how i knew i wasn't going to make my due date

halloween in brooklyn, the upside of raising kids in the city, and nesting like hell

halloween is my favorite non-christmas holiday. i love everything about it. especially the way that it unlocks creativity in all of us. and celebrating halloween in brooklyn is just an entirely different, magical, beast altogether.

as soon as october hits, the brownstone decorations begin. handmade candy shoots are fashioned from the tops of hand railings all the way to the street. long tubes fashioned from pvc pipe, connected and then decorated in orange and black streams, often ending in a monstrous mouth to deliver candy straight into a tricker-or-treater’s bag. plastic skeletons emerge from the two and a half feet of mulch separating apartments from sidewalks. competitions arise amongst former set designers who make the most elaborate displays extending to cover the entire height of their homes. any day of the week is a potential dress up day for little ones zipping to and from school on their scooters.

people always seem to get a little concerned about raising kids in the city, what they forget is how wildly imaginative it is to live with exponentially more kids on your block than anywhere else. the endless access to public playgrounds, kids classes and potential friendships that could last anywhere from five minutes to forever.

the way that i am never parenting alone.

my super runs from across the street to help me schlep things up the front steps. someone pops out an airbud to help me lift a stroller from the subway platform up a few flights of stairs. a neighbor carrying a child and walking a dog gives me the chin-up head nod in recognition of just how much it took for us to leave the house.

there is so much kindness and camaraderie that comes with raising kids in the city.

our homes are smaller, cozy spaces, where our living rooms and backyards expand beyond the confines of our apartments and meld into public life. do you have an extra poop bag? i’ve got another wipe if you need one. of course he can play with my kid’s toys.

soon enough i’ll need to teach my son a bit of stranger danger, but the street smarts will come swiftly. right now he’s so used to everyone being an uncle or an auntie figure, i joke that he would go home with anyone. but i love that he knows that, despite everything, the world can also be a place that looks out for him.

he trusts the intentional village that raises him and understands his role in building his own community too. as he moves through the world by my side, he smiles, waves and says please and thank you. he already understands how far a little kindness and consideration can go.

his sense of space is different than mine was growing up. my first near-decade of life spent in an oversized house in the larger than life state of texas. just a liberal east coast family a little lost in a newly developed neighborhood outside of dallas for the years of my dad’s relocation for work.

i knew fifteen foot fences and dual staircases that met at a platform in the middle before cascading down to the dining room and fancy living room, two spaces rarely used. an in-ground pool with a diving board and a hot tub in the backyard. i didn’t know that there could be pools that sat above ground. i knew a walk-in closet where i played make believe with my dolls and a double-sinked bathroom that i would have shared with my sister had we grown old enough for her to go potty on her own. my mom says we didn’t have much, things were just bigger in texas, but i always felt rich.

my son, on the other hand, knows his room is mutable, one to be offered up with an open palm when friends come to visit. he bops around in his little sleep tent in our room hoping to stay up late with the grown ups. in our living room there are two boxes of toys that hold all of his belongings, i had an entire playroom that i shared with my brother and sister.

all of that shrunk a fair amount when we moved to delaware county and the houses were significantly smaller and older. it didn’t matter much to me, all i cared about was that the houses were much closer together and i could finally run across the street on my own. all of our families looked out for each other. my parents had chosen a house down the street from our elementary school and while i was growing up there were thirty eight kids on our block. my best friend lived across the street. open door policy, stay for dinner, do your homework on our living room floor. welcome, welcome, welcome. as we grew up (maybe by eight or ten years old?) we walked into town on our own for pizza and eventually took the train into philadelphia with our friends once we turned thirteen.

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so it didn’t surprise my parents when i up and left for brooklyn a year after graduation. nothing but a month-long sublet and a handful of nannying interviews to get me to the next month.

new york is just where i always wanted to be, and was just as an important question for me and dan when we started dating as “do you want to have children?” “do you want new york city forever?” came first.

i’ve always loved a dense city layout. i want to be surrounded by people and food and endless things to do, i love that my kid gets that too. i feel comforted by small spaces where i can make things fit, instead of expanding unnecessarily into the abyss of untouched closets and storage spaces. sure, i’d love more space, we’ll grow out of our current apartment soon enough, but the beautiful thing about renting in new york city is there is always something out there that you never knew existed.

there’s also the stress of needing to figure everything out within two weeks notice, but we do what we can!

