18 Ways To Help A New Mom
”What Can I Do To Help?”
If you say this to a mama and she looks at you like it’s a trick question, don’t give up. Sometimes asking for what we need is tricky, you know? Especially when we love, respect, and can’t imagine you scraping lasagna off our plates and taking out our trash! No fear, though, here are some ideas we will love!
1. Run A Couple of Errands. Text me the day before you’re scheduled to drop off a meal and ask if you can pick anything up on your way: toilet paper, bleach-free pads, laundry soap, etc.
2. If I Say No: Text me again a few hours before you stop by. I may have remembered something!
3. Give Me An Afternoon. “Come over about 2 in the afternoon. Hold the baby while I have a hot shower, put me to bed with the baby and then fold all the piles of laundry that have been dumped on the couch, beds or in the room corners. If there’s no laundry to fold yet, do some.” (Gloria Lemay¹)
4. Something Else I Really Knead 
Go in with a friend and pay for a massage therapist to come to the house. Let me pick the date so I can make sure hubby is available to take the kids on a walk. Peace, quiet, and relaxation! (Thanks for this idea, Anna Miller!)
5. Spruce Up My Kitchen. Put a load of dishes in the dishwasher and wipe down my countertops.
6. Make Me a Mood Boosting Air Spritzer. Buy a simple 8 ounce spray bottle and fill it with 2 tablespoons witch hazel and 3/4 cup filtered water. Add 36 to 48 drops of lavender, rose otto, violet leaf, lemon balm, ylang ylang, clary sage or sandalwood. Ask me if I’d like you to spritz my pillow. Oh, and make up a batch for yourself, too. Let’s be happy together!
7. Don’t Assume that because I am on my second (or third or fourth!) baby that I don’t need help because I “know what I’m is doing.” I need more help! (thanks Renee Kohley!)
8. Speaking Of My Older Kids . . . Please take them to the park to blow bubbles or kick the soccer ball around. Please do not feed them junk – they turn in to gremlins, I promise! Here are some healthy snack ideas they’ll love!
9. Take Kitty For a Walk. Or if you really love me clean out Fido’s litterbox! (What, you DIDN’T name your dog after a cat and vice versa?!?!?)
10. Put A Sign On My Door . . . that says “Dear Friends and Family, Mom and baby need extra rest right now. Please come back in seven days, but phone first. All donations of casserole dinners would be most welcome. Thank you for caring about this family.” Gloria Lemay ²)
11. Express Your Inner Type A. If you’re the organizing type, help me harness “Is there anything I can do to help?” into real-life results. Create a list of chores to put on the fridge so that friends know what is needed. (thanks for this idea, Katy Scott!)
12. Invite Me To The Circle. Thinking about birth – mine, yours, or the totally different one down the street – is a great way to help me process my experience. Long conversations can be tiring, but I wouldn’t mind if you dropped by your copy of The Birth Next Door for me to read while I’m nursing in the wee hours.
13. Nourish the Nourisher. Set up a Care Calendar and email all my friends/family about it. If my family is on a restricted diet – gluten, dairy, sugar, whatever – make sure that vital info gets listed. When you sign up make sure to bring me a nourishing meal like egg drop soup and a huge salad with homemade dressing. Here are 21 healthy ideas I’ll love you for!
14. Close The Gap. Yeah, there are 3 states between us and you’re totally off the hook, but how awesome would it be if you made the miles vanish into thin air with a visit from a cleaning service or box of organic, GMO-free dark chocolate drop-shipped from Amazon?
15. Send Me This Article.
16. Stop By After All The Hullabaloo Has Died Down. The first two weeks everyone is eager to help, but the adjustment period takes much longer.
17. Leave Immediately. I love you, I REALLY do, but welcoming visitors can be very tiring. So after you’ve done one of these amazing things for me, quietly slip out the door. Did I mention that I love you?
