As I sat on my couch in the middle of the day in stained pajamas and matted hair feeling bleary-eyed, achy, and nauseous, I thought to myself…”What happened last night?”
It’s a situation we can all relate to. The morning after, when we wonder how we got through the night before and how to prevent it from happening again. Those mornings when we attempt to be productive, but all we can do is shake our heads in disbelief. The mornings when we question our decisions, our boundaries, and our strength of character.
I’m obviously talking about the morning after tending to a sleepless baby in the first four months of life, aptly named the “fourth trimester”. From my extensive experience of birthing one gorgeous baby, I happen to know that babies have no business being evacuated from the womb at nine months, and would benefit from hanging in there a little longer until they can, sleep through the night, walk, and be potty trained. As moms, at that point we are ready to regain control of our bladders, lower backs, and waistlines (joking! waistline is never the same). But this is where I’d call on evolution to catch up, because it’s 2019 AD.
I decided to write a book about how I cooked my way through the fourth trimester and watched my son become a happy guacamole-eating, library-going, ball-playing, car-loving international traveler. What you’re about to read is an excerpt from the introduction.