And So I Leapt

I’ve spent a lot of my life being afraid. Afraid of what you may ask? Well, everything. Anything. How I appeared to others. Whether or not the various projects I was working on would fail or not. My writing career. My love life. My sometimes troubled sometimes close relationship with my parents. My depressions. My anxieties. My regrets.

Yada. Yada. Yada.

All of this amorphous fear had one clear result: I was a ruminator, a hesitator. I spent hours and days and years contemplating a move before I made it. It was almost as if I had to run down every possible What if… scenario in my mind before I acted just so I’d know beforehand what I’d do in any given set of circumstances.

Example? I met Ebronis when I was 24, moved in with him when I was 25. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that 50 or 60 years later we’d be relaxing by some lakeside cabin, anticipating the arrival of beloved grandkids. And yet we didn’t marry for another 6 years. Had our first child 11 years out. And even then, I worried: was I doing the right thing? Was I rushing things?

Yeah. I was that kind of person.

But on Thanksgiving 2008 everything changed. MAS entered my life in a lightning bolt of fear and pain and taught me that no matter how intricate your plans, no matter how careful your preparations, life will take you on paths you never even thought to anticipate. Those paths may indeed be frightening, just as I had always thought. But what I didn’t know was that those frightening paths, those unexpected detours into tragedy, could also change you in startling and beautiful ways. That hardship could actually make you a better person, not just sadder and more scarred.

So here I am today. Not anything like the Minerva Jane of before. I look like her. Sometimes I even act like her. But inside? She’s gone. Someone else—someone stronger, someone fearless--lives here now.

All of this is to say that when MAS hit the 12-month mark Ebronis and I talked about trying for a second baby. We both wanted a large family and felt a sibling was the greatest gift we could give to our son. (Our own families are sparse and disappointing in so many ways.) 

Besides, I was about to turn 37. It had taken us a year to conceive the first time.

Time, after all, waits for no woman.

So, despite the depression MAS’s birthday had brought on with its memories of the NICU and emergency C-sections and NEC, we stopped using birth control. 

Maybe a year, we said to each other. At least 6 months. And if it doesn’t happen, that’s fine too. We have MAS. And despite his rocky beginning, that baby is wonderfully, miraculously—normal.

But pregnancy after a preemie? A 28-week preemie? Weren’t we being irresponsible? Weren’t we taking a grave risk you may ask? (I asked myself that, after all, so why shouldn’t you?)

My answer was no. There wasn’t anything wrong with me—like an incompetent cervix or a clotting disorder—that would increase the risk the second time around. I’d had a urinary tract infection and had been dehydrated. A fluke. A random brush with potential tragedy. Besides, if it happened again I’d know what to do. I’d be able to handle it—even better than I had the first time. A second baby, a sibling for MAS, would be worth doing it all again. Despite everything.

Still. This time I’d drink water nonstop and take cranberry extract and see a high risk doc. I’d get weekly p17 shots. I’d take it easy.

But I wasn’t afraid. I mean at all.

Of course, if you know me in real time, or have any sense of how stories like this always end, you know this: four weeks later we were pregnant. Not a couple of months or a year. 28 fucking days.

You’d think I’d be nervous. Especially now, as we close in on week 20. Fast approaching the dreaded 28 weeks when last time everything went awry.

But no. Nothing. No fear. No anxiety. Nothing. If anything, I’m more relaxed than I was the first time around. More confident.

Strange how life works. How beautifully strange.

Carroll Gardens In Fall

This morning, on the walk back to my apartment after working for some hours at the local cafe I caught myself thinking: my god I love my life... After so much angst--a moody adolescence; lost & confused early 20s and the difficult road to mamahood--everything in my life just seems to be falling into place.

If this is how my 30s feel, I can't wait to see what my 40s bring.

    My walk home... 

    And the munchkin who awaited me...

How we roll (to music class)

Right now I'm loving:

the bibbity;

anything by gapbaby;

happy baby's grrreat greens;

and the beautiful photos over at Progressive Pioneer.

MAS on Smith Street. En route to Music For Aardvarks.

Enter The Nanny

Our new very part-time nanny started this week.

Let me say that again: the nanny started this week! An event filled with joy, relief, a little fear and a little guilt.

She comes from 8-11 on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Not a lot of time, I know. Barely enough time to get started on the million and one projects I'm either late finishing or late starting. But still. Already its making a huge difference. I'm astonished how much more I can get done in three hours compared to before MAS was born. I've become efficient, folks. Before? I was a typical creative: scattered; distractable; prone to sudden insights while doing the dishes. Now? I sit down and do it now because I know I've only got 2.25 hours left and I have X to complete and Y to outline. Yet another way in which I'm not the same Minerva Jane as I was before he so dramatically entered my life.

Yet another gift he's given me.

Back to the nanny.

