is my dream to continue offering this free support for as long as I can. And I can hear my baby is waking up now, so I need to go. But thank you so much for listening.

I will see you next time on the Postpartum Prep Podcast.