PREPARING TO GIVE BIRTH IN BROOKLYN

i thought for sure i’d walk to our hospital to give birth. today my son and i walk past it all the time, it’s not a long commute. but at the time i was also really scared to take my kid home in a car. put a newborn in a car seat? drive him on the road? with traffic? a stroller felt much safer.

what i didn’t consider was how much i was about to overpack for three days in the hospital when in actuality i wore nothing but postpartum diapers, oversized tees and one of dan’s fleeces. i didn’t need any of my toiletries except for my face wash because i never showered. the thought of maneuvering my stitched up undercarriage in and out of a tiny hospital shower was beyond my capacity. and i’m a one to three showers a day kinda gal.

as i prepped my carry-on suitcase, my oversized tote and my heavy winter coat, i realized walking to the hospital to give birth was simply not going to happen.

A FEW WEEKS BEFORE THEIR BIRTHDAY

october second is our wedding anniversary.

we didn’t do a baby moon because sitting on a plane threw me into excruciating pain at twenty weeks pregnant during a family trip to france. i couldn’t let myself think about how i might make it through the flight back, it would have ruined our entire vacation.

so i thought it would be nice to do an anniversary trip, within driving distance, at one million months pregnant.

we booked a gorgeous hotel with beautiful meals, grounds and a massive tub (an nyc amenity that i have given up for the past few years) — and then i remembered that i can’t eat that much.

i was at the point in my pregnancy when, not only had i stopped enjoying food, but it felt like the baby was taking up so much room in my stomach that i didn’t have much of an appetite either. i dejectedly canceled our reservation at the last possible minute so we could get a full refund and let yet another pregnant dream die.

none of my pregnant fantasies ever came true, i kicked dirt in their direction as they continued to allude me at every turn.

from october on, i was sheltering in place. which means that dan wasn’t going anywhere either. his friends had invited him on a trip and i wanted to decapitate him for even having the idiotic gumption to ask.

we were stuck in the city and i still had over a month til my due date.

despite my distaste for carrying a child in my womb, i never understood why people said “i just want this baby out of me.” to an untrained eye, i looked like a living contradiction. i didn’t want my baby out of me. i just didn’t want to be in so much pain.

i loved how languid life was at this time. the slow and sweaty afternoons spent lying on the couch in my men’s hanes underwear and extra large t shirts, splayed out and staring ceaselessly at the ceiling fan wondering if it was rotating in the right way. is it pushing warm air down for winter, or cool for summer? how low can i set the AC before it backfire, reverses, and actually becomes warmer?

i took multiple cold showers a day. braving the outdoor world only for coffee, connection and walking our dog. i actually think at that point i had stopped walking our dog altogether. my mom was worried he might topple me over, and he did once, and that was that. i retired from dog walking for a little while.

during early postpartum i hired a group dog walker, but that turned out to be more work than it was worth when i was breastfeeding around the clock, forever topless and trying to juggle a newborn and a large dog.

in my second trimester i never got the jolt of energy that was promised in my pregnancy tracking app and the one pregnancy book i read. throughout the duration of my pregnancy i was depleted, exhausted, and deeply uncomfortable. my feet were swollen like melons and i was rocking orthotics from about eight months onwards. i hated everything.¹

—

until the week before my son was born.

early in the month i knew that my kid wasn’t going to make it to their november eighth due date. i remember telling my mom, “this baby wants to be an october baby.” she replied matter of factly, “then he will be.” she said that only the mom gets to know these things, if i said they were coming in october, this baby was coming in october. the mom is always right, she said.

and i was.

a scorpio baby. my double water child, taurus moon, to match his double water mom, also with a taurus moon. my kid is my twin in looks and astrological composition, through and through. minus all of the totally unique ways in which he is nothing like me, his father or anyone but himself. his features, strengths and eccentricities are all characteristic of him and only him.²

THE WEEK OF OCTOBER TWENTY THIRD

for the first time in what feels like forever, i wake up with a pep in my step. invigorated and ready to take on the day. i shuffle into my kitchen to make my pour over and when i open the cabinet to grab my whole beans i think to myself, “well this could be organized better.” and proceed to re-organize and label my entire pantry.

but it’s not that simple, it’s rarely that simple when i’m cleaning. it’s always, very, if you give an ADHD mouse a cookie, kinda thing. while i’m organizing the pantry i notice opportunities in all of the other spaces where we keep things. the spice rack. the cabinet above the fridge. surely our drawer full of kitchen utensils could be better utilized.

everything needs to come out though. i need to see the space to envision how i’m going to organize it. and i need to throw out every last expired item we own. not now, right now.

our kitchen island is covered with pastas, canned items and way too much of dan’s bonbon candy. i’m scouring our spices to see which have made it past the threshold of our lockdown days. a fancy spice mix from… twenty fifteen? big yikes.

