INGREDIENTS
1 ounce tequila
3 ounces lemon-lime soda
Splash of cranberry juice
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a glass with ice. Pour in all the ingredients and stir. Make sure you nurse it.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy did the math and figured out you were conceived after she polished off a bottle of red with Daddy on an empty stomach. The throbbing headache made her slightly regret that at work the next day, but little did she know that this magical and blurry evening was her last hurrah for nine months. The minute she found out she was having you, she stopped drinking—and also gave up unpasteurized cheese, Diet Coke, coffee, sushi, and fun. Apparently in France women enjoy all of these things in moderation when they’re pregnant, but Mommy couldn’t handle the judgmental North American stares. Plus, all the conflicting literature on what’s harmless and what’s not during pregnancy made Mommy play it on the safe side, to put it mildly. This meant constantly complaining to security about the smokers outside her office tower, washing her hands every five minutes, popping prenatal vitamins like an addict, and eating an excessive amount of steamed kale. Mommy was now the Least Fun Person at Every Party, and she noticed her Evite invitations took a steep decline during this time. That was actually fine with her. The combination of nausea from morning sickness (inaccurately named because she had it all the time), extreme fatigue, and general disgust with maternity wardrobe options made her perfectly happy to RSVP her regrets. Of course, she wasn’t always the picture of health; she probably spent a good chunk of your college fund on trips to DQ. Maybe that’s why her ob-gyn, upon seeing the results on the scale, told her to “slow down.” Unfortunately, this had the reverse effect, as Mommy later ate her feelings in the form of a Mint Oreo Blizzard.
INSTRUCTIONS
Now that you can have the occasional drink, enjoy
1 gorgeous glass paired with gooey, unpasteurized Brie. Vive la France!
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy just had her insides ripped apart and her entire world turned upside down, and has slept a combined total of seventeen minutes in the past week. The last thing she feels like doing, besides getting pregnant ever again, is turning her home into a revolving door for friends, neighbors, and distant cousins who think they’re doing Mommy a favor by being among the very first human beings to meet you. Fresh off germy public transit or on their last round of antibiotics, they immediately want to pry you from Mommy’s arms with their unwashed hands and inadequate neck-supporting techniques. Then Mommy is forced to play photographer, which involves multiple retakes and twenty minutes of postproduction work on an iPhone. Meanwhile, Daddy embraces the opportunity to entertain. “Beers for everyone!” Mommy wants nothing more than to crawl into bed and emerge when you can read, but instead she finds herself listening to Suzy No Kids’s overly detailed account of a minimalist art exhibit while silently brainstorming strategies for cutting this visit short. Every visitor assumes maternity leave is one long vacation and thus expects lunch. As do you. Mommy is forced to further complicate the process of latching you to her painfully engorged breast by introducing a Hooter Hider into the mix while simultaneously grilling panini.
INGREDIENTS
5 ounces apple cider
¾ ounce bourbon
¾ ounce apple liqueur
1 cinnamon stick
INSTRUCTIONS
Warm the apple cider on the stovetop and pour into a mug. Add the bourbon and apple liqueur, and stir. Garnish with a cinnamon stick. Do not serve to any visitors or they’ll never leave.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
After weeks under house arrest, Mommy emerges into the bright lights of humanity and Hollywood to attend a Mommy and Me movie. Mommy is so desperate to go out she’ll see anything, even a movie starring Anne Hathaway. A broken elevator and grueling half hour spent navigating your monster stroller through the parking lot’s M. C. Escher stair system later, Mommy splurges on a bucket of buttery popcorn that immediately offsets any postpartum weight loss. The movie is already ten minutes in, but Mommy can’t hear what’s going on anyway over the Dolby digital surround-sound screeching of colicky babies, including you. Mommy spends the next 102-minute running time running up and down the aisles attempting to soothe you. Unfortunately, the moment you fall asleep coincides with the exact moment of an unexpected plot twist involving a massive explosion. This not only jolts you awake but also makes you shit your pants, forcing Mommy to line up for the communal change table lined with 312 strains of bacteria. Great news! With the lights left partially on, she can see you’ve actually shit on her. Mommy doesn’t know who is most deserving of her sympathy: herself, the teenagers who didn’t know it was Mommy and Me day and are hating life, or the one uncomfortable Dad in the crowd who is flanked by row upon row of exposed, engorged nipples. Roll credits.
