Life in Chicago

Letter

Dear Baby,

One year ago tonight your father got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. It’s hard to believe that it was only a year ago. So much has happened since then.

Marrying your father was something I was sure about since the very beginning of our relationship. My feelings for him were immediately so different than any man I’d ever known; I couldn’t stand the idea of just being his girlfriend. We were so much more than that from the very start.

Finding the love that I did with your father was something I never imagined, yet always expected. I know that’s a contradictory sentence, but it’s the only way I can explain it. Intellectually, I didn’t really believe that there was one great love out there, waiting to be discovered. Yet, when I met Greg and fell in love with him, I realized that it was exactly what I’d been seeking and secretly hoping to find my entire life.

The amazing thing was that we seemed to be right on par with each other, both of us coming to similar realizations about love and life and where we wanted to go with the relationship – all of that only serving as further indication that this was the real thing, the right thing.

You’ll be in so many relationships before you meet the right person. Be gentle with yourself and with others as you explore the precarious world of love. It’s easy to get hurt and it’s easy to hurt. It’s also inevitable. But the deeper you can explore yourself in the context of others, the closer you’ll come to finding the person that complements you.

My mother wrote to me once, “Don’t marry anyone because of money, name, class, need of any kind. Be so much in touch with who you really are and what you really want and then it will happen – your complement will appear. Find yourself and you’ll find your other self.”

And when I found your father I knew that what she had written was true. I understood, more intrinsically than I’ve ever understood anything, that everything I’d done in my life had led up to me being able to meet him. Every relationship I’d ever been in, good and bad, every decision I’d made about how to move forward in my life, every time I worked to rearrange who I wanted to be, enabled me to move that much closer to meeting the person that would ultimately make me feel more complete than I ever imagined I could be.

I wish that for you, dear child. But know that it’s a long way off. There are many things you’ll do in your life before this becomes important. There will be many times when you’ll think you’ve found what you’re looking for, only to realize that you that the path you’re on hasn’t quite come to an end.

Don’t be afraid to love though. Don’t be afraid to give of yourself and to take in the experience of knowing another. It’s the most powerful way to discover who you are and it’s the surest way to glimpse beauty in this world.

Know that your father and I are here to help you navigate through it all. We already love you in a way that no one else ever will. Use that as your base from which to move forward, knowing that our love will never disappear.

Love,
Mom 

My Favorite Thing About Being Pregnant

I realized the other day that I'm not going to be pregnant for much longer. It was actually a kind of startling realization, only in as much that I realized I've gotten really used to pregnancy being part of my identity. As tired as I've become of it lately, I'm also pretty settled into being a pregnant lady.

Realizing this made me think about how, in some ways, I'll miss being pregnant. Ever since I began to show, about 3-4 months ago, it has changed everything about how I interact with the world at large. Pregnancy, it turns out, is a topic that everyone wants to talk about.

And talk about it they do. From the garden center guy who helps me load flats of flowers into the trunk of my car at Home Depot to the young check out girl at Trader Joe's. From the security desk guy in the bottom of the building that I've just walked into for a meeting to the guy walking by in the park with a baby strapped to his chest. From the nurses I work with to the guy in the mail room whose name I can never remember. From the sassy steward on my Southwest flight to the woman behind the cafe counter pouring me a glass of grapefruit juice...everyone has something to say about my swelling belly.

The questions are always the same: When are you due? Is it your first? What are you having? But the thing about it that I like so much is that I get these questions (and ensuing conversation) from people I probably never would have talked to otherwise. I feel like being pregnant has opened up my world in a really interesting way, making it wonderfully easy to connect with just about anyone in my immediate vicinity.

I wish that all my days were like this. I wish that we all had an easier time of talking to each other, of interacting with the strangers around us. I'll miss this great unifying subject of pregnancy, miss being able to smile and put my hands over my belly, share a laugh about the chocolate cake I just ordered or listen to someone tell me about their first pregnancy.

I have a feeling though, that having a kid might just be the next great conversation starter.

Last Days

I woke up this morning feeling very conscious that my last days as individual are dwindling. My time thinking only about me is about to come to a swift end.

I awoke independently from the alarm at 6:30 this morning and sat up in bed to stretch before making my way to the bathroom for a leisurely shower. And it suddenly occurred to me that my life is just not going to be like this for much longer. For a while at least, the only waking up I'll be doing will be to the sound of a crying baby and leisurely showers are sure to be one of the first things to go.

