Reasons Mommy Drinks (19 page)

Mommy has a love-hate relationship with the pump. Like Mel Gibson in
Braveheart
, it provides “FREEEEEEDOM!” However, Mommy could not feel more like a dairy cow, and not just because she is wearing a cow-printed Slanket. Mommy also doesn’t understand how science works because one side explodes while the other barely yields a drop. Mommy thought Daddy would never want to have sex again once he saw her nipples being stretched out into deformed pencil erasers, but Daddy just drowns out the “wig wom wig woms” by turning up
Storage Wars
.

But pumping at home is nothing compared to pumping at the office. There’s no faster way
not
to climb the corporate ladder than being walked in on by Mommy’s male VP while her boobs are hooked up to the Medela Pump In Style Advanced. It doesn’t matter how amazing her quarterly results are. The dude will never forget that moment, and Mommy now needs to update her LinkedIn profile. But pumping is worth it. Even though it can take a full twenty minutes of creeping her frenemies on Facebook to squeeze out five ounces, pumping means she can go back to work and still breast-feed you. It also means she can have a drink. So Mommy will continue to make like The Black Eyed Peas and “Pump It.”

INGREDIENTS

1 ounce coffee liqueur

4 ounces milk

INSTRUCTIONS

Serve over ice in a trough.

HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK

As if she doesn’t feel guilty enough when she leaves you for work every day, now Mommy’s got to take care of business in a different time zone. After an embarrassing incident at security involving her breast pump (“Well, sir, this actually
prevents
explosions”), she makes it to her destination, where she compulsively checks her phone in case of an emergency, spending her entire 401(k) in roaming charges. A day of meetings is followed by a night of client schmoozery, but all she wants to do is jump on Skype and judge what outfit Daddy’s put you in (please, God, not that “pimp-in-training” Adidas tracksuit again). When she finally gets back to her room to deflate the Dolly Partons her colleagues have been ogling, it pains her to flush that liquid gold down the drain because anything more than three ounces of breast milk is on the no-fly list. At the airport, Mommy hits up the duty-free shop to get Daddy a bottle of scotch, which he’ll need after his foray into single parenthood. Following some light turbulence during which she was convinced she was going to die in a fiery crash so she hastily wrote out a will on the back of her boarding pass, Mommy arrives home to find you sound asleep and not missing any limbs. It takes every fiber in Mommy’s being not to wake you. It’s the one time she hopes you won’t sleep through the night.

INGREDIENTS

1 ounce vodka

Champagne

Dash of simple syrup

1 ounce crème de cassis

3 fresh raspberries

Squeeze of lemon

INSTRUCTIONS

Pour the vodka, Champagne, and simple syrup into a glass. Top with the crème de cassis, raspberries, and lemon. Garnish with a swizzle stick, cocktail napkin, and a child kicking your seat.

HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK

Mommy was never living at the height of fashion, but since your birth she’s definitely reached new lows. Her closet is a jail cell for fashion crimes, containing hardened criminals like Ann Taylor and Laura Ashley. She wishes she could do a major purge and splurge, but she feels guilty even eyeing those Tory Burch flats in the window of Nordstrom because she should be BOGO-ing at Payless and fixing the leaky basement. Not only does she have zero time to buy new clothes, but when she puts on anything clean you proceed to accessorize it with milky drool, goobery hands, or pee. And honestly? Mommy isn’t super psyched about shopping at Lane Bryant, but until she loses this baby weight she doesn’t have a lot of options. On weekends, she can get away with wearing the same Banana Republic Factory Store maxidress over and over again, but during the week her coworkers are subjected to a fashion-show Groundhog Day as she rotates five business-passable outfits like days-of-the-week underwear. Speaking of underwear, poor Daddy. Her lingerie drawer is full of threadbare Victoria’s Secret, except for the one red thong from last Valentine’s Day that still has the tags on it. Daddy can dream.

INGREDIENTS

1 ounce Irish cream

1 ounce crème de cacao

INSTRUCTIONS

Pour over a scoop (or a whole pint) of vanilla ice cream.

HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK

Before you were born, Mommy and Daddy were living like assholes. Two thriving careers and no kids meant lavish dinners out, resorts with swim-up bars, and ironic hats. The financial meltdown began with all the crud Mommy had to buy for you that you really didn’t need, like the forty-seven newborn Onesies you outgrew on day two and every Fisher-Price contraption ever invented. Maternity leave’s nosedive into the red was only outdone by the euro debt crisis. She’s suddenly found herself more broke than when she worked as an intern and lived off canned corn but without the benefit of creepy old men paying for her drinks. Even though she’s now back to work, the cost of child care alone means she’s barely able to claw her way back to solvency. If only some distant relative would materialize out of nowhere to bail her out with a multimillion-dollar inheritance, she could finally fix the GODDAMNED LEAKY BASEMENT. Or at least buy a decent pair of non-elastic-waist pants.