How I Made 30+ Whole30 Freezer Meals for Postpartum
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I spent the first two trimesters of my pregnancy mentally, emotionally, and physically preparing for birth. I focused on strategic exercise (like EMbody), sticking to a healthy diet, reading birth stories, meditating, and working hard to abolish my fear of giving birth (read more about that here). Then I was listening to a podcast, and the interviewee noted that we spend months planning for labor, but labor only lasts about one day. Conversely, we spend very little time planning for postpartum, which lasts much longer. I started to focus more on postpartum preparation, asking my mom friends for their wisdom, reading books and articles online, and considering ways to make my postpartum recovery easier on both myself and my husband.
While the concept of preparing freezer meals was not new to me, I had never actually done it. I started bookmarking some meals that I could make ahead and freeze for postpartum, but felt very overwhelmed by the thought of planning to prepare the meals. Then I came across The Family Freezer, which offers free plans for preparing multiple healthy freezer meals at once. I looked at a few plans for making 7 or 10 meals, and then I found the mother of all freezer meal plans: The Ultimate Whole30 Slow Cooker Meal Plan! This one obviously had my name all over it. I couldn’t resist the thought of having basically a whole month’s worth of meals ready to go. I knew that since I hadn’t had much energy for or interest in cooking during pregnancy, I definitely wouldn’t want to cook for the first month after baby arrived. Plus, we had just recently purchased a chest freezer, so I knew I had the space to store 30 meals.
I did, in fact, follow the meal plan and make 30 Whole30 freezer meals (plus a few extra), and I can tell you that it was way more work than I thought it would be, but it was totally worth it.
Whether you’re expecting a baby, planning to have surgery, or like the idea of having a freezer full of meals for busy seasons of life, I am sharing my lessons learned for you today. Here we go:
Buy all ingredients from 1-2 places. In the interest of saving money, I shopped around, buying canned goods and spices from Thrive Market, meats from a local farm, and produce from two different grocery delivery services. This ended up being quite time-consuming and required a lot of coordination, keeping track of which items I bought elsewhere and which I still needed. I recommend buying all of your nonperishables and high quality frozen meat from Thrive Market and all of your produce from one other place (e.g., farmer’s market, farm, or grocery store) just to preserve your sanity.
Buy chicken pieces rather than whole chickens. We spontaneously decided to buy whole, uncooked chickens from the farm when buying all of the pork and beef rather than buying chicken pieces from a store. I only later realized I would have to chop them up raw in order to prepare my meals. Unless you are a skilled butcher, I do not recommend this. I am not a skilled butcher, and I found it to be stressful and honestly a little dangerous to hack away at four gigantic chickens with a meat cleaver. It took me an hour, and I am amazed that I made it through unscathed. I did, however, use the chicken carcasses to make a couple gallons of chicken bone broth (recipe below)! On the other hand, if you are looking to save some money, buying whole chickens is more cost-effective than buying chicken pieces.
Don’t wait too long to do it, but don’t do it too soon, either. I was 33 weeks pregnant when I made all of these meals, and it was exhausting. It took about 10 hours of actual meal prep (excluding all of the planning and grocery shopping), which I completed over the course of three nights after working full days. It honestly took me a couple of days of rest to recover. I was grateful I didn’t wait even one week longer, as my energy was obviously declining at this point. However, these meals will taste their best if used within 2-3 months, so don’t prepare them too early.
Enlist help. I imagined that I would do all of this meal prep by myself and that it would take me a few hours. As I mentioned, it took me more than twice as long as I expected, and I did have my husband’s help chopping some veggies, but an assembly line system of sorts might have helped. Get organized and get someone to help you chop, measure, bag, etc.
Get a baggie holder. This thing will save your life. It’s very inexpensive and all it does is hold the freezer bag open for you while you dump in the ingredients. I almost didn’t buy one because I figured I would have my husband hold the bag open for me. As soon as I got started, I realized that doing this meal prep would have been impossible without this little tool. If you expect someone to hold the bag open for you while you add the ingredients, they will either stand there all day holding a bag or you will have to put everything in a bowl, then transfer it to the bag, and wash the bowl 30 times in between. Trust me and get the baggie holder.
Invest in the nice gallon freezer bags. Buy the bags that literally zip closed, nice and easy. I again tried to save some money here and buy the cheap bags that don’t have a zipper, and some of them leaked. It’s not worth the small savings. If you’re interested in avoiding plastic, I recommend these silicone storage bags, which can stand up on their own, or these, which are less expensive but excellent quality. You can also use a chalk pen to label the bags.
In addition to the 30 Whole30 meals I linked to above, I’m making a few extras—mostly breakfast items (all of which are Whole30 compliant) and treats:
Paleo Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins (This is a bread recipe, but I just follow all other instructions and bake them for 18-20 minutes.)
Instant Pot Bone Broth (I use this recipe for chicken or beef bones. It’s full of nutrients, including glycine and collagen, that will help your body recover from birth.)
I hope that will be helpful for you! I will say that, although this was a ton of work and took longer than I expected, it was 100% worth it and saved me time (I basically did a month’s worth of cooking and dishes in 10 hours), money (we didn’t rely on takeout postpartum), and energy (because I didn’t have any once baby arrived). PLUS, having healthy meals ready to go really helped me heal postpartum. All in all, I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to have all of these delicious meals ready to go for my husband to just dump into the Instant Pot when we were exhausted and hungry in those first few months with a new baby.
If you’re interested in prepping a few meals (rather than 30 meals), remember that The Family Freezer has tons of guides, even if you want to prep five or seven meals. Good luck!
*Here are some simple instructions for adapting slow cooker recipes to the Instant Pot.