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce Silver Patrón tequila
1½ ounces orange juice
1½ ounces grapefruit juice
1½ ounces cranberry juice
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a glass with ice. Pour in all the ingredients and stir.
NOTE
Pairs well with microwave popcorn and your dusty DVD collection.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Your cousin’s outgrown car seat models were taking up prime storage space for five years before Mommy learned that car seats have expiration dates. Seriously? The Corolla in which it will be installed is one frost away from collapse, but apparently it’s the gently used Britax Marathon that’s obsolete. Time to spend another $200 on something you’ll outgrow in less time than you spent in the womb. At least babies love going for a drive and immediately drift off to sleep when placed in a car seat. Except, for some reason, you. You scream like Saw 4 is being filmed in the backseat for the entire ride. Not even Mommy’s Madonna megamix can soothe you. Even though all the windows are rolled up, the other drivers can see your tears and are giving Mommy the “Bad Mother” glare. Unfortunately, she has to put you in the car seat to get to her Mommy groups, which are a whole other reason Mommy needs a drink.
INGREDIENTS
2 ounces pear juice
2 ounces apple juice
Splash of lemon juice
Sage leaf
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine the pear, apple, and lemon juices in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into an ice-filled glass. Garnish with a sage leaf.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
While on maternity leave, Mommy is forced to travel in unchartered social circles known as Mommy groups. Gatherings take place at rotating houses belonging to the other Mommies from her prenatal class. She would never normally socialize with most of these people, but all her real friends are working and Mommy is desperate. With babies either asleep in Graco car seats or suckling at breasts, most Mommy group sessions are giant bitchfests about latching problems, lack of sleep, and useless husbands. Mommy chronically forgets to pack the Hooter Hider before leaving home, which means pulling a Janet Jackson to quell your hunger squeals before they drown out Norah Jones. Mommy groups can be weirdly competitive. These women boast about their eight-week-old’s above-average bowel movements and compare push gifts from Tiffany. Most of the women also insist on baking everything from scratch, and this poses a problem when it’s Mommy’s turn to host because she has no idea how an oven works. This quickly snowballs into a giant charade of buying gluten-free muffins at Whole Foods and burning all the evidence. Mommy is exhausted from pretending to be interested in their parenting styles (“My Liam is self-actualized!”) and nanny searches (“Manuela has an early childhood education degree, but she’s from an island”), but when faced with the alternative of social isolation and meals eaten out of a peanut butter jar, Mommy finds herself counting down the minutes until the next meeting.
INGREDIENTS
Equal parts any boxed wine and Perrier
INSTRUCTIONS<
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Fill a glass with ice. Pour in the wine and Perrier, and stir.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy used to party irresponsibly. She used to wear pleather and dance on the bar to “Pony” by Ginuwine, and once while overserved $2 Amaretto sours she ate a whole apple pie off some random dude’s table. Mommy would wake up in a dry-mouthed haze at noon and piece together the evening through Facebook photos and a Sent folder of drunken texts to ex-boyfriends. Then she’d meet her friends for brunch at 2 PM to discuss who made out with which bouncer. Now if Mommy has more than a glass of wine she pays for it at 2 AM, 4 AM, and 6 AM, when you wake up screaming and she has to feed you from the stash of breast milk in the freezer. She used to keep nothing but vodka and an eye mask in there. Times have changed.
