  The cosmic expansion history proceeds in broad terms from a radiation
dominated epoch to matter domination to an accelerated, dark energy dominated
epoch. We investigate whether intermittent periods of acceleration are possible
in the early universe -- between Big Bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and
recombination and beyond. We establish that the standard picture is remarkably
robust: observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background exclude
any extra period of accelerated expansion between 1 \leq z \lesssim 10^5
(corresponding to 5\times10^{-4}\ {\rm eV} \leq T \lesssim 25\ {\rm eV}).
