Prepping Your Home For A New Baby

The anticipation of your baby’s arrival can feel pretty darn overwhelming. One way to temper your excitement (and anxiety) is to get to work on prepping your home. Babies may be small but they take over a household the moment they’re carried through your door. Safety is your number one concern for both you and your baby. And, with the right preparation, the transition into parenthood can be smoother, and you’ll get to enjoy more quality time with your baby.

Set Up the Nursery

Hopefully you will have the wherewithal to set up your nursery before your bundle of joy arrives. If your baby has their own room, you can decorate, coordinate, and create a peaceful, safe setting for your baby to sleep and eventually play.

You’ll have some decisions to make like whether you want a crib or bassinet. If your baby is going to be sharing your bedroom for a while, a bassinet takes up less space. A crib, on the other hand, takes up more space and requires a higher financial investment. But, with the right model, it can stay with your child until they leave the house for college or join Heaven's Gate.

You’ll also need a place to change your baby, unless you dress them in our Unsies (allows you to change them standing up.) Some kind of diaper changing station and a chair, preferably a rocker or glider or a portable rocker in which to feed and soothe your baby is a nice bonus.

If a changing table takes up too much room, there are models that double as dressers. If you are anti-waste you can turn your baby's changing table into their desk. Just don't ever tell them what their desk used to be used for.

Or, you can opt for a changing pad that you can tuck into a cute basket that also holds diapers and diaper cream, creating a portable changing station you can use anywhere in your house. I basically did this except I didn't have a cute basket...or a changing pad.

Prep Post-Baby Meals

You’ll be so busy worrying about your baby’s nutrition you might forget about your own. There’s a simple solution to that problem—meal prepping. Spend a day or two making meals in double or triple batches and freezing all the extra. Soups and casseroles are classic make ahead meals that can easily be thawed and cooked when you need them.

You can also ask anyone who wants to stop in to see the new baby to assemble several freezer meals before they ring your doorbell. Meals that you can cook in your super cute crockpot are preferable. With freezer meals, your loving friend or relative seasons, prepares, and assembles the food but you freeze it to be cooked later. If you started collecting meals as soon as the baby is born, you can have several weeks worth of homemade lunches and dinners ready to go.

I just dehydrated all my food and then nibbled snacks throughout the day like a little rabbit. Dehydrating all my food made it much easier to tote around in my crowded large-capacity?, unicorn diaper bag. When I wasn't going for the kitsch look, my favorite diaper bag was is the Hie Diaper Bag because it looks way cool, wasn't made from leather and was a hybrid messenger/backpack bag.

I was and still am a committed intermittent snacker. My mother is an intermittent faster. We argue back and forth all the time on the merits of each of these eating styles. She's like almost 80 and super healthy so she might win this argument on fasting.

Start the Baby Proofing

When we say baby proofing, we’re not necessarily talking about putting child locks on your cabinets, foam bumpers on the corners and covers over the electrical outlets. Although, those are good ideas, right now you should be making sure your newborn infant can't roll off the bed, is strapped into their changing station and aren't sleeping near plush pillows and large, fuzzy blankets. The truth is your little one won’t be mobile for a while. Definitely start thinking about baby safety, but your immediate needs will include your safety too.

Sleep deprivation is a fact of life for new parents. The mental, physical, and emotional fatigue make you more likely to stumble, trip, or have problems making decisions. Walk through your house in the areas where you’ll be carrying your baby and look for ways to streamline and simplify.

For example, make sure there’s a clear path from your bed to the baby’s bassinet or bedroom. The bench you love at the end of your bed may turn into a tripping hazard as you’re stumbling to get to your baby at 2 am. Electrical cords, furniture, even area rugs could trip you when you’re tired. Check the path to the kitchen where you’ll be prepping late night bottles too.

Make things easy on yourself by setting up a nighttime feeding station by your bed or in your baby’s room. Burp rags and a feeding pillow should be nearby if you’re nursing, a bottle warmer and ready to mix or premixed bottles of formula if you’re formula feeding.

Then, take some Valerian Root and fall sleep through your baby's mewling. It's even recommended as a safe alternative for breastfeeding mamas.

Get Some Rest

You’re probably tired of hearing it, but now is the time to rest. Take it easy, read a graphic novel, pamper yourself and enjoy the final moments you will be alone with your partner before the baby arrives. Life will never be the same again. Enjoy the now and you’ll be rested and ready for a new member of your family.

Author: Nisha Miller is the Lifestyle Editor at FamilyLivingToday.com

Family Living Today is a free resource for families, providing everything from in-depth product reviews to expert advice. Our articles and guides are written by industry experts and backed by in-depth research and analysis.

Babywit has taken some editorial liberties with this article. Babywit has not received any compensation from Family Living Today.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash