My name is Andrea Drew and I’m a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Culinarian, and Mommy. And I’m absolutely thrilled that you are here!

My husband and I are preparing to bring our second daughter into this world, and once again pregnancy nesting has aggressively struck me in the form of meal prepping. 

Then it dawned on me that surely I can’t be the only momma out there that obsessively prepares for the arrival of a new baby – particularly when it comes to food. 

And thus Preparing 4 Maternity Leave was born. A little play on the fact that my family is about to be a family of 4.

Thankfully my educational background enables me (well, more like a mandatory compulsion) to provide the tastiest, most nutritionally balanced food that I can for my family. 

But I know not everybody has these skills or knowledge base to easily do the same for their family. 

So I created Preparing 4 Maternity Leave to be the ultimate resource for the expecting Mother. To help you feel perfectly ready for your leave so that you can focus on what matters most, your new baby. 

I’ve compiled every tactic I use as a Dietitian Mom so that you can feel like you are a Dietitian Mom too. Giving you peace of mind that not only are you prepared to feed your family during this huge change, but actually improving the health of your family as well.

Every recipe and food-related tip is either created by me, a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), by other RDNs, or reviewed and edited by me. So rest assured that the information you are getting is evidenced-based and follows the most current recommendations from the experts in the field of food and nutrition. 

So if you’re ready to take some anxiety off your plate as your maternity leave looms closer and closer…

Certification in Culinary Arts

My food journey actually started in the hospital. 

As a teenager, I was volunteering at hospitals loving the complexity and rush of the medical field. However, I quickly learned that direct patient care wasn’t going to be my thing. So when it came time to make the big-girl decision of college; I chose to follow my passion instead, and I was accepted into Culinary School. 

Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Academy of Culinary Arts was my new home. In this nationally recognized and accredited program I learned classical, contemporary, and international cuisine. 

I tell everybody that Culinary School was very much like bootcamp. Everything was incredibly regimented and strict. But I learned great discipline during my time here as well as an absolute love for food.

But just like I had acknowledged that I didn’t want to do direct-patient care, I was also accepting the reality that the “Chef Life” wasn’t the career I wanted either. 

And the only reason was because I knew that I wanted to have a family someday. Now mind you, I was still single at this point in my life. But that’s how important being a Mom already was to me. 

Chefs work all hours the rest of the world doesn’t. Evenings, weekends, holidays, etc. (and not to mention the pay pales in comparison to their dedication). Not exactly the family life I was envisioning. 

After talking with my Chef Advisor and sharing my concerns, she suggested I continue my education and I could become a Dietitian. To which my response was,

“What’s a Dietitian?”

Bachelor of Science in Nutrition

After completion of my culinary internship, I stepped right back into it, hitting the books for the next few years to earn my Bachelor of Science in Nutrition. 

I have to say, I did thoroughly enjoy the liberal dress code on the main campus sporting sweatpants everyday instead of the carbon-copy uniforms of the Culinary Program where you could hardly tell the boys from girls. 

As I was reaching graduation though, the next big hurdle was also nearing.

In order to become a Dietitian you have to pass a board exam. In order to be eligible to sit for the board exam you have to be accepted into and complete a dietetic internship. 

This is an incredibly competitive and intense little corner of our nutrition world. To give you an idea, only about 60% of applicants will match with a dietetic internship.

If you don’t match, you can’t sit for the exam, and therefore you can’t become a Dietitian. 

Fast forward a little to sitting on the couch next to my fiancé, laptop in hand, cursor hovering over “Show Results” to see if my dreams were about to become reality… or brought to a crashing halt. 

My fiancé clicked the results for me and said “You’re going to Marshall.” 

Master of Science in Dietetics

After enjoying living life together as a married couple for all of two months, we shipped me and my stuff down to Huntington, WV as I had been accepted into Marshall University’s Dietetic Internship, Master of Science in Dietetics Program.

While being separated from my new hubby and fur babies was not easy, there was little time to wallow in self-pity.

This 1200 hour internship encompassed several areas of focus, including; traveling to elementary schools for nutrition education to K-2^nd grade children, food service management, long-term care, community nutrition, and clinical nutrition in both inpatient and outpatient settings. 

Not to mention class schedules of graduate coursework in this accelerated program to earn a Master’s Degree in one year. 

It was an intense time and before I knew it, I was studying for my board exam. Studying like it was my full-time job that is. 

The exam is hard, expensive, and there’s a waiting period if you fail before you can take it again. The current average pass rate for the Dietitian Board Exam is only 65%.

After 3 months of studying, I sat down for 2 ½ hours taking the most nerve-wracking test of my life. 

Six years of education and hard work had paid off. I called my husband to come pick me up, that I had passed… that I was officially and finally a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist. 

Andrea Drew MS RDN LDN

This is a picture of me posing with my score report at my husband and I’s favorite sushi restaurant, as we had driven straight there to celebrate right after the exam. 

I jumped right into the workforce, and have been a full time RDN for over 4 years now working with the geriatric population in both the community setting and long term care. 

While this pays the bills, I’ve always wanted to do more. To be more.

For whatever reason, nutrition is a science that gets twisted and diluted until there’s nothing but pseudoscience-based fad diets ripping their way through social media and therefore people’s lives. 

How are people supposed to know what’s accurate and what’s not? It’s no wonder there’s such frustration as one diet fails after another as individuals try to reach their health goals.

The entrepreneurial stick had hit me hard right out of the gate when becoming an RDN, that I knew I wanted to be a reputable source of information. 

That’s when I started an online presence combining my two areas of expertise providing free education on culinary techniques for weight loss. This journey was a bit inconsistent though as I had gained yet another title during these years.

The Greatest Blessing of All, “Mama” 

My husband and I had welcomed our first daughter into the world, and like every other new parent, my life completely changed. 

The Lord blessed us with this tiny human that calls me “Mama” and it’s my job to provide her with a life full of love, happiness, and health. 

But it’s not easy. Being a full-time working Mom is not easy. The fact that daycare gets to see my child more than I do is such a heart-wrenching struggle for me that I don’t have words to describe it.  

But I know I’m not alone. 

We’ve reached a day and age that households cannot run off of one income alone. Almost every Mom is going through similar struggles that I go through, thus sparking a new passion of mine to pivot my online presence so that us Moms can work together to get through these tough times. 

If Preparing 4 Maternity Leave can make the life of just one Mom a tad bit easier during this life-changing transition (whether it’s the first kid or fifth) then I have succeeded in my goal. 

Trust me when I say that my husband and I know what it is to live life on a budget. Boy oh boy, do we know that book well. 

We also know that life is chaotic. Two full time jobs, extracurricular activities, family affairs, church responsibilities, and something that resembles a social life…I also know that convenience is absolutely essential. 

So while I would love to say that everything I make at home and presented to you here at Preparing 4 Maternity Leave is made from scratch with home-grown top of the line ingredients, it’s not. Because that’s simply not reality.

I cook with affordable ingredients using methods that are most time efficient and sometimes can even be done with a toddler on your hip.

If I had to sum up all of the nutrition knowledge I have into one 10- word sentence it would be this: 

Eat foods in their most whole form and in moderation.

Nutrition is not as hard as we want it to be. The internet makes it seem like there’s some secret key to health when really it’s just those bold words above. 

And that’s my cooking philosophy at home and what I share here. So let’s get started on preparing nutritious meals for your family too.

Happy Cooking!