Life in Chicago

Only the Lonely

I read an interesting blog entry in Motherlode yesterday, written by a mother who has a four year-old daughter and who doesn't intend to have any more children. She wrote about all the pressure she faces from her peers about providing a sibling for her daughter and she wants to know what's wrong with having an only child. Interestingly enough, she's an only child herself.

I'm also an only child, and being so has definitely made me adverse to the idea, not sympathetic to it. I think that even if I hadn't lost both of my parents I still wouldn't want to have just one child. It's not that I don't understand all the reasons that parents could choose (and sometimes not have a choice like my parents, who couldn't have more) to have just one child, it's just that I don't want to do it myself.

Throughout my entire childhood I wished that I had a sibling or two. I think I forgot about the idea for a while during my self-centered adolescence, but after losing my mother, the fierce desire to have someone else in my life who knew her and loved her as I did reared it's head. And now that they're both gone, I can't even imagine how amazing it would be to have someone in my life who shares the same memories (kind of) and experiences that I had growing up.

I read through dozens of the comments in the only child piece yesterday. Some people were incensed and wrote that having only one child was selfish and terrible (poor China), but I was really interested to see how many people wrote in to say that they wished they were an only child, that just because you have a sibling doesn't mean you'll like them or have a relationship with them. And I suppose that's true as well.

But then I think about Greg and his siblings. There are six of them, altogether. They're all about 2 years apart and Greg is right in the middle. For the most part, in comparison to other sibling sets I've met, they're all quite close. And while they may not always get along or approve of each other all the time, they really do love each other and share an amazing bond. 

And I know that even if Greg and I only end up having this one child, it will have so many wonderful cousins and aunts and uncles in its life that it will never lack for family or shared memories. But all the same, I definitely want to have more than one child. When Greg and I are gone, and even long before that, I'd like for my children to be able to have each other, to be able to sift through a shared experience of this strange life, and of the life that Greg and I, in particular, introduced them to.

Looking Ahead

I've got a long day ahead of me. I'll leave shortly for work, Thursdays being the busiest day of the week at my hospice job with end-of-the-week follow ups and our weekly 3 hour team meeting. I'll race home after that and jump on the train to go downtown to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening working on the second issue of The Printed Blog. I won't get home after that until 10 or 11 and will probably get up early with Greg tomorrow and go right back downtown.

For the most part, I don't mind working so much. Although it's tiring, I'm the kind of person who likes to be busy. I get depressed and lethargic when there's not much going on and energized when I'm under the gun. But all this has me thinking about what it will be like when the baby arrives.

Greg and I are both stressing about finances and trying to plan for my maternity leave. Turns out that I won't be paid at all during the time I take for maternity leave. I still get the leave itself but because I'm a part-time employee, I won't be covered financially. I had really been hoping to take the typical three months off but I might have to go back to part-time work sooner than that just so that we can stay afloat.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately and wondering what that will be like. How it will be to leave the baby after such a short time, if I'll be able to handle it. Watching my friends go through these transitions over the years hasn't given me the impression that it's easy. Hopefully we can save enough money or I can secure enough freelance writing work so that won't be the case but the whole thing definitely has me worried.

It's just a lot to think about in general. I think if resources were unlimited I probably still wouldn't want to be a full-time, stay-at-home mom but I would like some initial time to immerse myself in the experience. I guess the hardest part is knowing that this huge transition is coming...but not knowing what it's really going to be like. I can speculate and take advice all I want but until there's a baby in my arms I don't think I'll understand how any of this is really going to unfold.

More Dreams

Last night I dreamed that Greg was dying and that it was our last night together. It was horrible, and it was the second dream in a week in which one of us was dying and we were saying goodbye (last time it was me dying).

In last night's dream I didn't want to let go of him. I told him that we could have a million conversations and they'd never be enough. In the dream I thought that if I wasn't pregnant, I would just go with him.

I woke up from the dream and called him to me from the living room where he was drinking coffee and I put my arms around him and just cried, thinking about how I never want to be without him. I'm crying again now as I write this.

Man, these pregnancy dreams are intense.

Life in Chicago

Over the last couple of weeks I've been riding the train into downtown for work fairly often and it's given me such a different sense of the city.

