Packing your Hospital Birth Bag
You’re well into your third trimester and brimming with excitement to meet your little bundle. Perhaps you’ve already gone on maternity leave, and have had time to ‘nest’ and prepare your home and nursery.
This is the perfect time to start thinking about packing your hospital bag, not always the easiest task. Now, it’s important to cover your bases but you also don’t want to be rummaging through mountains of things to retrieve what you need, especially when you may be unable to do it yourself. If you want to skip the rest, here’s a little checklist I’ve created for you.
I’ve packed 2 hospital bags now, here are some tips I’ve learnt:
Compartmentalise - Separate things into “grab-and-go” categories. For example: labour, baby, going home outfit etc etc.
Get your support person to pack for themselves.
Go over it all with your support person so they know where to reach when you yell “birth comb!!” (I can’t recommend combs highly enough, for both vaginal and c-section births)
Don’t go overboard! A hospital will always have some emergency supplies if need be, and your support person may be able to fetch other necessities items.
Keep your documents handy - Often we get caught up with what we and the baby are going to wear, but make sure to bring important documents for the hospital staff, like your birth plan, medical paperwork etc. Make sure your support person can also find these easily.
Always prepare for things to go slightly different to plan, but know that if you are a few nappies down, or forget maternity pads, everything will still be ok. (Consider this your reminder to buy pads)
To save you the hassle of scrolling back up, here’s that hospital checklist again. I would love to know how your birth goes and what you packed in your bag.
https://www.milkylife.com.au/downloadable/hospital-checklist
Happy packing! x
