Life Updates

Today, coming down from the high of attending a beautiful wedding, I find myself full of emotion. Tomorrow begins the final week of my maternity leave, and will be my baby’s first day at daycare. This evokes mixed feelings, just as it did the last time I was in this position five years ago.

There is sadness about the inexorable passage of time, and the precious, tender moments unique to the very earliest days that you’ll never experience again. Guilt about handing off your own flesh and blood to other caretakers for eight hours a day, five days a week. Fear that your innocent, helpless baby will get sick over and over again.

Yet there is also anticipation. I like my job, and having business challenges and technical projects to tackle. It helps me be the most well rounded, confident version of myself. Even though it leaves me less time with my children, it gives me more patience with them and motivates me to make the most of the time we do have together.

There is relief, I have to admit, because these early days wear on me like nothing else. Sure, when the baby falls asleep easily for naps and stays asleep for long stretches throughout the night, it is smooth sailing. Days like that, though, are few and far between. When the baby screams and cries because she’s tired or gassy or constipated, and you’re running on six non-consecutive hours of sleep, it’s much less fun.

Don’t get me wrong—she doesn’t scream that much. She’s a pretty easy baby, for the most part. Plenty of parents don’t even get six hours of sleep a day. And as she grows, taking care of her gets easier still. I actually feel as though we are just getting over a hurdle and finding our rhythm. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad to keep her home with me a while longer. Ah, there’s that guilt again…

At least this is the last “first day of daycare” that we will face as parents. Part of what makes me so emotional is knowing that every milestone we reach with this baby, good or bad or mixed, will be the last. There will be no more after her.

Most of you know that I was hospitalized for four weeks in March. Consequently, I missed out on the second month of our baby’s life, I can no longer breastfeed her, and I will likely die in childbirth if I attempt it once more. I was already thinking two was enough, but I know many people get that baby fever again after a couple years and wonder whether they should try for a third. That won’t be us. There’s a bittersweetness to having the decision made for us.

I have a lot more to say about that near-death experience. Since I’ve been home, I’ve been writing a collection of essays about it. I want to see if I can get it published. If I can save one person from going through the same thing, or simply move someone with my story, I will have achieved something great.

I haven’t forgotten about my novel draft, which I also still want to publish. Seven people have read it and provided very helpful feedback. It is clear in my mind how to proceed from here, but for now, the essays about my hospitalization are more pressing.

These days, I save most of my thoughts and ideas for future books. That’s why I haven’t been blogging much. However, it does feel nice to come here and share some updates like this every now and then, like catching up with an old friend. I’ll try to do it more often.

I’ll Miss You, Rahway

We have moved. Earlier today, we closed on a townhouse, and this is where we live now. The process kicked off months ago—and I began drafting this post weeks ago—but it felt like a distant hypothetical all the way until tonight. This is our first night here, and I’ll be trying to sleep on the highest of multiple floors composing our space, without the usual soundtrack of train horns and yelling passersby.

I purchased our old condo over six and a half years ago. I chose Rahway primarily for its reasonable commute time to Jersey City and New York, proximity to my hometown, and ease of getting to the casino outside Philadelphia where I used to play an Omaha/stud game. Yes, it was important to me at the time to be able to get on Route 1 quickly and gamble. I also liked that Rahway had affordable homes within walking distance of the train station, unlike other towns farther west on the Northeast Corridor.

Growing up in Edison, you might think of Rahway as a shady place. Other people say, “Isn’t that where the prison is?” But I didn’t care about that stuff. I learned from my realtor that the downtown area had an up-and-coming arts scene, which was good enough for me. I did look up crime statistics: robbery and vehicular theft were high, but assault and murder were low. So I thought, well, at least no one is going to hurt or kill me.

I didn’t expect to fall in love with Rahway. Shortly after moving in, I got a gym membership, my first ever, at the YMCA. The pool was mostly empty on evenings and weekends, allowing me to rediscover the joyful Zen of swimming. The weight room was well maintained. The staff was all so friendly. I felt accepted into the community right away.

The YMCA is located downtown, a five-minute walk from our apartment, sandwiched between a Mexican restaurant and a Peruvian one. Both have incredible food and super nice people. I discovered these early on, along with a dive-y rock-and-roll bar (that has since changed management and become classier and more expensive, but still holds a special place in my heart), a pizzeria right around the block (that takes online orders for pick-up, which was clutch during innumerable weekend hangovers), a cute Italian restaurant, and a fried-chicken place that also serves chicken and lamb rice platters and the best cheesesteaks.