But that's okay. I'm feeling ready. In one sense, I'm definitely ready to just have this baby already, to not be pregnant anymore, to end the anticipation of it all, and to actually meet this little person I've been thinking so much about. On the other hand, I'm also ready to move forward into this next phase of my life.

The last ten years, all of my twenties, were incredibly indulgent and well-spent. There's not a lot I feel like I didn't get to do. It's begun to seem silly to just keep on doing the same things over and over, even if they're enjoyable. I'm ready for something new. I'm looking forward to the challenges and growth that parenthood is sure to bring. 

And I'm just suddenly aware that there are only days left before it all happens. As of yesterday I'm 34 weeks pregnant, which means that there are only between 4-6 weeks left. Call it wishful thinking, but I have a strong feeling that the baby will arrive by the end of May.

I'm still moving forward with my plans for a natural birth and I'm feeling really good about it. I think that all the classes we've taken and the books I've been reading have really prepared us both for the challenges of birth and labor. We're meeting with our doula tonight for a big, prenatal session and I'm excited to map out our birth plan and to go over all the questions and scenarios I have running through my head.

But for now, I'm also trying to simply be present to these last few weeks. To these last days of being just me. To the last days of being just me and Greg. To this time that marks the end of one era and the beginning of another.

Letter

Dear Baby,

Everyone tells me you are a boy. Everyone. All the nurses at work and the doctor too. “Totally a boy,” he said yesterday, eyeing my belly. My friends all say it too. Twice now, I’ve received gifts from people of little boy clothing, so certain they are of who you are.

As for me? I really don’t know. So many of my friends tell me they had a sense of what they were carrying. That they had dreams of the little person who was growing in their belly, that they just knew.

I really don’t. I’ll know that I’ll be surprised either way.

But for now, I’m trying to imagine you as a boy, trying to accept that you really might be such an unfamiliar little creature. It’s easy to imagine you as a girl, to understand your body, to fantasize about shopping for prom dresses, getting pedicures, enduring your angst-ridden teenage years.

But a boy? That’s something wholly unfamiliar to me. I look at my friends’ sons with their fire trucks and plastic hammers, their sports leagues and rowdy competitiveness and it all feels so alien. It’s hard too, to imagine all those boy parts inside of my big, swelling female body.

I take comfort in the fact that every mom I’ve ever met says that once the baby arrives, you could imagine it no other way, regardless of what you hoped it might be, that there is an undeniable resoluteness about that little entity. I hold onto that idea when I think about you being a boy.

I never imagined having a son. A son. I’ve been trying to say it aloud to myself these past few days. I try to imagine being the mother of a man. I try to think about what kind of man you’ll be, what kind of man having a mother like me will make you into. I think about the boys I’ve loved, or once thought I loved, about the things that made me love them. Their soft eyelashes and occasional shyness, their sweet intelligence and hesitant bravado, the ways they’ve loved me back, protectively and clumsily.

I think about my father and yours. I think about the fierce, deep love I’ve had for these two men, a love so unexpected and unwavering. I think about their strength and their vulnerability. I think about the ways I’ve cared for them, and the ways they’ve done the same for me.

I try to imagine you, somewhere in between all of that, made up of just those things: sweetness and strength, soft eyelashes and quiet sighs in your sleep. I try to imagine being the mother of all of that.

And I know that it will be just what it was always meant to be.

Love,
Mom

Thursday

I went for a walk yesterday with one of my pregnant mom friends from yoga class. She's 5 days past her due date and we waddled through the neighborhood together, stopping for tea and treats in Lincoln Square. We make quite a pair -- it really must be funny to see two such very pregnant woman together.

I like hanging out with Lauren. All we talk about is pregnancy and giving birth. This is her second baby and she had a successful natural childbirth with her first, something I'm really hoping to do as well, so our conversations consist mainly of me asking her a million questions and then letting her give me lengthy and sometimes gruesomely-detailed answers. There really is an endless amount of things to discuss when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth.

I'm not feeling scared about giving birth at all. In fact, I'm really kind of looking forward to it. The whole thing just sounds like a completely life-changing experience. It also sounds like a challenge I feel up for. I realized yesterday that I've been thinking of it akin to something like running a marathon. It's become this thing that I feel like I'm training for and trying to get psyched up for.

