Since the beginning of our relationship, my husband has been bringing me coffee in bed in the morning.

Anyone who suspects romantic reasons is wrong.

He acts out of self-protection.

Because in the morning I am the most ill-tempered and unresponsive person in the world.

He says.

Maybe he's right.

Tatjana Heid

Editor on duty at FAZ.NET.

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    We always brew our coffee by hand - kettle, porcelain filter, freshly ground powder. Back then, in August 2015, we had delicious Java coffee from a small coffee shop in the Berlin district of Wedding. It tasted so good that we had to export it to our entire family who live all over Germany. Because everyone who had tasted our coffee once wanted it at home. Unfortunately it disappeared from the range at some point, rumor has it that the plantation burned down. Maybe because Starbucks bought it all. Big capital tends to be to blame in red Wedding. Be that as it may: In the summer of 2015 the world was still fine and we were well looked after.

    It was a monday. I had spent the weekend drunk and blissfully on the Tempelhofer Feld. We had celebrated my best friend's 30th birthday, her upcoming trip around the world and my new job: I was supposed to go to Brussels as a correspondent for my employer at the time, we wanted to start settling the details this week. So life was going pretty well.

    But then came the coffee.

    It stood steaming on the bedside table, in my favorite blue and white striped cup, hot and black (milk has no place in coffee, but nothing at all!) ... and it didn't bother me at all.

    I sniffed, took a sip, another, it tasted disgusting.

    With the utmost contempt, I made half the cup.

    I dumped the rest.

    Bah.

    Then I informed my husband that he would no longer need to bring me coffee in bed in the future.

    He was confused.

    Me too.

    Would I have to switch to tea?

    This coffee didn't leave me alone.

    All day long I pondered why I didn't like it.

    My husband found it delicious as always, so the water couldn't have suddenly become inedible.

    Has my taste changed?

    Would I - God forbid - have to switch to tea?

    That was not funny.

    When I got home in the evening, I dragged myself up the stairs of the old Berlin building.

    I was more exhausted than ever in my life, I felt sick too and my goodness: Have the steps always been this high?

    And then this sudden aversion to coffee.

    "I think I'm hatching something really terrible," I let my husband know undramatically.

    And suddenly it hit me ...

    Our son is five years old today and he is the sun of my life.

    But forever I will see this one coffee - the only coffee I have ever spurned early in the morning - as the beginning of my new life.

    I went to bed a coffee junkie and woke up a tea-drinking mom.

    To this day, pregnancy is the only time in my adult life that I haven't had coffee.

    When our son was born after eight dry months, I felt like having coffee almost immediately.

    At four in the morning, I drank my first hospital coffee, the scorched liquorice variety.

    What can I say?

    It tasted heavenly.

    At least for me.

    My husband immediately fetched a kettle, hand filter and coffee powder from home - and put a coffee on the hospital bed for me.