Adventures in Decaf
Good morning, friends. By all rights I should be drinking iced coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts right now, however, I have a coffee date later today, so I decided to skip the morning coffee in favor of coffee later. Even if I were drinking iced coffee, however, it wouldn’t be doing much to perk me up aside from it’s refreshing coolness and sugary goodness. You see, I’m not drinking caffeine anymore. In fact, I haven’t had caffeine in three months.
Those of you who don’t follow me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook might be confused. “What happened three months ago?” you might be inclined to ask. Well, three months ago my husband and I found out we are having a baby. So that’s a thing. I’m 13 weeks, or three months pregnant and that means no caffeine for me for the next six months, at least.
Yes, I’m sticking with the caffeine thing today. We’ll have plenty of time to catch up on all of the things that I had to resist saying during the last three months. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to keep from casually commenting about being pregnant? There are so many off hand comments to be made about being tired and not drinking certain substances and baby planning and doctors visits and how there’ll be a tiny human here next year. I’ve had to bite my metaphorical tongue on so many occasions since we found out. Anyway, now that we’re officially public with it I have a lot of catching up to do. So we’re starting with the caffeine thing.
Logan and I were cutting out caffeine anyway. So I guess to say that I haven’t had caffeine in three months is a little bit of an understatement. I was trying really hard before we found out to limit my caffeine intake, though I hadn’t cut it out completely. Logan did successfully cut out caffeine from his diet over the winter, due to heartburn issues. This turned out to be really good timing as when we started trying he was out of caffeine completely, and after that started up with the occasional cup rather than the 4-5 cups he had been consuming. This is much healthier for him and also better for potential conception. Our collective caffeine sacrifice paid off in early July when we finally got the two lines and a plus sign.
I will admit, giving up caffeine was one of the things I was not looking forward to with getting pregnant. I don’t drink that much of it, generally speaking, but it is nice to have on occasions like today when I’m up early, or this weekend when we were out late and then up early and out late again and then up early again. It’s been a long weekend. I am discovering, however, that decaf is not as hard to come by as I had expected, and I’m not going to miss out on as much as I thought.
I was heart broken when I realized that I was going to be pregnant over pumpkin spice latte season. Sure, I only drink maybe two or three a season, but still, it’s an important part of the fall experience. I only get one fall a year and I would like to be able to do all the fall things, if possible. Thankfully I’m in the second trimester now, and that means I’ll have the energy to do all the fall things and still mostly fit into all my fall clothes. But the PSL was up in the air. I recently discovered, however, that I could get things in decaf that I never thought about. I knew I could get my usual iced coffee in decaf, since it was just coffee with mocha syrup and cream, but I was sure special drinks like lattes and mochas were out for the foreseeable future.
Then I went to my favorite coffee shop back home and asked what I could get that was decaf. I was expecting a short, well these teas, and hot chocolate, probably, and maybe one or two other drinks that were made without coffee, but to my surprise I was informed that she could make any specialty drink with decaf that I wanted. So I got a decaf mocha and it was wonderful. This made me curious as to what else I could get in decaf. I was under the impression that espresso could not be decaf. I was told in college that they could make things with decaf, technically, but it would probably suck, so I thought it was just one of those things that they didn’t do. Apparently I was misinformed. I asked the internet if a PSL could be decaf and the answer was a surprising “yes.” Apparently they do make decaf espresso, which seems super counter productive to me, but I’ll take it. Starbucks, at least, will make you a decaf PSL if you ask for it.
So today I will be getting a pumpkin spice latte, and enjoying it to the fullest, probably. I have to admit, ordering things decaf makes me a little nervous. There’s no way to tell if it’s decaf or not. Okay, I can’t tell, at least. I’m sure there are some people who can taste the difference, but I would never know if they gave me a regular by mistake, or on purpose. You hear stories about servers giving people the wrong thing because they don’t take their requests seriously. It seems dumb but since I’m not showing or anything, I’m a little worried that they won’t take my decaf request seriously either. I’m sure if I were clearly pregnant and ordering decaf they would be much more careful with what they used, but as it is, I’m always a little suspicious, especially when it’s not marked on the cup. Sometimes they mark things at Dunkin’ and sometimes they don’t.
I am comforted by the fact that apparently small amounts of caffeine are considered okay. I can safely have an 8oz cup of regular coffee a day, so even if I am concerned about whether or not my beverage is actually decaf, I know if I don’t drink the whole thing it’ll still be fine. It’s been really nice knowing a little caffeine won’t hurt. My husband and I both tend to be super anxious about things like this and it’s taken us some time to come to the realization that not everything is going to kill us, or the baby. It also helps that we’re passed the really scary, anything could happen, stage. Sure, there are still a lot of risks, but we’re much more stable now, and that helps.
We also finally got decaf coffee for the house. It’s not good coffee. We had to grab some generic stuff from ALDI while we were there but I’ll take what I can get. The weather is supposed to warm up again, but it’s still pretty cool here now and I need a warm drink in the morning to get me going. We have plenty of tea, which helps. Did you know you can steep out most of the caffeine in tea? If you soak the tea for like 20 seconds and then dump it and steep it normally most of the caffeine is gone. This is a helpful tip I learned from my husband. So I’ll be here, drinking decaf for the next six months, and enjoying all the kitty snuggles. That’s another thing about being pregnant, my cats have been super extra affectionate, and I will take it. Please enjoy all your caffeine on my behalf this fall, and stay tuned for my pregnancy adventures. Have a lovely day, my friends!
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