On Her Feet.

As if it isn't enough that Freya has been crawling since she was 7 months old, she has the sheer audacity to start pulling up at nine months, and if THAT wasn't enough, a few days later she's cruising along the furniture. It's wonderful and heart-stopping at the same time.  You would think having Clara would have prepared me for this but nooooooo. Clara waited until she was a sensible 10 and a half months to start crawling, pulling up, and cruising.  Just who does little miss Freya think she is?  

Oh right...she's a little sister.  And her mission in life is to get over to Clara and see what she's doing. This is all Clara's fault for being so interesting,and funny. Clara's main goal in life seems to be making Freya cackle with laughter...and trying to teach her things with varying degrees of success. Though a few days ago Clara actually did teach Freya to clap while I was in the kitchen putting away dishes.  From the living room I hear Clara telling Freya how to clap and then shortly after Clara's excited yells of: "She's doing it! She's clapping!"  I rushed in, and indeed - Freya was clapping, eyes glued to Clara looking for her approval.

Freya, just standing around.

The two girls share a room now and maneuvering through the minefield called "bedtime" with an almost 4 year old and a 9 month old can be perilous.  But it can also be wonderful.  A few nights ago after an attempt to get Freya to sleep first went pear-shaped, I asked Clara if we could read books in her bed with Freya, and Clara happily agreed.  The two girls lay down side by side next to each other on the pillows.  I started to read a book to them and one silly look from Clara and Freya dissolved into laughter - which made Clara laugh - which made Freya laugh, and so on and so on.  It was a laugh riot at bedtime and I got a flash of what great friends these two are going to be. 

Sisters.

I guess Gerald and I have to accept the fact that Freya is in a big hurry to grow up...or at least in a big hurry to chase her sister all over the place.  We're looking forward to the next milestone, the first word, which at this rate might happen sometime next week.  Clara is insistent that Freya's first word will be: "Clara." I wouldn't be at all surprised.

This is 40.

If you had asked me at 18, what being old meant I would have said: ‘Being 40.” Back then, 40 felt so distant is was virtually unreachable – something impossible that I would arrive at “someday” when “someday” really meant “never.”

Clara, sliding into 2 feet of snow.

But here I am.  Forty.  I am 40.  How did ‘never’ and ‘someday’ become today?  Two summers ago it was my 20^th High School Reunion.  I didn’t go. My memories from high school are barely tarnished…I was 18 and graduating five minutes ago.  My 20^th college reunion is in two years.  What?  I look at my twin sister and I feel like we were just running around Riverside Park jumping off of rocks and digging for worms.  Instead, I am showing my three-and-a-half year old how to jump off rocks in Fort Tryon Park.  Standing at the precipice, she asks me: "Help me to be brave, Mama.” And I do, and she jumps.

 Is anything different? I am the same person I was at 3…and 12…and 18…and 33.  The same person but a lot more willing to speak my mind and a lot less worried about what anyone else thinks.    The older you get the less you look around for someone to tell you you're doing it right or that you're okay. You actually become okay with telling yourself that you're doing it right - or wrong...or whatever but suddenly it's your opinion that matters the most. That’s a perk.

Life does pick up speed as you age.  Childhood and high school seemed to take forever...maybe from all that time you spend worrying about what other people think. Then college, then the years in your twenties where you’re trying to do everything  - make friends, keep friends, find a partner, find a job you can stand, then find a job you can stand that also pays you enough to stop having roommates. It all starts the clock ticking faster. I spent my 20's feeling like everything I wanted was just barely out of my reach. By my 30’s I was settling into my career in props for theater and television, I had a great group of friends, and was considering trying to have a kid on my own because I just couldn’t find the right person. Then I turned 34 and met the right person.  Over the next six years, we moved in together, chose to start a family, bought an apartment, had a daughter, got married, I finished graduate school, and then we had a second daughter.  Thirty-four to now was a roller coaster of milestones but every decision I made felt grounded in the absolute certainty that I was making the right choices. All of a sudden I have breathing room - and now (it seems) the world has to huff and puff a little bit to keep up with me instead of the other way around. 

