“Today will be the day! I can do this! I can stop drinking coffee!!”

You are either laughing at me or with me.

 If you are laughing at me (in a smirky, “I don’t get it” kind of a way), you are probably a tea drinker with no children. Or you are a tea drinker with several organic-and-locally-grown-produce-only raised children, in which case, I bow to you.  You have my humble adoration. Truly, I wish I were you.

 If you are laughing with me, you are probably a coffee addict yourself, or at least a person who cannot start their day properly without a good cup o’ joe (I define myself as the latter, but know that the latter IS  probably the former, just more gently worded). You may be just like me, a coffee drinker who has read several articles about the benefits of green tea,  who would gladly make the switch to green tea if only green tea tasted JUST LIKE COFFEE instead of like mildew-y grass. You may be just like me, and go to bed at night telling yourself “tomorrow I am going to wake up, steep a bag of delicious chai, add a little honey and milk to that baby… Man, is that going to taste terrific”. And then your daughter wakes up twelve times during the night to nurse, and by morning time you have bags under your eyes the size of pillows, and you say to yourself “you know what? I don’t think chai tea is really gonna cut it today. TODAY I WILL drink coffee. But tomorrow, I’m all over that chai tea thing.”

I have thought of making tasty blended chai-vanilla shakes in the morning. That sounds good, right? In theory, it sounds great. But when you are running around like a maniac, trying to dress yourself and your daughter, pack her lunch for daycare, check the weather report, warm up the car, and wash last night’s dishes all in 20 minutes, blending a frothy tea-based beverage is the last thing on your mind. Especially when you know it won’t taste as good as coffee.

I’ve tried that Yerba-Mate thing too. Some people swear it has the earthy-goodness taste of coffee. In my opinion, it does have earthy goodness, but the kind that tastes like burnt dirt.

I did give up coffee for pregnancy, but that was only because G-d decided to play a joke on me and made me want to vomit every time I even SMELLED coffee. That’s actually how I discovered I was pregnant. I woke up two mornings in a row with a gag-reflex when I thought of having my morning “cuppa”, and knew something was definitely up with my body.  I remember that before I gave birth, I told myself I would stay a non-coffee drinker FOREVER, even as a new mama.  That decision lasted maybe three days. On the fourth day, after being up with Em for three straight nights, with my achy c-section scars and sore boobies, I needed a source of comfort that would simultaneously provide me with enough energy to just make it through another day. And so I reunited with my coffee cup, and the two of us have not been separated since.

If I get pregnant again, even if I don’t have the heeby-jeebies when I smell coffee, I will give it up for the baby’s sake. But in the meantime (or if I am not to get pregnant again), I really need to develop some willpower, or find a green tea that really does taste just like coffee.