I love Christmas! I love decorating, baking, shopping, being with my loved ones and everything else that goes with it. Sometimes these things, while enjoyable, can add stress. Being due a couple months before Christmas, I wanted to eliminate potential stresses and have the most pleasant holiday with my newborn! I want to share with you my journey preparing for a baby near the holidays.

Baking

Cookies and the holidays go hand-in-hand at my house. Chocolate chip cookies on a winter’s day? Hell yeah! Let’s be honest, I can eat chocolate chip cookies any day! Did you know that most cookies freeze extremely well and can be frozen up to six months? Baking prior to the baby’s arrival will make life soooo much easier on you! Many blogs recommend preparing freezer meals but fail to mention to prepare your favorite baked goods as well! Great baking demands little to no interruptions, so take advantage of your time now.

A few minutes difference can turn a delicious dish into inedible, blackened ash! Babies, especially newborns, demand most of your time. A baby crying while your dish is in the oven is game over!

Even if you can bake uninterrupted, you still have cleanup to deal with. In my opinion, the cleanup takes longer than the actual baking. At the end of it all, I have multiple bowls, cookie trays, cooling trays and utensils to clean; most of which inconveniently don’t fit in the dishwasher. The countertops are cruddy with flour spills and crumbs and there are fifteen different ingredients to put back in the pantry. This cleanup scenario is much harder to deal with when you have hardly any sleep!

Hot Tip: If you’re storing your fragile baked goods in a chest freezer, place them in a large Tupperware container or box to avoid crushing. I use a sturdy box to store mine and labeled what’s inside.

I found baking to be an enjoyable activity and used it as a way to manage stress during my pregnancy. The best part is that nobody could tell my baked goods were prepared and frozen ahead of time!

While most baked goods freeze well, be sure to research if your recipe can be frozen. Desserts containing meringue, gelatin, pudding, creams or desserts that are fragile (like pizzelles) should not be frozen.

Complete your Gift Shopping

My goal has always been to have Christmas shopping completed by November. Expecting near the holiday drove me to complete my shopping even earlier. By August, most of the presents were purchased and I had an Amazon shopping list saved with the remaining few items to order.

I pushed to have my shopping completed because for me, I knew taking a newborn to crowded stores in the height of flu season was out of the question. While I avoided this scenario, I was not expecting the other rewards that came with completing Christmas shopping before the baby arrived.

• Brainstorming and browsing the internet for gifts helped me take my mind off things during the pregnancy. There are many fears that can come with expecting a child. Especially when the pregnancy insomnia strikes, having something fun to think about can help relieve anxiety.

• Having time to take advantage of sales. Unless you are planning on buying high-end electronics or appliances, you do not have to wait until Black Friday to receive a good deal. I signed up for newsletters with a fake email account to receive promotional discount codes and found that many stores offer better sales throughout the year than the holidays.

• Time for shipping and shipping back if needed I ordered what appeared to be a cute sports team gnome for a relative off of a website. When it arrived, it looked nothing like the pictures. I received a very creepy looking gnome that had to go back to avoid me from having nightmares! It was much easier to run to the UPS store for drop-off without having a newborn tagging along. I also had time to brainstorm and find a replacement gift that was less frightening.

By purchasing gifts early, I was able to avoid the dreadful holiday lines, avoid putting my baby at risk of illness by taking them in public to a store and was able to relax during the holiday season.

Prepare Christmas Cards

If you mail out Christmas cards, consider using an online stationary company for assistance. It is more money than purchasing cards at the store, however it can save you valuable time and your cards will look stunning.

I use Minted.com. After creating an account, the site allows you to upload or enter contacts and saves them in an address book. After choosing a card template and personalizing, Minted will print the addresses on the envelopes for free! Imagine not having your hand cramping from handwriting all of those addresses! These addresses remain on your account so if you order birth announcements, invites or other stationary, they are always there.

You can opt to print your return address on the envelopes for a fee, or you can order labels or a rubber stamp. Again, no hand cramps from writing out your return address on each envelope! Etsy.com has a beautiful selection of labels and stamps.

Don’t forget about postage! Stop at the post office before the holiday rush or order online.

Organize Decorations

With a new baby, you may not want to deck all of the halls! I have several large storage boxes of Christmas decorations in my basement that I haul upstairs every year. My living room quickly would become crowded with decorations strewn about as I would sort through to find “that decoration” for whatever space I was decorating. There are always some decorations that don’t make it out of the box and make my lugging the containers back downstairs even harder.

It’s exhausting and with a new baby, there was no way I was going to go through all of that. I decided to venture down to the basement on a sunny summer day during my pregnancy and organize the decorations. I was so glad that I did!

I organized my decorations by categories: tree, Christmas village, dining and tabletop, outdoor and so on. Each category had its own storage container and I did not mix categories. I donated the decorations that never make it out of the boxes come decorating time.

By organizing your decorations, you will be able to easily access which ones are important to you and which ones you can leave for next year when you have more energy.

Be ready for change, say no and ask for help!

Holidays are interlaced with traditions and you may find that having a newborn will derail these. As a new parent, it is totally ok to say no and allow yourself to take things easy. Some examples to consider are:

Staying Home: Do you travel to visit loved ones? You may feel apprehensive about this and there are many factors to consider with a newborn. Don’t be afraid to say no and instead invite relatives to visit you. Be sure to communicate that you will not be traveling sooner than later so your loved ones can make arrangements.

Leave the Cooking to Someone Else: You can still achieve a holiday feast by catering from a restaurant. Some chains like Cracker Barrel have holiday catering bundles that make it easy and affordable. Another option is to ask dinner guests to bring a dish.

Purchase Gift Cards Instead: Skip the gift wrap and purchase gift cards.

Hot Tip: If you are hosting dinner consider purchasing festive, disposable dinnerware and napkins for easy cleanup.