The most recent candid  photo we have of the whole family is from Halloween.  (sigh)

I waited until I was 35 to add “mother” to my resume, and this past August at 39, I updated it to include "mother of two.”  Maybe it’s living and growing up in New York City but among my friends I was one of the first to have children.  Before me, I only had one friend from high school who already had children. Now the parents of Clara’s friends, who have become my friends, have all had or are having their second child.  My twin sister just had her first, and two friends from my graduating class in college are having their first children – squeaking in just under the wire for 40.  Maybe it wasn’t a deadline for them – it was a sort of invisible deadline for me but now that I am here nothing really has changed.

Photo Credit: Clara, after grabbing my phone to snap some flattering pictures.

So I’m a middle aged mom to an almost pre-schooler and an infant. Who cares?! Every mother I know is a middle aged mom to a kid that’s under five.  If this is a New York City phenomenon, I am even happier that I live here.  My husband and I juggle work, parenting, and the mad dash for babysitting when our work schedules collide.  In theater there's a saying: THE SHOW MUST GO ON. And because everyone on the stage loves what they are doing they take the aphorism seriously. It doesn’t matter if you’re sick, or didn’t sleep all night – THE SHOW MUST GO ON.  Baby was throwing up all night – THE SHOW MUST GO ON. You’re delirious with a fever?  Your toddler will still ask you every five minutes “when will dinner be ready?” while adamantly denying having anything to do with the marker scribbles all over her face that magically appeared when you tried to go to the bathroom with the door closed (for once) . THE SHOW MUST GO ON. It can be messy and hard and sometimes you might want to put your head in your hands and cry but it's also wonderful, and magical and full of surprises when you love what you're doing.

And then there were two.

As a parent you hone your reflexes to a razor edge – catching the cup before it hits the floor, pulling out the penny your baby just popped into her mouth in the one second you glanced away, or just knowing your daughter needs a little extra reassurance in her lifelong quest to spend every day being brave.  At the end of the day, when you finally sit down, the 40 year old’s bones are a bit creakier, so when the baby starts to fuss it takes a little extra heave-ho to get back up on your feet.  The one thing I would like to borrow from my 20-year old self is a bit of that seemingly inexhaustible  energy you carry with you from your childhood. Clara's boundless vitality and stamina carries her through her days with extra to spare.   I’d love just a little bit of that overflow…or maybe a glass of wine will do just fine.  

I wish I slept this well. 

And Then There Were Two.

As of August 24th, 2015, Gerald and I now have two children.  Two daughters. 6 weeks later and I finally have a moment to write about it. Boy, do you forget how much time and effort it takes to care for a newborn. And a toddler?  We're just a little tired. (Gerald will totally back me up on this one.)

Clara arrived fashionably late, one day past her due date.  I was pretty sure I would go the full 40 weeks with the second, so I felt only a mild twinge of anxiety when Gerald wanted to go see Andy Pettitte's number retired at Yankee Stadium.  I was a week away from my due date...and really, what were the odds?  I made a joke on the way to the train that if I went into labor at Yankee stadium, our TBD little girl was going to be the first female Major League baseball player. Gerald bought tickets and we headed to the stadium on the subway.

Before the fateful "water break."

Freya already planning her jail-break.

We had great seats in the upper levels - plenty of leg room and space for Clara to walk around if she got antsy.  We watched Andy Pettitte get his number retired, and then it was time to watch the ball game. (Yankees vs. the Indians)

We had only planned to stay for about 4 innings anyway.  Clara can last only so long, even distracted as she was by pizza and ice cream.  Gerald suggested packing up to leave and I excused myself to use the restroom for the hundredth time (thanks to the baby using my bladder as a pillow and punching bag.) Except, when I stood up, it felt like I wet my pants.(embarrassing) I quickly waddled to the bathroom.  It wasn't pee.  My water had broken, which along with about fifty other pregnancy symptoms I had been experiencing with this pregnancy,  hadn't happened when I was pregnant with Clara.

