Early embryonic development in all animals depends on maternally provided gene products. Posttranscriptional and posttranslational processes control spatial and temporal readout of the maternal information. This review focuses on the control of maternal transcript stability in the early Drosophila embryo and how transcript destabilization is necessary for normal development. The molecular pathways that regulate transcript stability are often intimately linked with other posttranscriptional mechanisms such as mRNA localization and translational regulation. These additional mechanisms are explored here with an emphasis on their relationship to transcript decay.