Sunday, September 19, 2010

30 Days of Blogging, Day 15: Something You Can't Live Without

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's nothing I really couldn't live without (aside from the basic requirements--food, air, water, etc.)  I'm a pretty adaptable person and when I have to let go of something, I do it.  I may not like it, and I may not be happy about it, but I do it. 

There are several things that make life much less pleasant when they're out of rotation, though.  First among those is coffee.  With both of my pregnancies, I gave up coffee.  That was absolutely the hardest part about being pregnant.  There's conflicting research about whether pregnant women need to give up caffeine entirely or just cut back, and of course my mother insisted I didn't need to do either--"I drank coffee the whole time I was pregnant with you kids, and you were fine," she said.  You also drank alcohol and lived with a man who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, I could have added.  But the fact that we all dodged various bullets didn't make me feel inclined to follow her example. 

I knew it would be harder for me to limit my coffee drinking than to just give it up altogether, so that's what I did.  Toward the end of my second pregnancy I observed to my friend Denise that when you're pregnant is when you most need to relax with a drink or wake up with a cup of coffee, and you can't do either one.  It's so unfair. 

Healthy children are pretty good compensation for those temporary sacrifices, though.

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