Christmas Babies

[Pheepa]

Looking for ideas! My 3rd is due on 2nd Jan. I’ll likely be booked for a c section between Christmas and new year due to 2 previous sections and low lying placenta. So will be heavily pregnant at Christmas or will have a tiny baby if he happens to come a bit early.
We love Christmas and don’t want this year to be a let down for any of us. My husband can cook but Christmas dinners wouldn’t be his forte, we don’t want to plan to host anyone for obvious reasons and don’t really want to travel far to family. Booking a meal somewhere is risky as they’ll all want deposits with it being Christmas Day and there is a chance we wouldn’t make it.
Has anyone ever done anything really easy, different but still really special for Christmas Day. I know we could do nice nibbles and Christmas films and just take it easy but not sure that will cut it and we’ll probably have been doing that for the rest of the Christmas holidays!
Thanks, just thought someone might have a genius idea!

DS was due 15th and born 29th. It was Covid times so couldn’t have people round, but I’d organised a Christmas Eve collection from Sainsburys of all of their Christmas dishes that you just put in the oven. Timings are all on the packaging so it was absolutely fool proof.

We got a cheese delivery and had stocked up on nibbles. My siblings also got us an early Christmas present of Cook meals and batch cooking to go into the freezer which covered us for a couple of weeks.

DH was very happy with his hospital bag snacks of an ultimate Christmas leftovers sandwich!

I was heavily pregnant last year & I'd honestly do a M&S style Christmas - all prepared, just pop in the oven. Can even buy the gravy to just heat up! Takes zero effort and comes in foil trays you can just throw away to save on washing up. Pricier than usual but worth it IMO. It's what we did and no regrets. If I wasn't on mat pay this year I'd be doing it again 😅

Dc1 was born between Christmas and New Year. Christmas day that year dh and I had fish fingers, chips and beans for dinner 😂
As a family it has become our tradition that we don't have the full roast on Christmas Day. Instead we have "party food", the boxes of ready made tapas/spring rolls/Indian snacks etc. After church the oven goes on and periodically we shove trays of stuff in, grazing through the day. We play games (either video or board) or watch Christmas movies. Video calls with relatives. It's pretty much the only day of the year we're all in the same room all day which is what makes it special.

Look at somewhere like Cook - they do loads of pre-prepped Christmas dishes and sides that you can mostly just stick in the oven. Bit expensive but nowhere near the cost of going out for a meal and will be much easier!

I was due 2nd Jan with my last and she came 3 weeks early, we’d already cancelled our normal Christmas plans and were planning low key, lazy Christmas, we just did it with a baby too! Not what you’re asking for, but it was nice. I’m glad we didn’t plan anything and I see her next Christmas as being her first proper one - she was able to try and open her own presents etc.
I’m due just before Christmas this time, so fingers crossed for a relaxed one again!

Ooh following as I'm due Boxing Day! I think we're going to just do the M&S ready to go in the oven stuff and have the pantry full of Christmas bits ready to go

We did the full on Christmas dinner before my due date of mid December and then planned to do it again on Christmas Day if we’d had the baby before and we were all settled. We ended up coming out of hospital on Christmas Day so I was glad we’d done all the fancy food in advance especially as our DD was a really unsettled baby and it was months before I managed to eat a meal uninterrupted.

My little one was born on Christmas morning and we stayed in the hospital till 28th (went in on the 24th)

Husband was very happy with pizza for dinner on Xmas day and was too tired to care. Bigger things to worry about really than this especially if there are medical issues for mum or baby.

Hope you have a great pregnancy and birth experience. 😀