It took me eight months after MAS's discharge from the NICU to hire someone, even though I was already technically back to work a month before he came home. (Ebronis and I have a marketing firm. We shifted most of our clients over to him during my brief bedrest but I retained one or two.)

My mother-in-law comes one afternoon a week, so this isn't as bad as it seems. Besides, he goes to bed at 7.

Still, things have piled up.

But every time the idea of hiring someone would come up I would hesitate. The money! The drudgery of finding the right person! He was so vulnerable, you see... And I only needed a few hours. Weren't most people looking for full-time work?

All good points.

But behind all of this protesting, all of these compeltely logical reasons, was a deeper psychological one.

I didn't see my baby until 24 hours after he was born. Didn't get to hold him until he was a week old. He spent the first 9 weeks of his life cared for by a team of nurses, a group of predominately Philippino professionals. (I don't know why, but most of the NICU nurses at St. Luke's Roosevelt on 57th were transplants from the Philippines.)

They were all kind, competent people who had MAS's best interest at heart and without whom he wouldn't have survived, but it still felt so unnatural to be told when and how I could feed, hold, and comfort my own child. I had to ask permission every time. Sometimes it was granted, but if it didn't coincide with the nursing rotation it wasn't. By the end a weird psychology had evolved: I started to feel that it I didn't behave he would never be discharged. I tried so hard to be a good enough patient for the both of us.


So when I got him home? It was like I was making up for lost time. I encircled him, protected him in ways I wasn't able to during that last trimester-cum-first two months. And I was reluctant to let anyone else in...


But now? MAS needs more interaction than what I can give. And I need to figure out who this new Minerva Jane is. And get back to the non-mommy parts of myself...

So today she came at 8, fed MAS his breakfast of organic DHA- and probiotic-enhanced brown rice cereal, and took him to the park where they played on the swings and slide. He returned rosy-cheeked and exhausted from the playing. And now? He's napping peacefully in his stroller while I get back to my old bloggy self.

The Sick Baby

MAS woke up this morning with a runny nose.

Mid-morning it morphed into a stuffed nose with a possible low grade fever. (First reading was normal; second reading was slightly elevated; third, he was a little chilly!)

Our pediatrician thinks this is a cold and a minor one at best. Nothing to worry about. MAS also seems to think a cold is nothing to worry about: he spent the morning happily banging his green plastic egg on everything he could find. After a mid-morning snack of sweet potatoes and prunes and milk he's contentedly sleeping on my bed while I type this.

But me? I'd be lying if I didn't admit to a frisson of fear when I saw that clear snot snaking down his upper lip. It could be: flu, swine flu, RSV... ?! Anything, really. But it also could be nothing.

Yes: I know that overprotecting him will never be the answer. Kids need to get sick so they can develop immunities. Put MAS in a bubble now and his first year at school will be a disaster.

Still. I thought I'd put the whole NICU roller coaster behind me, you see. At the beginning of the summer I made such a huge effort to not talk about it and to brush it off as nothing nothing, a little blip whenever it came up. He was born early but he's fine now. Quick, let's change the subject. Have you guys started solids yet? I even stopped blogging here because I didn't want to think of him that way. I wanted to pretend that MAS started life like all the other babies.

All it takes is a whiff of a cold, a whiff of allergies even, and all that comes tumbling down. MAS's story isn't like the others'. I can't change that. No matter how much I would like to.

It will always be there in one way or another. No matter how robust MAS is, there will always be some part of me that remembers my first glimpse of him: my 2 lbs 5 oz half-cooked baby hooked up to god knows how many wires, his nose irritated from the CPAP and his soft mewling cries more feline than human.

During our NICU stay my challenge was to step up to the plate and be there for him in as positive and consistent a way as I could. I spent hours by his side and even more hours holding him in kangaroo care, telling everyone--myself, my husband, my in-laws, the nurses and all the other grief-srtiken parents--that MAS would not only survive but thrive. If I could WILL him better, I would.

But now? My challenge is to step back a little and let him be... With all the flus and colds and scrapes that come with any normal childhood.

As one of the neonatalogists told me when she discharged us that last cold day in January: "Well, he's not a preemie now. He's a former preemie. Now he's just like everyone else."

13 Things About Brownstone Baby

1. He was born on Thanksgiving Day.

2. He was born 12 weeks early.

3. He therefore, like all preemies, has a double identity: Sagittarius and Aquarius.

4. He loves the stuffed loon on his activity gym.

5. He thinks diaper changes are funny.

6. He’s ticklish.

7. He abhors being hungry.

8. He finds his Fisher Price swing sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing.

9. He had a full head of hair when he was born; no mean feat for a 28 weeker.

10. Since he learned to stick his tongue out it’s become his favorite trick.

11. He loves bath time more than any other time of day.

12. He loves speed whether its in the car or stroller: stoplights and traffic jams make him angry.

13. He's been hitting every single milestone when he would have had he been born on his due date--sometimes earlier. (Rolling over at 3 months!)