INSTRUCTIONS
1 ounce, served neat. If you’re going to have only one drink, make it count.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
On the occasion of Mommy’s birthday, Daddy tries to melt away three months of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion with the (previously) fail-safe gift of a day at the spa. Unfortunately, Mommy’s first postnatal spa visit doesn’t quite pan out as planned. First, the massage therapist has the misguided notion that Mommy wants to spend her first child-free hour in months answering a continuous stream of questions about labor when all she really wants to do is fantasize about Matt Damon. Mommy’s rejuvenation facial is scored by pan flutes, wind chimes, and a lecture about the toll that her lack of sleep is taking on the skin around her eyes, delivered by an aesthetician who looks twelve. Mommy hasn’t even cracked Us Weekly in the postservice tranquility room when Daddy calls with the news that you’ve been wailing incessantly for the past forty-five minutes, refusing to take the bottle. Mommy heads immediately to the checkout desk, where she’s pressured in her vulnerable postpartum state into dropping $75 on an antigravity firming lift cream from France that she’ll find unopened and expired in her bathroom drawer in 2020. As she races uptown at lightning speed, Mommy’s nipples leak all over the steering wheel. Serenity now!
INGREDIENTS
½ ounce green tea liqueur
½ ounce melon liqueur
3 ounces mango juice
2 ounces cream
Fresh mint leaves
Freshly ground nutmeg
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine the green tea liqueur, melon liqueur, mango juice, and cream in a shaker with ice. Shake well and strain into a Champagne flute. Garnish with mint and nutmeg, and hold your breath for eighteen years.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Even more hotly debated than health-care reform is which of the 563 models of baby-wearing devices to buy. Despite witnessing multiple demos by store clerks on some petrifying dummy babies, Mommy never actually mastered any of the three baby carriers she purchased during a hormone-induced shopping spree in her last trimester. There was the structured baby carrier from Europe with twelve buckles, six adjustment straps, and a recall notice. There was the two-foot-wide, sixteen-foot-long piece of organic cotton fabric that all the websites said was “so easy to use!” that Mommy almost strangled herself with. And finally there was the ergonomically designed backpack that was more difficult to assemble than an IKEA EXPEDIT shelving unit. Mommy was forced to resort to the “idiot-proof” online instructional videos after your birth, but they were far too complex for her sleep-deprived brain. After three months of carrying you in her arms every waking minute of the day, Mommy finally struck gold with a borrowed sling that looks like a cross between Joseph’s Technicolor Dreamcoat and the wallpaper in her great aunt’s bathroom. Mommy is now a prime candidate for What Not to Wear: Maternal Edition, but at least she can finally make a sandwich with two hands.
INGREDIENTS
½ ounce grenadine
1 ounce gin
2 ounces sweet-and-sour mix
2 ounces chilled club soda
½ ounce cherry brandy
Cherry
INSTRUCTIONS
Pour the grenadine into the bottom of a glass and fill with ice. Add the gin, sweet-and-sour mix, and club soda. Top with the cherry brandy, stir, and garnish with a cherry.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Sure, there are a lot of things Mommy doesn’t miss about being pregnant. Like heartburn, cankles, and three months spent hugging the toilet bowl. But pregnancy definitely had its pluses. Aside from the forty pounds of extra weight around her midsection, Mommy-to-be was a spitting image of a Victoria Secret model thanks to her doubleD rack, luscious locks, and hormone-charged glow. Armed with her “baby brain” pass, she never had to sweat forgetting a best friend’s birthday or saying something stupid in a really important meeting. Now that you’re born, Mommy is yesterday’s news. She no longer walks on water and she’s finding it hard to cope. She’s wondering why all the nice strangers who used to run to her expectant side to open doors for her are always MIA when she’s struggling to jam your SUV-sized stroller through the tiny nonautomated Starbucks doorway without spilling half her extra-hot latté on your lap. The world could now care less whether you’re a boy or a girl; they just want to know what Mommy’s done to make you scream so loudly. Recently, she’s even caught herself longing for the unsolicited belly strokes that used to make her recoil. Now she has only your dirty diapers to thank for that.
INGREDIENTS
5 ounces cranberry juice
1 ounce club soda
Cherry
INSTRUCTIONS
Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour in the cranberry juice and club soda, and stir. Impregnate with a cherry.
NOTE
Break out your maternity jeggings and a basketball and enjoy this mocktail for old times’ sake.
