Moms Help 10

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Mommypotamus » Motherhood » 18 Ways To Help A New Mom
Heather Dessinger 65 Comments This post contains affiliate links.
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?
After my oldest was born and my midwives crept away for some well-deserved sleep, I remember wondering if they’d noticed that I couldn’t figure out how to burp her. I loved my squishy little girl more than my own breath, but it took some time to feel confident as her mama.
Fortunately, my family and friends surrounded me with support, even when I didn’t know what to ask for. Apparently they had a new mom playbook I didn’t know about, and it went something like this . . .
Whether your friend is a first-time mama or a seasoned vet on baby #5, here are some ways you can help . . that ACTUALLY help!
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, natural laundry powder, etc.
Text me again a few hours before you stop by. I may have remembered something!
“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.” (Gloria Lemay) Or if there’s no laundry to fold, offer to start a load.
Chances are I barely managed to get into presentable pj’s before you arrived and I’m not thinking about a photo shoot, but as the saying goes, “If you see something beautiful in someone, speak it.”
Whether it’s my beautiful squishy baby sleeping peacefully, or an older child dressed up in a makeshift costume, if you see something lovely ask me if I’d like you to photograph it. Use my phone, or use yours and send it to me later with a quick note telling me what a great job I’m doing. Even if it’s grainy and not at all professional, your photo may become a treasured memory of a time when not many photos are taken. (See Exhibit A here)
Put a load of dishes in the dishwasher and wipe down my countertops.
Buy a dark amber 4 ounce glass spray bottle, fill it with organic lavender hydrosol (flower water) or organic rose hydrosol, then tie a bit of baker’s twine or ribbon around the nozzle to make it pretty. Although the shelf life will be about 3 months, which is shorter than this homemade air freshener made with essential oils, hydrosols are more gentle and therefore preferred for use in a home with a brand new baby.
Ask me if I’d like you to spritz my pillow. Oh, and make up a bottle for yourself, too. Let’s be happy together!
. . . 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 for this idea!)
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.
Or if you really love me clean out Fido’s litterbox! (What, you didn’t name your dog after a cat and vice versa?)
If I’ve shared with you that I’m feeling overwhelmed by visitors, offer to print this sign for me and place it on my front door.
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!)
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 gifted me a copy of The Birth Next Door for me to read while I’m nursing in the wee hours.
Organize a Meal Train and share it with my friends and family. Also send me a link that I can give to anyone who asks about bringing a meal.
If my family is on a restricted diet – gluten, dairy, sugar, whatever – make sure that vital info gets listed. When you sign up to bring something, make sure to bring me a nourishing meal like egg drop soup and a huge salad with homemade ranch dressing. Here are 25 quick, healthy meal ideas I’ll love you for!
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 natural cleaning service or box of organic, fair-trade chocolate drop-shipped from Amazon?
The first two weeks everyone is eager to help, but the adjustment period is much longer. Help around the house, or offer to come with me and hold the baby while I try on nursing bras or pick up some essentials.
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?
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!”
Is it something that was helpful to you after having a baby, or maybe something you wish someone had done for you?
Hi, I'm Heather Dessinger, founder of Mommypotamus.com. I'm on a mission to help you put delicious, healthy meals on the table, find effective natural remedies for common complaints, make your own fuss-free personal care and home products, and save time and money in the process.
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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.
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 🙂
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!
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. 🙂
Forgot to mention that I was referring to #10 up there.
Lol, Bethany! Passionate about meal organization, are we???
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.
I’m with you. It’s an even greater blessing when the meals are delivered in containers that do not need to be returned = one less item to remember to clean, get in the car, and return to the owner.
Haha, that’s awesome Lyndsay! I’m adding a couple cool points next to my name just for knowing you 🙂
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.
Absolutely! I thought of my 76 year old wheelchair-bound recently widowed friend. She desperately needs help in every way possible. After hip surgery, her brief time in the recovery facility was horrible, so home is a much better place for her, but she needs help. Everyone’s been chipping in: family, neighbors, church members, even her late husband’s coworkers visit regularly to do chores and even house repairs. There are so many people that temporarily fall under the category of “shut in” whether they have money or none, we all need help sometimes. God bless!
So many great ideas here! I love them all. Thanks!
