In The Fourth Trimester, we ask parents: What meal nourished you after welcoming your baby? This month it’s a zucchini skillet dinner by ‘What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking’ author Caroline Chambers.
After I had my first son, I lost control of my bladder for 10 days. My OB assured me this was “not common, but not abnormal,” but a hospital OB on rotation told me my case was “the worst she’d ever seen.” Friends and cousins had warned me about the lack of sleep, the woes of learning to breastfeed, the night sweats—but no one had warned me about how devastated I would feel when I unconsciously peed myself while wincing through the pain of breastfeeding a five-day-old baby. Nothing prepared me for how worried I’d be about myself in those first few weeks. I’d imagined a cozy cocoon of smooshy newborn bliss, but my own healing consumed me.
When you hear the words postpartum depression, you picture someone else: a weeping mother spinning out of control. What the pamphlets don’t tell you is that postpartum depression exists on a spectrum. When my bladder finally healed after having the baby, my worries lightened, but I did not graduate from the anxiety that had needled its way into my body.
Instead of napping when the baby napped, I spent those hours staring at the monitor, making sure he was still breathing. I woke at all hours to check that his curtains, hanging on the other side of the room, hadn’t somehow fallen and suffocated him. When a friend offered to take him on a walk, I reminded her at least five times to keep a tight hold of the stroller on the hill near the ocean and then spent what was supposed to be quiet time to myself fighting off visions of him plummeting into the sea.
Cooking—and feeding the people I love—had always been how I unwind, how I nourish my body and also my mind. But in those first months of motherhood, I gave it up entirely. Where was I supposed to put the baby while I cooked? When he cried for milk, how did I avoid burning the chicken? So we ordered in, or picked at a rotisserie chicken, or I threw together overcooked spaghetti with jarred marinara. Whatever I could assemble in the small moments untouched by worry.
For the first time in my life, I understood why people had always asked me, “How do you find the time to cook?” I had no time anymore, not in the beginning. But when I lost cooking, I lost a piece of myself, that alchemy of turning a half-empty can of beans and a shriveling head of celery into a feast. To me, cooking isn’t just a means to an end for eating. It’s about taking care of myself and my people.
When my son was around five months old, my hormones started to un-wonky themselves. I found my way back to the kitchen. I strapped the baby to my body and we walked to the Carmel farmers market. It was May in Northern California, and produce was overflowing from the stalls. Plums, strawberries, apricots, early summer squash.
Mattis still on my chest, cooing up at me, we sliced up the zucchini. Chopping vegetables with tiny baby feet dangling in front of the cutting board was a new challenge, but one easily solved by a little shifting and angling. I learned to cook sideways so that no tiny baby toes got toasted on the skillet. I had planned to make sautéed zucchini with meatballs, but that felt too complicated, so the ground turkey got thrown into the pan. Leftover marinara and cheese from the fridge got stirred in for a quickie lasagna-esque situation. When George got home, we sat outside under the café lights on our tiny deck for the first time in months, and ate spoonfuls straight out of the skillet. It wasn’t remotely fancy, but it was delicious. And I had done it with the baby in tow!
The kitchen choreography had grown more complex, but the triumph of pulling it off had grown sweeter too. As I figured out motherhood, I also figured out a new kind of cooking: one that happened in stops and spurts, one that could sacrifice half a zucchini or banana to feed a baby (read: watch him smash it into his hair). My cooking became less perfect, less cheffy, often in service of simply getting it done. But it was still flavorful and creative and fulfilling.
I’ve since had three more babies. Each time, those first hazy, lazy newborn weeks come to an end the same way: a baby strapped to my chest, a meal back in the kitchen, a lifeline back to normality.
Make the recipe:
For more recipes from Caroline, check out her cookbook, ‘What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast.’