everything must go. hello, we’ve got a baby coming!

before i put away anything, i see the hall closet taunting me from the corner of my eye. “you’re right,” i think to myself, “you’ve got to be organized too.” so i climb haphazardly on a bar stool while dan continues to work from our son’s nursery / his office. he would absolutely flip if he knew what i was doing right now.

i pull out all of my puzzles from the top shelves, kitchen sized trash bags, dog toys our dog has never had any interest in, and some shoes i lost track of when i stopped wearing anything attractive. should probably purge some outerwear while i’m at it. i’m sure dan doesn’t really care about these fifteen sweatshirts in here (read: he definitely cares about each and every one of them).

by the time dan comes up for air, and for dinner, the house looks like a tornado came through (me) and approximately one cabinet almost completely organized. i’m hunched over on the kitchen floor, squatting on a step stool in his t shirt, his briefs, and my squishy slides singing the wrong words out of tune and loudly to whatever is blasting from my airpods, when i notice he’s standing behind me. i pop out a pod and look in his direction, my face full of shame like a dog who got caught digging in the trash again, “uhh, hey,” i muster my best angelic smile.

“heyyy. so… you doing okay? should you really be doing all of this when you’re this pregnant?”

“probably not, but i feel like i can, you know? like i haven’t felt like i can do anything this entire pregnancy and now i can do everything and i just feel like if i don’t do it now, i mean when will i, you know?”

a pause and a breath while my inner knowing catches up with me:

“oh. ohh. this baby is coming. we should have the go-bags ready. i still have our tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum costumes ready for friday night though! it’s gonna be awesome with this big ole belly. we’re going to have so much fun. why don’t we just order takeout tonight and then i’ll give you back the kitchen tomorrow, i swear it’s not as bad as it looks!!!”

the following days i scrub every baseboard, organize every teeny tiny set of clothes, and do my best not to feel totally overwhelmed by all of the baby shower gifts that had taken over our apartment.

since dan was working out of our baby’s nursery until… wait for it, the night before my water broke. i never fully decorated. too much pressure. what if i messed it up? did i really want a pinterest board projectile-vomiting all over the place? better to keep it a little undone, room to live in it, see what works.

dan’s desk was the last thing to go. it was saturday night and i had already given up my best friend’s halloween party the previous night. instead of a costume contest, the friday at the end of my manic organizational fever dream had concluded in my thirty eighth week appointment and the announcement that i was three centimeters dilated. the midwives recommended that we have a nice final meal out and get ready to go to the hospital any day now.

as much as i loved the idea, eating was the last thing on my mind. getting dressed? fuck off.

saturday came and dan was trying to pump out as much work as possible and i let him do his thing, but threatened to move his desk by myself at the end of the day if he didn’t. (he did.)

six am the next morning my water broke.

OCTOBER THIRTIETH MY SON WAS BORN

maybe i’ll tell my birth story another day, but honestly dan’s the one to go to for that. he was so much more lucid and exponentially more proud of me than i could ever be. i ended up spending halloween with my newborn baby in my arms, dan running out to get thai food and coming back to tell me how excited he is to raise our son in this neighborhood.

“there are kids dressed up everywhere! we’re going to have so much fun. i can’t wait. wow. halloween is going to be so different now.” (i.e. “i might actually get half as excited as you”)

but i’d completely forgotten about my favorite holiday. halloween came and went and i don’t even think i noticed the sun rise and set. i was in a time warp attempting to decode the avian cries from my own flesh and blood. we were sleepless, lost and so unbelievably happy he was here.

for all of the ways i thought i knew my body when i was trying to conceive and the countless more i’d hoped to understand my body postpartum, pregnancy is when i was most in tune with my physicality. when i could trust the pains, signs and language my baby and i used to communicate.

listening to and believing in my body was the most important thing i did in my entire thirty eight and a half weeks of pregnancy.

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related mother curious stacks on pregnancy and my ttc journey:

1. my delusional ass is already back into fantasizing about an entirely different pregnancy experience for my next pregnancy. hope springs eternal i guess. anything is possible! but i might also just be more into life after pregnancy and that’s okay too.

2. i married into a big italian family where every single feature is compared and designated to a parent or grandparent, “the likeness of his ear to his great grandfather, uncanny!” and on my side, my filipina american mother was mistaken for my nanny as the platinum blonde child i was. so sometimes i take a little too much pride in my kid’s likeness to me! it’s true! it also feels so good to have worked so hard to bring him into the world and have nobody question that he’s mine <3