>The One Must-Have Item for Every New Mother

New moms generally are showered by their friends and family with all kinds of “indispensible” items, from diaper wipe warmers and bottle sterilizers to Miracle Blankets and play gyms. But even the woman with 200 baby shower guests probably won’t receive the one thing she’ll need most in the year to come:

Coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that Punky slept through the night by 2 weeks. Even then, she’d wake around eight, eat, and go back to sleep until 10:30. My first few months of mornings were spent luxuriating in bed with a good book, waiting for her to wake in the bassinet beside me. That was then.

This is now.

Most nights, Bruiser wakes every two or three hours, whether I feed him or not. It can take anywhere between 2 minutes and an hour to convince him to return to sleep. Hubs has helped most of all, getting up with him in the mornings about half the time. My older girls have been good about watching him so that I can get out of the house. My friends have brought me dinners and called and e-mailed regularly to check in. But what’s really gotten me through this time of unbelievable, mind-boggling sleep deprivation is, you guessed it…

COFFEE.

I’ve always loved coffee, but I’ve never felt the almost cultish devotion to it that I have now. You would too, if you began every morning so utterly exhausted that you literally couldn’t keep your balance as you made your way to your squawking baby’s room. I lurch down the hall, throwing a hand against a wall for balance, so that I can swoop up Bruiser from his crib and plop him on the floor with some toys to keep him occupied until I can make a pot of my miracle potion. I like to think I’ve already trained Bruiser to wait a perfectly-timed 15 minutes before he starts “Ah bah bah”ing for my attention, giving me just enough time to have downed at least half a cup and feel my brain begin to creak to life.

Without coffee, I imagine I’d be a zombie, slogging through the day in body, but out of mind. But with coffee, I can function. I can think. I can take a shower and dress myself. I can write blog posts. Really, if coffee’s not the best invention that ever was, I don’t know what is.

So the next time I’m invited to a baby shower, I’ll be wrapping up an industrial-sized vat of the best coffee I can find. And I’m willing to bet my gift will be the most appreciated one there. Eventually.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.