Hot Girl Summer

SURPRISE! Somehow, it’s July. But the real surprise is, SOMEHOW, I’m still pregnant. This was unexpected. I guess for a normal person it would not have been unexpected, because of the whole, “takes 10 months to make a baby” situation of the human species, but for ME? Unexpected.

So here I am, sweating my face off, heat wave after heat wave, and… baby is still cooking.

Don’t get me wrong, this is extremely good news.

My expectations of the summer were either: 1. have a second dead baby in a row and be absolutely devastated waiting for a bus to drive through my window or 2. Have a VERY early baby in the NICU and live back and forth from the hospital or I guess bonus #3. Be hospitalized and on bed rest for as long as we can keep this baby in.

But alas, there was a sneaky #4 I had no expectation for: still be pregnant, living at home, and working at my job, business-as-usual.

So that leaves me here, with hot girl summer, or as I should call it, “no-plans-girl-summer.”

I made no plans for this whole season because of the aforementioned 3 ways I saw this summer going down, but I also made no plans because I’m scared to leave the radius of 10-minute-Uber-to-hospital, and also because going to shows/Central Park/outdoor events etc., means lack of available of bathrooms. Also, did I mention it’s been routinely over 100 degrees on the heat index? No thank you.

I have settled into a comfortable routine of:

1. Wake up in air-conditioned bedroom
2. Take meds
3. Transition to air-conditioned living room
4. Work on laptop
5. Go to air-conditioned gym if I can handle the walk there and back
6. Watch tv in air conditioning
7. Go to sleep back in air-conditioned bedroom

Plus of course the 3-4 doctor appointments per week, which, depending on weather and time of morning, I am transporting myself there in an air-conditioned Uber, or an air-conditioned bus.

I must admit, it’s weird to watch people have summer plans all around me. There are people at lake houses, people on family vacations, people on wine tours, and of course 90% of my Instagram is back and forth to Europe to see Taylor Swift. Then there’s me, thankful to be cool, home, and pregnant.

Monday, I went to see my nephrologist and she seemed completely floored by how uneventful this pregnancy has been so far. She finished my appointment by saying, “your job right now is to do nothing. Don’t go doing something stupid like traveling to the Hamptons for the weekend, and getting stuck having this baby in a small hospital on the island.” This made me laugh harder than I had in weeks. She clearly does not understand my anxiety that barely allows me to travel downtown for fear that an ambulance wouldn’t take me to the hospital of my choosing. I will heed her advice and I will not be traveling.

The weird part about staying home and having no plans, is that most people are in a frenzy right before they have a baby. There are so many things to do! Paint the nursery, put together the crib and changing table. Assemble the stroller, host the baby shower, do the maternity photoshoot. (Funny sidenote, my sister-in-law asked when I was doing a maternity shoot and I cackled. I said, “when he’s alive.”)

For all of those reasons, people sometimes take off work before giving birth to “nest.” Nesting is for people who know (rightly or wrongly) that they are going to be bringing home a living baby. I am not one of those people. I am not sure, and I am sure as hell not ready. But I am ok with that, and I’ve come to terms with it.

I don’t want to sit around a house I have completely changed for the impending additional occupant, while I have no certainty this baby will make it out alive and think about all the things I do or don’t have, for a baby I may or may not have.

Since 34 weeks, I’ve been slowly putting little baby things here and there around the apartment. I consider it exposure therapy. I refuse to buy diapers, but I do have a fully-assembled baby swing in my living room. It’s a bit anxiety-provoking, since it’s sitting there empty, but it’s helping me wrap my brain around the possibility of having someone in it. At 34 weeks, 4 days, we picked up a bassinet from Buy Nothing. It is in our bedroom. That one was very difficult. For a few days, it was hard to walk into the room and see anything else.

I’ve also been working on a few need-to-do items on my to-do list, mostly around keeping this baby safe and healthy. Since I know that is my absolute #1 priority, I have been swallowing my fear and anxiety, and doing the scary tasks anyway. For example, I took a 4 hour online-CPR class for infants. Last year, I signed up for an in-person class, and the next week I had to write them to cancel. While I think hands-on experience is better than an online class, I was a bit relieved when I saw I was too late for the live classes and they were all booked up. I can’t imagine myself in a room with normal moms-to-be who are doing this class out of a sense of obligation, not because they actually know babies who have died from SIDS. I have also begun researching/interviewing pediatricians. Again, I didn’t do this because I wanted to, but because my doctor told me to, and because I know I will need a doctor who understands how important it is for me to keep my son healthy.

The whole “buying stuff for the baby” is still an issue for me. I have found that second-hand things are far easier for me to stomach. The idea of going to a store and walking through a baby aisle with happy and naïve moms-to-be, the idea of having this baby boy specifically in mind while I pick out an outfit and picture him wearing it, I just can’t do it. I see a cute “going home outfit” and I imagine him dead in it. I know that sounds horrible, but it just is what it is. So, I have trouble with purchases.

Here are some things we have: a lot of second-hand clothes, a secondhand baby swing, a secondhand bassinet.

Here are things we don’t have: diapers, wipes, a stroller and a car seat.

For some reason, the items in the latter category seem like a hurdle the height of Mount Everest. For diapers, if he’s dead, who will I put diapers on? For strollers, stroller shopping is the last thing we did for Maliyah before I went in the hospital. We decided on one and then never got to buy it. I just can’t bring myself to get one. And the car seat is the hardest one of all. It’s the one thing required by the hospital for you to take your little one home. But what if we don’t get to take him home? Buying a car seat seems so overly confident, it seems like tempting fate.

I know it’s close to the time when these things are necessary, but the advantage of 1 day delivery and living in NYC is, it’s not actually urgent. It feels like it when I see people on social media, but it’s really not. By the time I leave the hospital, if I have an alive baby, everything will have been delivered (pun intended).

So for now, I will do nothing. I will stay inside in the air conditioning, I will drink water, and I will go to my doctors’ appointments. I will wake up every day, lay completely still in bed until I have reassurance that he is alive, then I will thank all of the gods in the universe, and then I will distract myself. I am getting VERY good at Sudoku.

(Written at: 35 weeks, 6 days)