Ever since moving to Chicago a year and a half ago, I've been working in the suburbs. I spend my weekdays driving through the snowy, northwestern neighborhoods. I drive past old houses and big grocery stores, passing parks and moms with strollers, and visiting patients in old-fashioned homes with snow-covered lawns and ancient maple trees. It's in stark contrast to the last decade that I've spent living in urban metropolises like New York and Los Angeles.

Greg and I live in Lincoln Square, still considered Chicago city proper, but edging the border with it's north of downtown location. And although I adore it, our little enclave of Ravenswood Manor is definitely the most neighborhood-y place I've lived in over a decade. With it's craftsman homes and tree-lined streets, baseball diamond parks and ground-level train stations, it feels like it's own little, old-fashioned neighborhood in the middle of the city.

All this to say that ever since I've lived in Chicago I've had much less of an urban experience than I was anticipating. But riding the train down to the Loop several times a week has reminded me of what a great city Chicago really is, and how my experience of its northern neighborhoods and suburbs is totally different than that of Greg and my other friends who ride the train downtown every day, rushing amongst the throngs of people, streaming across sky-scraper-shadowed sidewalks. 

Greg and I have had several conversations lately about other places in the country we would consider living...San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Colorado are all contenders. It's definitely that time of year that encourages this topic of conversation. No one ever talks about where else they would like to live in the summer around here. But when the temperatures have been in the teens for weeks and the snow is piled up in icy mounds on the sidewalk for just as long, you start to think about what life would be like in another city.

I can't see myself settling here in Chicago, living the rest of my life here. But then again, I'm not sure I can see myself doing that anywhere. Just the idea of committing to one place for whole decades, for the rest of one's existence, sounds stifling to me. But now that I'm pregnant and 30 and married it does seem time to start thinking about a place to perhaps spend a good set of solid years.

I've been moving every five or so years since I was 9 and as impractical as it is, I've gotten used to the idea. I'm pretty good at starting over, making friends, at making a home in a new place. I really can't imagine not doing it again, it seems that much a way of life to me. But it's a different story for Greg -- his family is here and he's lived his whole life in the midwest -- so I have to take that into consideration.

But seriously, if someone offered me a job in Rome I wouldn't even think twice about it. We'd be enrolled in Italian classes next week. I'm all for having a dozen different living experiences of the world or the country in my lifetime. But that idea is becoming less and less practical the more of an adult I grow into.

For now though, Chicago is just fine. And even better, in fact, now that I've been having a fuller experience of it.

--

Check out Greg's latest Huffington Post piece about our neighbor, good old Blagojevich: 

I'm Totally Rooting for Blago at This Point

Monday Morning Dreams

I've been having such vivid dreams these last couple of weeks, sometimes two or three a night, some of them fierce and terrifying nightmares.

Last night I dreamed that I was at a doctor's appointment and had just had an ultrasound. The doctor left me alone in the room and I happened to see the top of my ultrasound chart and realized that, it said that the baby is a girl. I couldn't see it that well at first and, even though Greg and I have firmly decided not to find out, I couldn't help leaning forward to confirm that it really said GIRL, which it did.

In the dream the emotion I felt upon seeing that word -- GIRL -- was relief. Intense relief.

Telling of what my preference is, huh?

The truth is that I'd love to have one of each, a boy and a girl. Or even two boys and a girl or two girls and a boys or three girls. In any case, there just has to be a girl. And I hope that it happens with this pregnancy so that I don't have to wonder with each subsequent one; I can just have my girl and get it over with.

I've thought about this a lot -- why it is that I want a girl so badly -- and it's partly because the idea of having a boy makes me nervous because I fear I won't be able to relate to it as well. BUT, before you get your fingers poised to comment on that, let me say that I know that fear is irrelevant given the fact that I've never had a child before and I know, I just know, that no matter what I have it will be perfect and it will be exactly what I was meant to have, be it a boy or a girl or a child with disabilities, and I will love it and relate to it perfectly.

The conclusion I've really come to about why I want to have a girl so badly has to do with my mother. Simply that it's now been 12 years since I've had a mother-daughter relationship -- and I had such a good one -- that I deeply yearn to have that again. As complicated as those relationships can be, between a mother and her daughter, I want so badly to have that in my life again. My mother was such a vibrant, beautiful woman, and our relationship was so wonderfully complex and layered and influential. And her absence has left me to sort through so many things about what means to be a woman...that I would truly love to share a bond like that again, with a daughter. 

