You can help a new mom by bringing food, doing household chores, watching the baby, and paying attention to her wants and needs.
The birth of a child is an exciting time for everyone involved. Initially, after a new mother gives birth, she may essentially be on a high for the first couple of days. She'll be so excited that her new baby has finally arrived, and she'll revel in the visits and attention from friends and relatives. The hard part comes, however, once she arrives home.
What can you do to help a new mom? Many well-meaning friends and relatives lightly throw out the comment, "Let me know if you need anything!", as they walk out the door. Most new mothers are not bold enough to pick up the phone and tell that friend or relative that they need them to do certain things. Instead of telling the mom to let you know what she needs, you should be more specific in offering help. You should also pay attention to how much help a young mother really wants.
Many times, new parents are overrun with other family members, including the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Unfortunately, even though everyone wants to see the baby, the mother becomes exhausted because she can never quite get the rest she so desperately needs. After the initial birth and homecoming of the newborn, however, everyone eventually goes back to their day to day activities, and the mother may be left at home. Of course, some mothers may revel in the idea of having several full days of solitude to spend with her husband and baby. Other mothers, however, may suddenly feel completely overwhelmed at the idea of taking care of a newborn.
Hopefully, you are close enough to the new mother to be able to gauge what her feelings are concerning needed and wanted help. If you are not a close family member, such as a grandparent or sibling, you may want to wait until all the hoopla has died down, and the husband has returned to work. Once all the company has left, you might then offer your services.
You may need to be specific in your suggestions of help. For example, you could tell the new mother that you would like to bring over dinner for the next couple of nights. Be sure and have everything precooked, so that all she or her husband has to do is warm the food before they eat it. As an added plus, you could bring along a few sturdy paper plates and forks, so that there will be less dishes for the new parents to deal with. You can bring the dinner in a disposable dish, such as an aluminum foil pan, or you can tell the new mom that you will come back and get your dish later, so she doesn't have to worry about returning it to you.
If you are a parent, you may remember those first few weeks and months in which you felt as if you didn't do much more than sit on the couch and feed your baby. Housework and laundry continued to pile up, and you went to bed exhausted every night. Even if you don't remember those days, you can sympathize with a new mom. If you live conveniently nearby, ask the new mother if you can come by and put a load of clothes in for her and run the vacuum cleaner. Be sure that you come when it is convenient for her, and if she seems uncomfortable at the prospect of someone sorting her dirty laundry or cleaning her house, don't push. Instead, you and some other friends could pitch in and pay for a cleaning service to cover the first few weeks that the new parents are at home.
Finally, the one thing a new mom may crave is a couple of hours away from the baby. Though she adores their child, she may also have an urge to simply prowl the aisles at Walmart or take a long bubble bath. You can offer to watch the baby for a couple of hours, so that your friend can simply have time to run errands or do nothing at all. There are numerous ways that you can help a new mother, but above all be sensitive to her needs, and make sure that what you are doing is really helping her.