I took up running while living in Rahway, and spent a year jogging all over the city. I found a mom-and-pop grocery store with great produce at low prices, where I shopped almost every week until having the baby earlier this year. I found parks: a really big, beautiful one with a lake and a community center, and lots of smaller ones tucked away in random neighborhoods. I found a large cemetery, which I later learned through a Halloween tour contains hundreds of soldiers from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. I found a surprising number of churches for such a small city, and even made an Instagram hashtag for them, #churchesofrahway. Whenever I travel, I like to dedicate at least one day just to walking around semi-aimlessly; it’s the best way to stumble upon cool things on your own and get a feel for the local vibe. All my jogs combined have given me that same feeling, magnified hundredfold.

When I started dating my now husband, he was wary of coming over to see me in Rahway. He soon learned to like it, too, and together we made new discoveries. Next to the grocery store, there is a better pizza shop, still one of my favorite slices to date, than the one I’d been picking up from before. We found another Mexican restaurant with greasier, slightly more flavorful tacos (though, after a phase of frequenting this one, we eventually reverted to my original spot). We had a few dinners at the underground pizza parlor I’d been wanting to try. So many new businesses came to town, too. We did trivia nights at a pub that specializes in meatballs. We took visitors to a trendy pizzeria (yes, another one). We tried both new cafes that opened on the same block. The brewery became one of our favorite haunts. And most weekends, we would get breakfast sandwiches and doughnuts from the shop down the street, the best we’ve ever had. The downtown area is up-and-coming, as my realtor had promised.

Then we got mugged at gunpoint.

I recovered, but my husband didn’t. And who could blame him? He hadn’t spent years here, hadn’t fallen in love with the city the way I had. I chose Rahway; my husband didn’t. He was only here for me. After having the baby, other issues started piling up. He would never feel safe letting our child play outside. His commute was too long and full of traffic. The condo was too small if we were to have another kid. The school district isn’t good enough. So here we are.

Our new town is supposed to have an excellent food scene, too. We live a few minutes’ walk from an enormous park, bigger than the one in Rahway with the lake. My husband’s commute is significantly shorter, which also means our baby spends less time confined to a car seat going to and from daycare. The school district is better. In almost every possible way, this is an amazing move for our family. Yet I can’t help feeling sad and heavy-hearted. There is so much I will miss about Rahway. No matter how many beautiful new memories we create here, Rahway will always be important to me as the first place I chose to live as a Real Grown-up, where I was living when I became a gym rat, partied the hell out of my mid-twenties, started working in the big city, met my husband, and took my baby home from the hospital. Rahway, I love you.

Sentimentality

This may be surprising, but I am a very sentimental person. I love savoring moments present and past. When I close a chapter of my life—by graduating from a school, ending a relationship, leaving a job, and so on—I always want closure, one last good look around, a satisfying sense of neatly wrapped loose ends. I am a completionist who hates feeling as though I am missing out on part of any experience.

Parenthood exposes this aspect like an open wound that you can’t stop poking because you relish the sting. I don’t want to miss anything cute or funny or interesting from my baby. I want to catch every smile, coo, and even pout. I love holding his warm little body, looking into his wondering eyes, rubbing his soft cheeks, smelling his milky breath and his hair that smells like both mine and his father’s. Part of me hates that I’ll be going back to work full-time and will most likely miss his first steps and words.

And yet, the days are sometimes so, so hard because I worry so much about being the optimal nurturer. Is the baby crying too much? Is he sleeping enough? Am I talking to him enough to stimulate mental growth? Am I having him do enough tummy time and other activities for physical growth? Is he going to have developmental problems because I spend too much time on my phone and leave the TV on? Am I enforcing bad habits and associations? Some days, the hours pass at a miserable crawl. I count them down until the end of the day, the end of the week, and finally the arrival at some milestone when everything is supposed to get easier and better. At these times, I can’t wait to go back to work so I can stop obsessing over the baby and feel more like my old, “normal” self again.

They say, “The days are long, but the years are short.” My son is seven weeks old tomorrow. I can’t believe he’s already seven weeks old, but I also remember how far in the future this date used to feel whenever I was frustrated and exhausted. I remember how long my pregnancy felt, too. This baby takes so long to grow, and then he grows up too quickly.

The other day, I started a memories box for him. It contains ultrasound photos, hospital wristbands, medical charts, and cards from friends and family. Reviewing the ultrasound photos makes me so emotional. It is incredible to consider how this thirteen-pound living, breathing boy grew from a tiny bean. Eventually, my baby will be too big to nap on my torso. He may want to stop nursing before I do. Then, one day, I will have picked him up for the last time, not knowing it would be the last. There will never be any sort of closure.

Those kinds of thoughts wreck me, they really do.