Is Coffee Good for You?

I like coffee. Especially the dark roast variety. No cream or sugar. If I order it at Starbucks, it’s a “Venti half-caff”. If I make it at home, it’s Dunkin Donut’s French Roast.
My relationship with coffee started a long time ago when I was a camp counselor in the mountains of North Carolina near Asheville. The counselors gathered every morning before breakfast to hear the day’s events. It was always cold, even in the summer, and I would pour a cup of coffee just to let the steam float up to my face. It would warm me up instantly. After a few weeks of this, I decided it smelled pretty good and I might as well taste it. I did. The rest is history…
In college it came in handy when I would stay up late working on a paper or studying for an exam. But it was not until after the birth of our second child, Mary Kate, that the true coffee habit was born. Mary Kate and I came home from the hospital 24 hours after she was born. She was great that first day of life! It was that second night when things got tough. She did not sleep at all. And the next day we could hardly get her to stay awake long enough to eat! We spent the next night trying to get her to sleep, and the next day, wishing she would just wake up! It went on like this for weeks! Mary Kate had her days and nights “mixed up”, but that certainly didn’t seem to bother Charlie, her two-year-old brother, whose days and nights weren’t mixed up at all!! Needless to say, being sleep deprived became a constant in my life. And so did coffee. Seven children later, both are still constants.
Not to sound defensive, but I’m just not convinced that a cup of Joe a day is such a bad thing.