And it's suddenly looming close on the horizon. I'm less than 6 weeks away from my due date now and, after all these weeks and weeks of being pregnant, 6 weeks sounds like nothing at all. I keep trying to imagine that day, keep trying to imagine the moment when I actually get to meet this little person who's been pushing around in my belly all these months. Who is it going to be??

The consensus is still that I'm having a boy. Everyone says BOY. From the nurses I work with, to close friends, to my prenatal yoga teach, even to the woman who waxed my eyebrows last week. They all say BOY. My friend who threw our shower last weekend even bought me boy clothes! Sometimes I think it's a boy too, but mostly I just have no idea. 

I did buy my first baby item last week though. All this time I haven't bought anything for the baby -- no toys or outfits or books or cute, little things for the baby room that I just couldn't resist. I don't know if I'm just not that kind of person or if it's more than I need to meet the baby and get to know it before I want to buy things for it. But the one thing I wanted to get before it arrives was a baby book. And not just any baby book. This one had to be perfect.

My mother kept up my baby book until I was eighteen, and it only stops there because she died. She put everything in there -- my first job, my first date, my college acceptance, you name it, she recorded it. I remember coming home from an event as such and hearing her exclaim, "Oh, I have to put it in the baby book!" And she would.

I've always imagined doing the same with my child. But I  wanted just the right book for it. And so I looked through tons of websites and shops, searching for the perfect baby book. It had to be fairly large, classic and simple looking, contain entry prompts like My First Doctor's Visit, etc and also have room to add in lots of my own stuff. I finally settled on this one, and while it was a bit pricey, when it arrived the other day, I was thrilled that it truly had everything I was looking for. And, with it's blue leather pages and embossed silver pages, it's very pretty.

I got teary-eyed paging through it, looking at all the different pages and trying to imagine all these moments down the road. To me it just sounds like the best and the worst thing about having children is how life is no longer just about you. And a lot of the time, that just sounds like the best thing.

Remembering

Yesterday I went to see one of our new hospice families. I'd been hearing about this case for the last week at work, over voicemails and in team meetings. We take on several new patients and families a week and as the various disciplines (nurses, social workers, chaplains, etc) on our team visit them they call in with voicemail reports for the rest of the team to listen to. Our entire staff also meets once weekly to discuss all the patients and families and examine the cases from a multi-disciplinary approach.

Thus, I'd already heard a lot about this family before I even visited. The patient is a male, in his late thirties, dying of an aggressive cancer. He is at home, being taken care of by his wife who is in her early thirties. They have two children: a 6 year old and a 7 month old.

I spoke to the wife last week by telephone and arranged a visit for late yesterday morning. I'd heard from the social worker, the chaplain and two of the nurses what a hard time the she is having and I wondered if there would be anything I could really offer her. As I drove to her house yesterday I tried to imagine what her days are like right now. When I spoke to her on the phone she admitted to feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, angry and sad. How could she not be?

I knew, driving to see her, that there is little any of us can really do for her, that this is one of those cases that is just horribly sad, no matter how you play it. There are so many cases in which we can actually make a difference -- we can resolve family conflicts, help facilitate conversations between the dying and their loved ones, provide much needed respite for a caregiver with a friendly volunteer, pay for extra help in the house through our foundation dollars. But rarely do we work with such a young family. The vast majority of our patients are in their 60s, 70s and 80s.

In this case, there really isn't much this family needs...except to not be going through what they're going through. As I drove through the rainy Illinois suburbs yesterday to her house I thought about them and wondered what I would do when I arrived. I always experience a slight tinge of anticipation when meeting a new patient or family, but usually I feel confident that my presence will be of use in some way. Yesterday, I wasn't quite so sure.

I parked on the street in front of her house and sat in the car for a moment. It was a quiet neighborhood street. The garbage cans were out for a Monday morning pick up and the rain drizzled down on the newly blooming daffodils and crocuses. I thought about how you would never know what's going on inside this house, just driving by. Two nice cars sat parked in the driveway. A bunch of tulips grew by the front stoop.