That said, because I've gone and written about it, and because I want it so badly, it's sure to be a boy. And that said, if it is a boy, it will most likely prove to teach me even deeper lessons than a girl somehow would -- I think that sometimes what we fear the most is exactly what we need to propel us forward into new realms of life.

--

If you live in Chicago, be sure to look for the inaugural issue of The Printed Blog tomorrow morning, being passed out at el stops in Lincoln Park and Wicker Park.

Twelve Years

Dear Mom,

It is January 24, 2009. You have been dead for 12 years. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been writing these letters all this time…12 years worth of letters telling you about the progression of my life since I last saw you.

Beside me lies a photo of you taken on April 29, 1978. You were 8 months pregnant with me. You look so beautiful in this photo; your stance proud and your smile luminescent.

As I write this, I am 5 months pregnant. I lied in bed this morning with Greg, both our hands on my belly, and felt the little kicking from within. I’ve thought of you so much through this process. I’ve wondered so much about your experience of pregnancy and I’ve sat, hunched over photo albums, peering at polaroids my father surely took of you throughout the nine months before you gave birth to me.

A lot has happened in the last year, mom. A lot that I would have loved to have you here for. Oh, I just had to get up for tissues. I’m already crying. Every single year I think I won’t cry when I write this letter…and every year I do.

I got engaged and married last year, mom. Two things I would have loved to have had you here for, more than anything. Although, I’m sure that when I give birth in June that will top them both, in terms of wishing you were here.

I couldn’t be happier to be married, mom. Greg is the most wonderful man I’ve ever met. Besides Dad. He’s so kind and caring and patient and he makes me feel complete in a way that I never expected. It’s just like you wrote to me all those years ago –

Find yourself and you’ll find your other self, you wrote. Give each other space and respect – there can be no tiny, nagging doubt. The Italians have a name for it – colpe di fulme – and it’s likened to being struck by lightening when you both meet, which I adore. Accept nothing else. Have babies which I can take care of. Please choose a man who adores you and would never hurt you.

And it was like that, mom. There was never any doubt, never any question. Falling in love with Greg was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life. In April of last year he got down on one knee and put a ring on my finger and asked me to marry him. It was your ring, mom. He took the stone from the beautiful engagement ring that Dad gave you and had it made into something special just for me. Every time I look at it, I’m reminded of you and Dad and the love that I come from.

We were married in July on Cape Cod. In the very church where you were married over 30 years ago. I’ve never felt so beautiful or happy in my life as I did on that day. Uncle David officiated the ceremony, just as he did for you and Dad, and Greg and I exchanged vows that we wrote ourselves. That afternoon we dined on lobsters and champagne in Pam’s backyard by the beach and then we all went swimming in the ocean. It couldn’t have been a more perfect day.

Afterwards we returned to our life in Chicago, our beautiful home on the river with the ducks and softly flowing water and cicadas ringing in the trees. And in September we conceived the baby that I’m carrying. I thought of you so much that month, wondering what it had been like for you and Dad in those first few weeks of learning that you were pregnant with me. It happened so fast for us, but we couldn’t be more excited.

I’m due in June, just a couple of weeks after my 31st birthday. I like thinking that you and I will have carried our babies through the same seasons. I look forward to the warmer months, to spring and then summer and the baby here, making three of us. If I haven’t already felt part of a family again, I know I will, more than ever, then.

But I miss you, mom. So much. I wish you were here with me through these life events. But I also know that you knew I would do all these things, that I would grow into the woman I am, that I would marry and have babies and be beautiful and happy.

I hope to be as good a mother as you were. To give my child the same fierce love and understanding that you never ceased to bestow on me. It’s a love I still feel today, and of that, there is no greater gift that a parent can give. Thank you.

Your only daughter,
Claire

Retraction

Okay, I retract Wednesday's anxiety-ridden post about a lack of baby movement. The baby is totally kicking.

I started really feeling it a lot yesterday in my 3-hour long team meeting at work. It was so wild to feel. I mean I'd felt some light kicks over the last few weeks but yesterday in my meeting, as I was slightly reclined back in my chair with my growing belly protruding out before me, I felt a few of the most distinctive kicks yet -- the undeniable kind that could be caused by nothing but a baby. It's such a weird feeling! That there's a little entity in there moving around!

And then this morning I woke up when Greg's pre-alarm went off (he likes to hit snooze a lot) and turned over on my back for a bit, kind of awake and thinking about my day, and suddenly I could feel the baby kicking again. I put Greg's hand on my stomach, right over the spot and all of a sudden he felt it too! He was definitely surprised at first but kept his hand pressed firmly as a couple more swift little kicks came in.

