Postpartum Nesting – Supportive Items for Your Home

Creating a supportive, cozy, and thought out nest while you’re pregnant is both a nourishing activity and also a wonderful reward for when you finally get to bring baby home.

Many women will naturally have this instinct to nest sometime in the later half of pregnancy. What does that mean? Well it’s different for all of us, but it can mean setting up a space for baby in your room, creating a nursing station, batch cooking food, selecting items for a nursery, folding and refolding newborn clothes obsessively. 🙂

The biological drive around postpartum nesting fascinated me while I was pregnant. In particular, noticing what I felt compelled to do and when. I followed those feelings and I’m glad I did. You will have little to no energy to do any of this once baby is home, so taking time to carefully select items and cultivate spaces in your home will be well worth it, and can also be deeply nourishing as you observe your own body and mind in the process.

In many cultures, it is recommended that mom stay home for a period of weeks gently tending only to the basics – feeding baby, bonding with baby, eating nourishing foods, and resting. One piece of wisdom that I loved and tried to adhere to was:

After birth plan to spend the first 21 days in this way: 7 days IN bed, 7 days ON bed, and 7 days NEAR bed.

That’s a lot of time in the bedroom! This is why I recommend cultivating restful spaces that will your support your recovery and bonding time with baby.

A few questions to consider:

• Where will you spend time with baby when you arrive home?
• Where will you feed baby?
• What kind of lighting will you use in baby’s sleeping space? In your nursing area?
• Are you facing a window in your bed?
• Do you have photos or art that you will enjoy looking at?
• Where will you keep your essential items for nursing/feeding?

Postpartum Nesting Ideas:

• Salt Lamps – We light our home by the soft glow of many salt lamps after the sun goes down. This helps to support circadian rhythm and prepare the body for sleep. Newborns are particularly sensitive to light and have not regulated their circadian rhythms yet, so it’s important for restful sleep to keep the lights low at night. Make sure to have a soft, low light (or salt lamp) in your bedroom or nursery for nighttime feedings and changing. Last thing you want to do is flip on an overhead light and see babies big eyes staring back at you! 🙂
• Baskets – We used a few big wicker baskets to store essential items for nursing and mama care. These can easily be moved around the home during the day too if needed. Helpful items: nipple cream, tissues, burp cloths, breast pads, pumping supplies, a book, phone charger, and anything else you want easy access to while you are spending time in bed or in a chair with baby.
• Water Filter – We consider this an essential. A good water filter will remove hundreds of contaminants such as viruses, bacteria, cysts, parasites, pesticides, chlorine, fluoride, VOC’s. I was reminded of the importance of this the other day when our city sent us a letter stating that our home has lead pipes and they don’t recommend drinking the water! Woah. Well, good thing we have been filtering our water and especially given that we have a baby. It is particularly important to use filtered water if baby is eating formula. Our go-to filter is the Berkey. We have a travel berkey which works well for our small family and we will pack it up when we travel or car camp. They are a bit expensive but will last forever!
• Air Purifier – this was an essential for us, as we are currently living in a big city (longing to be back in a rural town). However, I would also say that it is an important item for any home, particularly if there is a pregnant woman or baby at home. There are A LOT of options out there, ranging in prices. Important features include a HEPA filter and ideally a few types of filters like a pre-filter and odor filter. We went with this Coway filter which was affordable and filters 360 sq feet which works for our small space. Of course you could always have more than one for a larger space. 🙂 Other good options: IQAir and Austin Air.
• Plants – Well, I love plants! So our home is filled with many types as they help to purify the air and also bring the outdoors in. During postpartum you will spend a lot of time inside, so I loved being surrounded by my plant friends.
• Sound Machine – when I was pregnant I thought this was optional. Well, I was wrong. Not optional! In fact, we played the soothing and calming Liquid Mind albums which I think he enjoyed but if there was a song change or a lull then he would wake up. Enter the sound machine. The reason this is so helpful is that baby is used to a loud environment in the womb as they listen to the constant noise of your heart pumping and blood moving. Hence the “shhhhh” noise that is so effective in helping to soothe baby. In the 4th trimester, doing things to help mimic the environment of the womb will help baby to relax and sleep like swaddling, white noise, movement, and skin-to-skin contact. Many will recommend buying a separate sound machine for baby versus using an app. We tried this but it didn’t work well for any of us – the noise was a bit abrasive (Hushh sound machine) for us and it didn’t help him sleep. So we have been using a portable speaker (UE Roll) and the free sleep app called White Noise using the rolling stream. This works well for our LO, and we would also prefer to listen to a stream all night versus what sounded like an alien movie!
• Find the FULL list in the Postpartum & Baby Prep eBook!

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