18. Make “Thank You” Taboo. Gifts are not necessary, but if you bring one make sure that it comes with a card that says “Don’t you dare write me a thank you note!“
What did you find most helpful after having baby? What do you wish someone had done for you?
Jaime Adams via FB
Love this article. I hope I am so lucky when we start having babies (hopefully right after the wedding in September!). Love the article you linked, also.
Kendahl @ Our Nourishing Roots
This is great! I could have used pretty much all of these when my kids were born. I love to see how we are all paying it forward
Kendahl @ Our Nourishing Roots´s last [type] ..Review: Diet Recovery E-book
Heather
Yep!
Really, though, I didn’t have any mommy friends when Katie was born. If my mom hadn’t come to stay with me I would have had two donated meals and a flower arrangement from Daddypotamus’ employer to work with. The second time around was soooo different. I was surrounded by amazing, generous women . . . they inspired this list!
Leah
meals, meals, and meals, followed by someone to hold baby while I showered. our first child didnt ever sleep therefore I was a very tired momma. having meals delivered kept the hubby and I fed and able to concentrate on our new baby. with our second child having people to spend time with the older child was important and having meals that fit our dietary restrictions in the freezer ready to go was great!
Diane
Good idea and I’ve read it before. Read it & tried it. Still, they came, thinking I surely wasn’t talking about THEM. Doh.
Someone should market a new mom flamethrower, easily worked with one hand while nursing baby is cradled in the other. Or, for those less prone to violence, one of those motion-activated sprinklers to chase away visitors when they reach for the doorknob.
Diane´s last [type] ..#3: Installing the 2012 Bees
Diane
Forgot to mention that I was referring to #10 up there.
Diane´s last [type] ..#3: Installing the 2012 Bees
Bethany Nash
mealtrain.com
Use it.
Heather
Lol, Bethany! Passionate about meal organization, are we???
Bethany Nash
Our church just started using it for new moms or other families that need meals, and it makes it SO much easier. Less time on the phone trying to work out who’s bringing what and when, etc.
Lyndsay Weir
I have a dog named Kitty
Heather
Haha, that’s awesome Lyndsay! I’m adding a couple cool points next to my name just for knowing you
Julie Harding
Great article with lots of good suggestions. Don’t limit these ideas just to new babies – there are many other times in our lives when we need to pull together as a community and help each other out. My son had surgery a couple of weeks ago, and his recovery was crazy difficult. I would have loved to have help from friends. Fortunately family was able to help out a bit.
Robin
So many great ideas here! I love them all. Thanks!
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Diana Osborn
I’ve given birth for the third time and I got a lot of help from using astaxanthin which I got from Dr. Mercola at http://products.mercola.com/astaxanthin/ and I never had problems about my skin after birth.
Brittany
This list is great! As baby #2 is on the way, I am hoping to get a little more help this time around. With my first one, I was living with in-laws who both work and are hardly home. We got virtually NO outside help, I guess because people assumed that we didn’t need it since we lived with family. This is a good list for me, too, for visiting friends! Sometimes it’s hard to think of what I can do to help!
Erin
I love these ideas except I would claw someone’s eyes out for touching my laundry. Feel free to clean my kitchen though, I’m just that way.
I do wish I had had a little more help, my support system was somewhat of a wreck. My mom was there being a tremendous help for what would have been a week if my husbands aunt hadn’t come over and called her the maid which hurt her feelings terribly and made her decide to leave a little earlier. The doctor said, in front of my in-laws, that friends and family are there to help, not be entertained so if visitors aren’t doing something productive, they should leave. My FIL thought this was great advice which he repeated every time he came over for the next month. DId that change the fact that he and my MIL still did absolutely nothing helpful but simply sat on the couch and hold the baby until I had to take him into another room to nurse because they think it’s gross? No. About half of my friends that visited brought meals with them, the other half, I ended up cooking for then cleaning up after.
I’m going to be a much better friend to new mamas now that I”ve experienced how not to be. And I”m also going to be more explicit in my requests for help the next time around.
