In The Fourth Trimester , we ask parents: What meal nourished you after welcoming your baby? This month it’s a soothing porridge from Eating at Home author Trinity Mouzon Wofford.

Our first daughter, Ruby Natsuko, arrived on a Tuesday afternoon in late July. Her name is Japanese for Summer Child. She was born at home, caught by my midwife, and warmly welcomed by her newly minted father and grandmother, who were there alongside me.

I hadn’t intended a home birth when I received the welcome surprise of a positive pregnancy test. I have always considered myself risk-averse, pain-intolerant, and skeeved-out by the sort of spiritual mumbo-jumbo that seemed to accompany an unmedicated birth.

I dutifully signed on with a traditional OB practice, but halfway through my pregnancy, I’d reached a breaking point. The practice had misread a test result of mine on the assumption I was Caucasian, leading to a flag that the baby might have a fatal birth defect.…