
Birthing a baby is hard. I don’t care which way you do it, it’s intense and overwhelming and exhausting and a big deal.
But before having my first child, I didn’t know that on the other side of all that anguish and pain was one of the greatest joys of life. The post-birth meal.
To me, this meal should be talked about in reverential tones. It's something so special and so impactful that it should be the main topic of conversation at every baby shower – who cares what colour you’re painting the nursery, or which names you like, I want to know what you’re going to chow down on once you’ve birthed your baby into the world.
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My first labour went for 14 hours and ended in an emergency c-section. By the time I got to the ward, it was the middle of the night, there was no dinner on offer, I was bed bound because of the epidural, and I was starving. My husband couldn’t leave and come back with food as visiting hours were well and truly over, and he wouldn’t have been allowed back in.
So that first night, I had to settle for a piece of barely toasted bread with a scrape of honey (no butter, they’d run out) and a black cup of tea (milk had run out too). It wasn’t great, but I was so hungry I scoffed it down in about 30 seconds.