I hurried back to Gerald and Clara and told him the news.  Gerald, with an excellent poker face, said: "Well, let's get going." The people in the row in front of us heard, cheered loudly, and suggested we name her Andy. In the lobby of the stadium I suggested asking guest services to help us get a car service to the hospital.  But the words: "my wife's water broke" incurred a frenzy of activity.  Soon we had an entourage of 2 EMT's and a police officer.  No, I couldn't walk - they would get me a wheelchair.  And a car service was out of the question - we would ride in style in an ambulance.  To be fair, Gerald and I both expected this labor to be pretty quick.  Common wisdom proclaims that your second labor will be about half as long as the first.  Clara's was six hours so we assumed we had to get moving.

They wheeled me over to first aid to wait for the ambulance to arrive.  Family was called, and my sister and mother planned to meet us at the hospital to take Clara home, and Gerald's parents hopped in their car to come down to the city and stay overnight with Clara. An absolutely lovely police officer whose name I can't recall (edit: Gerald remembers: Officer Vanessa De Los Santos) stayed with us while we waited for the ambulance.  It arrived, and the two EMT's (Andrew and Guy) manning the ambulance were equally lovely and had a sense of humor about the whole thing which was greatly appreciated. They treated Clara like a princess and made her ride in the ambulance seem like an adventure instead of something scary. It was my first ride in an ambulance ever, and the two EMT's made it fun and made me feel safe.

We pulled into the Emergency Room at Columbia Presbyterian. The ER was backed up and I waited on the gurney in a hallway with a lot of other people waiting on gurneys and in wheelchairs for care.  Gerald stood next to me, holding Clara's hand.  I soon noticed that all he people around me were acting sorta strange.  Well, really strange.  The woman across the aisle from me made some funny faces at Clara (normal), then made some slightly obscene faces for my benefit (less normal), then licked the cheek of an unconscious woman sitting beside her who may or may not have been known to her, and told a passing orderly she was in love with him. The EMT's from my ambulance came up to me and said: "Just so you know, everyone else waiting here is high on K2."

I told Gerald to get Clara out of there and find my mom and sister - I would let him know where I ended up.  Shortly after Gerald and Clara left, an ER nurse asked what I was doing there, and I was promptly wheeled out of the ER and up to maternity.

My water broke at 2:30.  At around 6PM I was admitted to Triage and they confirmed my water had broken, but I was only one centimeter dilated.  I was having contractions but they weren't really strong.  Gerald and I watched Into the Woods on his phone.  At around 8pm a labor and delivery room freed up.  My first reaction to the room was: Is this a film set?  It looked like a staged labor and delivery room in a movie where the laboring mother's hair and makeup remains perfect while a nurse blots her lightly sweating forehead with a cloth handkerchief.  The wall-to wall picture window had a sparkling view of downtown Manhattan.  In front of the window was a giant sofa that folded out to a bed for Gerald.  Our nurse told us that down the hall was a lounge with a fridge stocked with sandwiches and drinks for the dads. AMAZING.

At 11pm the on call obstetrician came in to discuss pitocin.  After insisting on being checked to see how dilated I was and finding I was still one centimeter, I agreed to start a low dose of pitocin. Contractions enhanced by pitocin are no joke.  They felt nothing like my first (drug-free) labor.  They were intensely painful and radiated out from my pelvis.  I labored through the hellish pitocin contractions for 4 hours before considering an epidural.

On the fence about an epidural I asked the nurse for her advice.

She said: "Well, it depends on what your birth plan is.  Do you want to feel the worst pain imaginable while giving birth, or not?"

I laughed hysterically at this and the nurse replied:

"You still have the energy to laugh, you're going to be in labor for a while longer."

Epidural please.

After the sweet relief of the epidural kicked in, I labored for another 5 hours for a grand total of 18 hours.  The end was very quick - I pushed three times, and there she was on my chest.  Her first sound was a pained: "Owwwww."  Ow, indeed.  Gerald cut the cord and we both got to meet our second child - Freya.  Gerald insists the labor was so long because our littlest Yankee fan couldn't bear to be born on a day when the Yankees lost...so she waited for a day when they did. (Astros vs Yankees)

Clara meets Freya.

 Welcome to the family, Freya.