I remembered how I used to feel that way when I was taking care of my father -- that the two of us existed in this little microcosm, that all the people around us, going about their days, running errands, helping their kids ride bikes by our front door, were oblivious to what was going on inside, this slow seeping away of a life, this breaking of my heart.

I won't go into the details of my visit yesterday, for privacy's sake, but when I left an hour later and got back into my car, I sighed a deep sigh -- one of both relief and regret, tinged with sadness and also something else, maybe some small sense of fulfillment. It's strange sometimes to be on the other side of this work, to be the one who gets to walk away, to get in my car and drive home to my healthy husband and budding family.

And I hope that I was able to offer this young wife something after all, even if it was only solace and the knowledge no matter how alone she might feel right now, she's not, that she will get through this and that there are those of us who have gone before her. 

Sometimes I think that’s all we can really do in this world: remind each other that we are not alone.

Monday

Going to bed last night, Greg and I both remarked on what a nice weekend it had been -- just one of those that was both relaxing and productive.

I spent the vast majority of my Friday writing, which felt really good. I'm actually feeling quite engaged and enthusiastic about my latest book project and it felt good to sit at my desk for hours, working on it. Late Friday afternoon Greg and I worked on the deck, planting flowers and tilling the various pots and planters. Hopefully it won't frost again, even though I already dreamed that it snowed all over our pretty new plants.

The weather was lovely for most of the weekend, balmy and in the 70s. We took walks through the neighborhood, ate outside on patios, went to the movies and finally painted the guest room. I've really loved having a guest room this last year. It's been so much fun to host all of our friends who have come to visit and Greg and I have both been grumbling a bit about turning it into a nursery. But on Saturday we finally took out all the furniture and painted the room.

While I went to work to facilitate my Saturday bereavement group in the morning, Greg taped up the borders and painted primer over the formerly-mauve walls. And when I got home we set to work on turning it into the pretty, buttery yellow it now is. (Don't worry, we used eco-paint, so it was safe for me and baby.)
 
We've decided to leave the bed in the room for a few more weeks since we have a couple of guests coming in May. We're also planning to have the baby sleep in a bassinet with us for the first few weeks or months anyway so there's no rush to build the crib. We did decided yesterday, however, that no matter how much we wanted to keep that bed in there, we just can't. We're now planning to put the bed in storage and buy a futon or pull-out couch for the room instead. That way we can turn it into a full-fledged nursery with plenty of room for the crib, dresser and rocking chair. Sorry guests!

Yesterday we had our third (and final) baby shower, hosted by our friends Hillary and Doug at their condo in Lakeview. This time it was a couples shower and it was so much fun to celebrate baby with all of our Chicago friends. There was lots of yummy food (thanks, Emilie!) and mimosas and little onsies for everyone to decorate with fabric paint. It turns out that this was the first baby shower that every guy there, except Greg, had attended. I think it's such a shame that this tradition still hasn't opened up much into the male realm. I think it's so much more fun to mark the pending arrival of a baby with both parts of a couple and all of their friends.

And now it's Monday again, dreary and drizzly, which I kind of like. I'm off to work and a busy week and I'm looking forward to the sunny, 80 degree days that have been promised for the end of the week.

Friday

Well, it's a new day. The sun is shining, it's supposed to go up to 70 degrees and I've got the day off. Therefore, even if I'm not feeling better, which I kind of am anyway, I'm making an effort to.

Thank you for all the comments and support in yesterday's post. I'm glad to know that no one thinks I'm crazy for not loving this point in my pregnancy. I would have to stop writing in this blog if I couldn't be honest about my day to day feelings, but it is hard sometimes to reveal so much of myself here.

We went to our birthing class last night and, as usual, it was somewhat comforting to see all these other couples around us, all of them edging closer to the same unknown reality, all of us mesmerized by the videos, lectures and exercises about this huge thing that is about to happen in just a matter of weeks.

Last night's class focused on all the different procedures and interventions that can happen during child birth and I couldn't help but revisit the days of my surgery as we discussed c-sections. I remembered how scared I was that I would lose the baby and how grateful I was afterwards to still be pregnant. And, for the most part, I still feel that way -- incredibly grateful to be pregnant. It really is a privilege, and one I lost sight of a bit this week. I'm also so proud of our little baby for making it through all of that. We've got a strong one, that's for sure. 