Avian Analogies

To take the bird metaphor further: she who lays her eggs in an open field has to be more aggressive in defending her chicks than she who lays in a camouflaging tree.

Me? I laid my egg on a freshly mown suburban lawn. Danger all around: kids playing ball and dogs digging and cars speeding past.

Nestless, I used my very own puffed up self to protect him. And letting go of that? Ah. Harder than I thought.

When The Worst Isn’t That Bad

Giving birth 12 weeks early was the biggest crisis I’ve dealt with in my adult life.

But it wasn’t an entirely negative experience:

I meet a group of really wonderful women and some pretty tough preemies.

I got to know a team of phenomenal NICU doctors and nurses.

I got an extra three months with MAS—months during which he would have otherwise been a mystery to me. (And what a miracle to be able to watch the rapid and spectacular development that occurs during the third trimester.)

But the real kicker: I discovered something really important about myself, something that has changed me in the most profound way.

Despite my previous doubts, it turns out I’m actually a remarkably strong person. Life can throw its worst at me and I don’t crumble. I bend like a reed. I bounce back easily and quickly. I don’t lose perspective even while I’m terrified and the walls are crumbling around me.

And somehow knowing that about myself changes everything. And that’s the gift MAS gave me: faith that no matter what happens from here on out, I’ll rise out of the ashes.

Walk-Up Living. Or, An Ode To The Sling

We, like many Brooklynites, live in a walk-up. Still, our two bedroom apartment with its leaky faucets and over exuberant winter heating system (can we say steam heat=sauna) comes at a pretty penny--three times the rent, in fact, that we paid for our 3 bedroom full bath Charlottesville, VA place.

But committed we are to city living. Or rural living. (Its the suburbs that I find soul-crushing.)

Now that the bambino is home, I'm finding those three sets of stairs create untold obstacles to my daily living. Sure, I have a great stroller.* But getting it up and down the stairs with baby in one arm? Yeah right.

That's where this wonderful thing called the sling comes in. Unlike the Ergo, which I also own and shall write about shortly, the sling is super fast and easy to put on. Slip it over one arm, slide the baby into the pocket and away we go.

And days when MAS won't stop crying? After I've bounced on the exercise ball for over an hour and STILL no sleep for the preemie-liscous boy? Why, the sling: slide him in and my hands are free to say read a book or sweep the floor--or GASP, write a blogpost.

* The Mountain Buggy, while fab, is friggin' heavy.

Chicco KeyFit 30: Fit For A Shrimp

The Shrimpster, in his Chicco Keyfit with Infant Insert


I was a little anal about my baby registry, I have to admit. Part of it was that I was so flummoxed by the number of choices and chagrined by the implication that if I made the wrong choice I’d be a BAD MOTHER that I researched the pants off of everything. That, and I tend to over research things in general. (I even had a spreadsheet of items I wanted! Color coded! And cross referenced!)

Anyhoo, when MAS was born three months early that whole process sort of got dropped. Funny, that. I’d researched everything online, you see, and hadn’t had a chance to really visit the babychain stores to see the crap in real life. (More on that later when we talk about strollers & citylife.)

Plus, it seemed like every time we started preparing for MAS's arrival something bad happened. What do I mean? Paint the babies room: go into preterm labor & deliver 12 weeks early. Order the crib: baby gets NEC and has to go on a triple course of antibiotics for ten days and is fed through an IV.

Scary shit, no? Sorta makes you superstitious, no?

And then there's the fact that our needs and priorities shifted a bit: preemies are a special case. Especially super shrimpy preemies like MAS. For Chrissake, he just barely hit 4 lbs 12 oz when we brought him home so the Graco SafeSeat I’d registered for sure as hell wasn’t going to cut it. (The SafeSeat is only good for babies 5 lbs and over...)

The only car seat that could really fit him was the Chicco Keyfit 30, which I begrudgingly registered for even though it was more expensive than the Graco and didn’t fit the SnugGlider that I REALLY wanted. (A swing! And it vibrates! And is so small I could fold it and slide it under the sofa! A Brooklynite's dream, really...)

But boy was I wrong. I love this car seat, if love is a word that can really be applied to something like a car seat. It was a breeze to install because its got a spring-assisted level foot, bubble levels, and “Center-Pull” adjustment. And it fits babies 4 to 30 lbs and has these latches on the side so I can use it in our car, in a car service car or even a Taxi—from the day he came home from the NICU until he’s like 2. So MAS is pretty much set.

Luckily it also fits my Mountain Buggy Stroller Car Seat Adapter and Kolcraft Universal Car Seat frame—the latter of which, annoyingly, was stolen from my apartment building’s vestibule. (But also luckily: Brooklyn thieves are stupid: they stole the cheap stroller!)