When Heather Meininger from Charlotte, N.C., brought home her daughter, Caroline, four years ago, she was lucky enough to have her mother stay with her and prepare the family's meals for a week. But after that, she and her husband were on their own.

"I couldn't believe how difficult it was to even get dressed, much less worry about making dinner for us," says Meininger, president of the Mommies Network (www.mommiesnetwork.org), a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping moms find friendship and support in their local communities. "We had takeout a lot and for a family getting used to a one-income household, that was really not a good idea. We racked up a lot of credit card debt during those first few months, and I know a lot of it was because we ate out so often rather than eating at home."

What you are going to eat after you return home from the hospital or birthing center often gets left off the pre-due date checklist, especially for first-time parents. They don't realize the first few days are going to go by in a blur of catching up on sleep while the baby is napping, entertaining visitors, trying to keep the house straightened and nursing the baby or preparing bottles.

Here are a few tips and quick meal ideas that will enable you to still eat nutritiously without having to call for takeout every day.

If that slow cooker you got as a wedding gift is still sitting in its original packaging, now would be a great time to break it out. Slow cooker meals are quick, easy, convenient and require little cleanup. You can throw a few ingredients in the cooker in the morning and by dinnertime a delicious meal will be ready. There is an abundance of slow cooker recipe books on the market right now, and you can ask your friends for their favorite recipes and start stockpiling them.

In the weeks leading up to your due date, you can make an extra batch of certain meals and freeze them. Examples are baked ziti, lasagna and burritos. That way all you have to do is thaw the meal in your refrigerator overnight, pop it in the oven the next night and dinner will be ready in about an hour. If you don't have a large freezer with your refrigerator, you might want to consider purchasing a small shelf freezer to put in your garage or outside storage area. Later, you can use it to store meat and other frozen items you may choose to buy in bulk.

Many women are catching on to the idea that new mothers desperately need help with the cooking in the first few weeks home. Mothers groups and communities are forming "stork clubs" where women sign up to make meals for each other when a member returns home from the hospital. You can join a mom's group in the months before your due date, so get yourself on that list! You will have to return the favor on an occasional basis, but it will be worth it. If a stork club has seven or eight people in it, that's at least a week's worth of meals for you –and you've made some new friends. That's what Michele Weir of Cornelius, N.C., did in the months before her son Ian was born.

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