When we came home from class last night, Greg and I sat on opposite couches and talked for a long time all about the last two years, about how fast it's all gone, about how much has changed, how much we've both sacrificed and gained, all the highs and lows thudding along one after another. I wonder what it will be like for us to look back at this time 10 or 20 years from now. I can hardly imagine.

I'm going to spend the morning writing and then I'm off to the hardware store for paint supplies and flats of flowers for the deck -- we're FINALLY going to turn the guest room into a nursery this weekend. Wishing everyone a pleasant and sunny end of week.

Week 32

I had another crappy day yesterday. All morning I was tired and I had a hard time working on anything productive (aside from that over-wrought blog post that I have since deleted). I went to yoga in the middle of the day, which did make me feel better physically, but then I came home and, without even eating lunch, fell asleep on the couch for an hour and a half.

When I woke up it was already 3pm and I still felt tired and felt as though I'd done nothing productive with myself all day. I tried really hard to not beat myself up about it, but I couldn't help it. I'm so sick of being tired and feeling huge and ugly and unproductive. I'm sick of being pregnant. I'm sick of waddling around listlessly. I miss doing cardio, miss having more energy, miss drinking cocktails with friends, miss the idea of a future that I can envision.

Because that's the thing of it -- I'm sick of being pregnant but I'm also not ready for the baby. All I can think about these days are all the hard things that are coming: a potentially difficult labor, sleepless nights, breast-feeding challenges, my pregnancy-destroyed body, the emotional devastation of going back to work, the expense of daycare, my inside-out life that will drone on for the next 20 years.

I know that this won't be all of it. That there will be this baby here that I will love more than I've ever loved anyone -- but I can't imagine it. I've never had a baby. I've never loved a baby. And so I just feel stuck. Sick of being pregnant, yet scared of what's to come. 

And hating myself for feeling all of the above.

Letter

Dear Baby,

It’s cold and rainy here today. I just got home from a million errands – to the craft store, Babies R Us, Jewel and Trader Joe’s. There’s only 7 weeks left in this pregnancy and I think I’m getting too big to be waddling about like this in the rain. I huffed and puffed my way into and out of the car, into and out of the stores, up and down the stairs with my bags, and now I’m finally home and on the couch, a glass of tea at hand, the dishwasher humming in the background. Your father will be home any minute and the cats are pacing back and forth across the living room as they wait for him.

I went to visit an elderly man today whose wife died on hospice last fall. They were married for 57 years and now he lives alone in their condo, making himself dinner for one each night and turning up the television in accordance with his hearing aid. We sat in his living room and talked for over an hour, both of my hands resting on my belly as you kicked around inside, all elbows and ankles today.

The man was only 5 years younger than my father, but still in his mid-eighties, and I listened to him tell me stories about his time in WWII for the better part of the hour. I think he was pleasantly surprised by my knowledge of the Army Air Corps and the different kinds of planes that were being flown in the early 1940s. He had applied to be a bombardier or navigator but ended up as a mechanic, working on the same kinds of planes my father flew. He said they all wanted to be pilots like my dad, but that it took a certain kind of man to earn that position. I swelled a little with pride for my father.

This man leaned back in his chair and told me all about being on boats with ten thousand other men, about being transported to New Guinea and then the Philippines. And again, I surprised him with my knowledge of those southeast Asian islands, both of us having been to Cebu where he was stationed for a time. His eyes welled up with tears on more than once occasion as he told me these stories, the sheer experience of it all overwhelming him.

I thought about you while I sat there, and how, by the time you are old enough to understand any of this, it’s likely that there will no longer be any living people left from WWII. And my dear, it truly was the last great war. It was the last time that people fought justly for a common cause. Not many people in my generation understand or think about WWII and even fewer in your generation will either, but I can hardly describe what it’s like to see a man like I did today, brought to tears, not by a sad story, but just by the enormity of what he did all those years ago. The meaning it gave his life is evident even today as he sits alone and lonely in his little condominium in the Illinois suburbs.

It made me miss my father very much. I hugged the man goodbye, again taking him by surprise, as he apologized to me for going on and on with his stories. I shook my head and told him how much I enjoyed getting to listen to him and then I walked down the hallway to the elevator, leaving him to close his door behind me, left alone with his thoughts.

I hope you get the chance to know your father like I knew mine.

Love,
Mom