I think it was one of my most favorite moments that I've ever had with him. Lying there in the dark, both of us feeling the little kicks of our baby inside me. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about it. I'm still wrapping my head around the idea that we have created another life together. It seems like the greatest privilege in the world to be able to have this with someone I love so much.

And I know there are only more amazing moments between the three of us yet to come.

Back to Work

It was nice to go back to work yesterday. You know I've been at that job for over a year now and I'm definitely pretty settled in. I like the people I work with. It's a funny thing about work, isn't it? Being forced to spend time with people that you would never normally spend time with, and usually don't really like in the first place. But then, after a while, hopefully, you begin to get to know them all for their little eccentricities and funny personality traits and you're able to simply appreciate them for the unique space they occupy in the world.

The people I work with are like that and I've really come to enjoy their company. They still don't know anything about me being a writer or having a blog or getting published in various magazines or that I review restaurants or go on travel trips sometimes. I'm just kind of the young one on the team, the new wife, the pregnant chick, the one who moved here from California (how about this cold, huh? not what you're used to, I bet!).

So it was good to go back yesterday to my little desk and familiar work routines. One of my well-meaning colleagues put a little ceramic angel figurine (a Precious Moments kind of thing) on my desk while I was out having my surgery and, although those sorts of figurines kind of make me cringe, I now feel obligated to leave it there since it was such a nice gesture. 

I've also been busy the last couple of days helping out with a new venture called The Printed Blog. The idea is to take the best of the blogs and put it in a daily print paper. Pretty counter-intuitive right now, but nevertheless a unique idea. I've been helping out as editor, choosing blog posts to include in the first issue which will come out on Tuesday. An article in the NY Times came out today about the whole thing. I'll actually be working on this until late tonight in the downtown office.

So yeah, not just back to work, but back to WORK.

Oh, and I think I felt some kicks late yesterday afternoon. It's so hard to tell still!

Things as Usual

I'm going back to work today.

I've been feeling so much better this week. The pain, which last week was probably a 7 on the pain scale of 1-10, is now a 1. I'm hardly even thinking about it and am able to sit up and down without really noticing it all. Which is just such a relief because last week was truly torturous and I was so worried that it would go on like that for weeks. The only thing that still really hurts is laughing...so it kind of sucks right now to be married to such a funny guy. Yeah you, Greg.

I'm glad to be going back to work though. I've been sitting around the house for too many days now. I've worked on a fair amount of writing projects. I've watched a lot of tv and movies. I've taken a lot of naps. I've eaten a lot of chocolate. I've burned through a 1,000 page Anne Rice novel and I've spent an inordinate amount of time with the cats. It's definitely time to get back to a normal routine.

I'm tired though this morning. I had anxiety dreams all night last night and woke up often, thinking of all the things I need to do today. I kept dreaming about being at the doctor's office and asking her to listen for the baby's heartbeat. But everything kept going wrong. Blood pressure cuffs weren't working and the doppler radar was nowhere to be found. It was so stressful.

I'm just past 20 weeks and I'm still not really feeling the baby kick. I had always thought that by now I'd be feeling it like crazy but in the last week I think I've only felt it a few times...and even then, I haven't been positive that was it. I was feeling it for sure before the surgery but ever since, I haven't been able to tell what's what in there. I told my doctor this last Friday and she said not to worry, that I would feel it soon enough.

When I google things like "20 weeks and still haven't felt the baby kick," I see that there are lots of women reporting the same thing and that some women don't really feel it until 22-24 weeks and my books say the same thing, but it still seems like most women say 20 weeks. Maybe things just got so moved around with the cyst being taken out that the baby just has more room. I do know that my stomach is still growing -- I feel bigger than ever right now.

But I'm ready for the reassurance of some regular, solid kicks. Maybe going back to work will inspire the baby to get to work too!

--
Addendum:
I just realized that it's probably weird for me not to mention what a historic day yesterday was. I, like the rest of the world, spent the morning glued to the television. And I, like the rest of the world, couldn't be more thrilled that I'll be raising my child under the Obama administration. What a glorious weight has been lifted from the United States.

20 Weeks

As of yesterday, I'm officially 20 weeks pregnant.

I've gained 7 pounds. And lost 1 pound (the cyst).

You can check out a progression of baby bump photos here.