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy feels like shit. Mommy wants to turn off all the lights, crawl under the duvet, and die. Before you were born, Mommy could call in sick and still get paid. But now that she’s on maternity leave, when Mommy feels like she’s been run over by a truck she can’t even take a minute off, let alone a whole day. She’s desperate for even twenty minutes of sleep, but she can’t get it because you’re teething, or you’re constipated, or you’re just being an asshole. In between cold sweats, Mommy reaches for her surefire OTC cocktail, SudafedBenylinNyquilTylenol. WARNING: Nursing mothers are screwed as meds will adversely affect milk supply. NOOOOooooo. In that moment, Mommy has delusions of getting relief by snorting bath salts. At least she’ll get to rest when you take your morning nap. Oh, you’ve dropped your morning nap today? Awesome. This is Mommy’s fault for not getting the free flu shot given to pregnant women when she had the chance.
NOTE
Countries across Europe have been using it as medicine for years and they always know what they’re doing! (cough Greece cough)
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Mommy used to love having sex with Daddy. When you eventually ask, “Mommy, where do babies come from?” she will be tempted to respond with the truth: a trip to Agent Provocateur, a remix of Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing,” and a bottle of red wine. And in the early days of pregnancy, it was still game on, thanks to raging hormones and a growing rack. But CLICHÉ ALERT: Now that she’s a Mommy, her sex life has taken a nosedive into nonexistent. She looks at her Track My Sex Life app with dread when she realizes it’s been weeks since she put out and Daddy’s getting cagey. Even though it looks like Picasso’s Femme en Pleurs down there, he’s still really into doing it. Maybe it’s because her boobs are porn-star huge. But if he tries to touch them after you’ve been gnawing on them all day, she will totally go for it! If the definition of go for it is “lose it.” On top of which, Mommy hasn’t picked up her Venus Embrace razor in three weeks, and her last bikini wax was just before you were born.
INGREDIENTS
⅓ ounce Amaretto
⅓ ounce coffee liqueur
⅓ ounce Irish cream
INSTRUCTIONS
Combine all the ingredients in a shake
r with ice. Shake well and strain into a shot glass. Make another for your partner and enjoy simultaneously. Just like old times!
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
Some women at Mommy Group complain that their babies are not sleeping through the night. “My Liam wakes up once in a twelve-hour period! We’re going to have to hire a night doula.” What. The. Fuck. Not only will you not sleep through the night, you’re up every two hours. Mommy has been forced to replace actual restorative shut-eye with caffeine and carbs. She was going to max out a college savings plan so you could go to Harvard, but at $10 a pop for a Venti and an artisanal cheese scone, it looks like you’ll be going to the First Choice Haircutters Academy. To add insult to injury, after desperately attempting to nurse you to sleep last night, you puked Linda Blair–style down her threadbare Bravado bra. Mommy was too exhausted to do anything about it, so she spent the night in someone else’s vomit. Memories of spring break in Cancún. Although being up all night then was by choice. (And awesome.)
INGREDIENTS
5 ounces hot coffee
1 ounce coffee liqueur
½ ounce tequila
INSTRUCTIONS
Pour the coffee in a mug, add the coffee liqueur and tequila, and stir. Enjoy your much-needed caffeine fix hot and steamy, just like that night on the beach with Ernesto. Or was it Todd? Not important. Vacation flings don’t count toward your “number.”
HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK
The time has come for Mommy’s mandatory “bring the baby to the office” trip. Mommy carefully scheduled the visit around your nursing schedule, as her lack of skill with the Hooter Hider would inevitably lead to a traumatic nipple-flashing-the-CFO incident. Mommy’s in-box has been overflowing with emails about how excited everyone is to meet you, although she knows they’re actually just dying to see how much of her baby weight she’s lost. None of her business casual wear fits, so Mommy had to truck it to Banana Republic yesterday to buy a half-price polyester dress she’ll never wear again and take her MAC Studio Fix out of hiding. Mommy will put on her best “really interested” face as she’s updated on the latest office politics and fiscal-year market share progress, while secretly dreaming about the Downton Abbey episode on her DVR. As you’re passed around from one colleague to the next, she’ll also try to block out what she recently read about keyboards being five times germier than toilet seats. Mommy really hopes you don’t cry, unless it’s when she’s caught in conversation with that guy from accounting who can’t read social cues.
Reasons Mommy Drinks Page 2