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!
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.
I think this is GREAT! I have had two babies and both times I was totally alone, My hubby had to go back to work so during the day it was just me and two babies. And I have to have C-sections so it was especially challenging with the 2nd baby. Someone PLEASE do these things for me with baby number 3 lol.
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!
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!!!
Congrats, Jessica Beech Griffith! Wishing a beautiful, butter birth!
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.
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.
Great post ~ lots of useful information to share with friends (who are ALL having babies these days)! 😀
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!
These are great ideas! I especially love the no thank you card note with a gift. I will definitely be practicing this one myself!!
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!!
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.
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.
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.”
?Thank you mommypotimus! My thoughts too. I have had both kinds of friends super independent and super needy- but being a friend is know what to do and not to do. I love the suggestions because what ends up happening- “call me for anything” actually doesn’t work. You need to be specific to be a helpful. I had one friend that would t let people come over for 30 days- that was her culture. I respected it. I also had a friend that let me hold her baby for about an hour or so so she could take a nao, while her hubby out up a Christmas tree. Totally cool. Thanks for the reminders!!
I think it just depends on many factors. My first born did not sleep, was colicky, and I had a terrible time recovering physically from difficult labor. I was sleep deprived for months and really appreciated the small gestures like folding a load of laundry or bringing a quiche, that helped so much
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.
I TOTALLY AGREE! A family member came to “help” for 2 days and all she did was hold the baby and I ended up cooking for her while she held my 1 week old baby. That is NOT what I wanted to do!
Wow, these are AWESOME! Particularly making “thank you” taboo! YES Please! I am VERY thankful, but it stresses me out to write everyone a specific note in a timely manner! I always tell people to NOT send me a thank you note, but I should probably write a note that says that!
#1 is great too! With our second baby we were grossly unprepared for how many diapers he would go through before we got into town again!
I like what another mom added below about not bringing your kids when you go see a new mom/baby. I love children and think they should be full of life etc. But there’s a different etiquette for visiting “new baby” homes. Do not let your kids get ANYTHING out or get ANYTHING dirty, and if they can’t be quiet and or polite, then kindly leave them at home.
This is a wonderful list! Thanks for putting it together!
Thank you! Baby #1 is due in March. I am so very shy about asking for help so I am for sure passing this on to my mama & hubby who aren’t shy at all! It’s also wonderful to hear from mommys that have been there & done that that I’m not supposed to be superwoman.
I don’t know…I think I would feel really embarrassed if anyone started cleaning my house for me, nor would I feel comfortable going to take a shower with visitors over. Dropping off dinner is hard in our case because we’re a divided family (vegetarians and meat eaters) but I lovvvvved a friend who dropped off a zucchini pie that we ate for breakfast and lunch. I could cook dinners because my husband was home to hold the baby then, but during the day I lived off of bananas and apples. It was so good to have something substantial to snack on when I was alone.
I love the one about coming over to see the baby but not staying too long. I want everyone to get to meet the baby, but for all the hours that I had to share my baby with visitors (including grandparents here!) it was really tough to feel like I was getting my time to rest and bond myself.
And having a no-thank-you-card policy is fantastic! Nothing like trying to keep track of your thank-you list with a newborn in your arms.
I liked some of these. Bringing meals, calling to see if I need something (though with 1 baby I relished going out to the store, it’s with 2 when became beyond exhausting at first), and folding my laundry. Honestly, laundry was the only this that totally killed me. I really don’t understand how new moms have trouble finding the time to shower though. Newborns sleep so darn much. I took long long shower when my first was a baby. I also don’t like the idea of putting a sign on the door. That seems really rude. For me, the biggest help was plain old company. With my second my husband was in the middle of a huge transition at work and could only take 3 days off (including the day he was born) so I was alone pretty quick. It was super lonely and I loved the people that would just come and sit and talk with me. I hated how so many people wanted to give me “space.” It made me feel incredibly lonely. Oh, I also loved the idea of taking the older kids out.
My first newborn rarely slept for more than 30 minutes at a time, in a 24 hour period. I did not shower much. I often asked myself “I could shower, nap, or start a load of laundry” and usually the shower was last priority.
#18, thank goodness someone said it. I should come with a disclaimer, if you require a thank you note whe
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