Have you heard of a meal train? If not, a meal train is a fantastic way to help a new mum.

Everyone wants to visit and see the new baby and the new mum, and quite often we want to help, we just don’t know how or what we can do without seeming pushy or stepping on anyone’s toes.

So what is a meal train?

It’s where you have a list of everyone who has offered to help and assign them a day to come and drop off a meal. It’s much easier to organise before you have baby, and with social media, it’s as easy as creating a group chat. Most people you know, know what foods you like and dislike, if not.

When you start the chat you can make a list of the foods you like and foods you don’t. Having meals prepared for you straight after you get home from having bub can be a godsend. You can take the time to rest and get to know bub, and know that you are going to have at least one nutritious meal a day. Asking people for two meals each is a good idea,one a week. It’s not a strain on just one person and people really do want to help.

There’s also a brilliant website called Take Them A Meal which helps with the co-ordination of the meal train.

But what about the friends and family that can’t cook, but still want to help?

Well, I have coined a phrase –  it’s “The sanity saver train”. Just as with the meal train, make your list and group chat of people who want to help, then tell them the things they can help with, just for an hour, just one day. You may want your floors swept, a load of washing done, someone to do the dishes, the bathroom cleaned. Or maybe you could do with a nap, or maybe a shower. Anything that needs doing, but you are too busy with bub to get to, or you just need some rest after the marathon of birth.

People who love you want to help, so let them. We need more community, more women looking after women. Childbirth and the postnatal period can be difficult, emotional and exhausting.

Don’t try to be a superwoman, you won’t get any medals running yourself ragged trying to do everything yourself.

Get on the meal train, and “The Sanity Saver Train”, you won’t regret it, and it may just save your sanity!

 

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