We all know It can be hard to prepare meals when trying to adjust to your new life style with a newborn baby.   Your nutrition plays a big role in recovery, even more so if your recovering from a long complicated birth, caesarean birth or /and are breastfeeding your baby.

You can keep it simple and stock your house up with nutritional foods which require little or no preparation.  Quick nutritious foods can include fresh fruits, raw vegetables, oats porridge, cereals with whole grains and low sugar, yogurt with raisins, raw chocolate (cacao), nuts & seeds to name a few.

I always suggest letting friends and family help you by providing nutritious meals during the early months after childbirth. Meals you can freeze are especially helpful because you can pull them out of the freezer for use on those occasional difficult days.

In Jamaica we believe a good warm meal is needed to aid recovery and soup is on the top of the list.

Soup can be comforting, on the nutritional side it’s a package to get essential nutrients from vegetables, as some people struggle with getting five-a-day and you can have three of your five in one bowl, if not more.

Jamaican Fish Tea (soup).

Fish tea is good for pregnancy and recovery after childbirth.  One of the most important and unique benefits of fish tea is the iodine it adds to your diet.  Pregnant women who have thyroids can benefit from adding iodine into their diet.  The sweet potatoes is rich in vitamin C which can accelerate wound healing and is essential to helping us cope with stress.  This fish tea also contains okra and carrots which makes it rich in iron and vitamin K.

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

2 medium whole fish (red snapper)

8 cups water

2 Green bananas,

1 large carrot, slice

1 Cup of okra, slice

2 sweet potato

1 small onion, sliced

1/2 Green and/or Red Bell Pepper, sliced

Salt or all purpose seasoning to taste

Black Pepper to taste

1 tsp mixed herbs

1 clove of garlic

1 Scotch Bonnet Pepper

Instructions: 

1. Wash fish with lemon, remove fish heads and set aside. Filet fish and set flesh aside.

2. Place the fish heads and bones into a stock pot; add 4 cups of water and bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

3. Strain fish stock and discard heads and bones; add 4 cups of water and bring to a boil.

4. Add green bananas, okra, sweet potato and carrot to fish stock and bring to a rapid boil.

5. Add bell peppers, onion, mixed herbs, salt or all purpose seasoning and black pepper to taste and stir.

6. Place scotch bonnet pepper and fish fillets on top of soup and simmer on Medium High for 10 minutes

7. Remove bonnet pepper before if explodes to avoid the soup becoming too hot to taste.

Serves 4

This soup can be tailored to your taste, you can remove and add different ingredients to suit you and your family.

Taking things one day at a time is the best approach to postpartum recovery, combined with getting plenty of rest and, most importantly, eating well and bonding with your baby.