The Best Meal Ever - Sharon Muza's The Joy of that First Postpartum Meal - Babymoon Inn Birth Center

When my daughter was born three years ago, for hours afterward I was too excited to feel hungry. Her birth left me on a high that has yet to go away, even three years later. Food was the last thing on my mind, even though I was under strict orders to eat from my Babymoon midwife and nurse.

It wasn’t until hours after she was born when I was happily snuggled up in bed with her at home that I finally felt like eating something, and my obliging husband brought me some scrambled eggs.

They were the best. eggs. ever.

With every bite they grew more tasty, and I asked my husband what he had done differently to these eggs to celebrate this special occasion of our daughter’s birth. Turns out the “special ingredients” were salt and pepper.

A couple nights later, a friend brought over lasagna and I experienced the same euphoria when eating it. To this day, I still talk about that lasagna and those eggs and how every bite of food for those first couple postpartum days blew my mind.

Turns out I’m not alone in that experience Recently, my fellow doula and Lamaze Certified Childbirth educator Sharon Muza wrote about this phenomenon in a blog post on www.dona.org.

Muza shares the story of a preparing a meal at a home birth where the pickins’ were slim:

I slowly pulled some dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets, no doubt meant for their toddler, from the freezer and popped them in the oven. Slicing up an overripe banana and a couple of oranges, I arranged the fruit “artfully” on the plates. Some mayonnaise mixed with creamy horseradish made a “fancy” dipping sauce for the baked nuggets. I cut up some string cheese sticks and mixed the pieces with the jar of olives I found. Crackers spread with jam served on the side completed this first postpartum meal.

I carried the plates to the bedroom, where both parents were resting in bed while the newborn nursed. Placing the plates on the night table, I encouraged them to eat. And eat they did. They dug in and ate with gusto. Every last bit of food was consumed. When they were done, they leaned back against the pillows happily and commented that this was the best meal ever. They were serious!

Muza hypothesizes that the first meal after giving birth is always “the best meal ever.” Anecdotal evidence at Babymoon would support this theory, as we have heard more than once that our postpartum pizza, pancakes, and snacks are beyond compare…

What was your first postpartum meal?  Was it, in fact, the best meal ever?

For the rest of this insightful and fun article and for other great articles – please visit the DONA blog.

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