Erin´s last [type] ..Bluebonnets of Texas
A. B.
One of my friends with 3 children got a babysitter for her own kids and came and cleaned house with me a few weeks after my second was born. It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me and did so much to alleviate the depressed feelings that would well up every time I looked around my filthy home!
Jessica Beech Griffith via FB
Love this list as I’m working on a list right now of how family and friends can help with #3 arrives any day now!!!
Mommypotamus via FB
Congrats, Jessica Beech Griffith! Wishing a beautiful, butter birth!
Jessica Beech Griffith via FB
Thx!
Sharla
When I had my twins my friends were so amazing. We had meals for 6 weeks. There was one set of friends who came over on a Sat night to bring us dinner and stayed until 10pm!! I was so tired!
Another thing I will add to the list is please leave your own kids at home if you come over. I actually had to add that to my meal train instructions as my boys were preemies and I wanted to keep them as germ free as possible.
allison
Your article sounds like most new mum’s dream – but a nightmare for me. There are only two things I want from other people after baby comes – take my older kids and make them happy and hold the baby whilst I shower. Other than that please leave my laundry (most people who try to help shrink all of my clothes I’ve spent years taking care of), cooking (I have celiac disease, I’m allergic to peanuts and sometimes other things and can’t consume cooked dairy) and cleaning alone (I have one person I trust for that). The massage therapist is welcome about 3 months after I’m into a nursing rhythm and the soreness has left. Call me a masochist, but there’s so much I’d rather do myself as to not make the postpartum hormone hell any more agitating.
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Andrea Drugay
Great post ~ lots of useful information to share with friends (who are ALL having babies these days)!
Andrea Drugay´s last [type] ..Photo-A-Day April 23: Vegetable
Erin Kutschbach Conant via FB
This is really really good. And accurate! And personally, i think people should not expect a thank you note anytime soon if they send gifts after the baby is born!
Cara
These are great ideas! I especially love the no thank you card note with a gift. I will definitely be practicing this one myself!!
Tammie
These are also great ideas to use when someone loses a loved one…especially a young widow/widower with children or parents who have lost a child but have other children to still take care of!!
Shelley Fitzgerald
Or even a mom and dad who lose a baby that don’t have kids at home. Getting back in to a routine of taking care of anything from paying bills, grocery shopping, and cooking healthy meals after we lost our first took a LONG time. I can’t tell you how many days I ate a reeses peanut butter cups for lunch because there was nothing else in the house.
Meal, meals, meals! There could never be enough. When our second baby was born we were so blessed by people bringing us meals! Although with only adjusting to new baby and not grieving I felt like I could have handled more cooking, but was SO grateful I didn’t have to.
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jana
Are people really that needy after having a kid?? I mean, sure, these gestures are nice, but I had a kid, not cancer. I couldnt WAIT to get back to normal after pooping mine out. I found infancy to be tedious, rather than exhausting.
Bethany Nash
Desiring loving support from friends and family during the postpartum period is not “needy.” You may be someone who has a very independent personality, and would prefer to “get back to normal” and go it alone, but some of us aren’t. Gathering around a new mom and helping out is a great way to build community, and most of us (I hope) would return the favor.
I found infancy to be exhausting at times, tedious at times, but also a time of wonder and exhilaration. Also, birthing my children was a holy experience, a thing set apart from anything else I’ve ever done, much more than “pooping out a kid.”
Mindy
Good list! I cannot emphasize enough to the in-laws, friends, etc who want to come over to “help” me by sitting around and holding my new baby, PLEASE don’t. If you want to bring food and then leave that’s one thing. If I need help cleaning and I say that would be helpful OK. But don’t just come over to hold my baby. A new mom needs alone time to bond and to adjust and in some cases learn to breast feed (think boobs hanging out) and does not need a bunch of baby-crazy people playing grab hands. IF she asks for this that’s one thing but please don’t assume that’s what she wants.