As a parent, you experience every summer in a whole new way. Two summers ago, I was hugely pregnant. I was either laying on the beach like an actual whale or walking on the elliptical at the gym for a whole hour at a time because at least the gym was well air-conditioned and I could watch the London Olympics nonstop.
Then Eli was born. While we were in the hospital, thunderstorms came and the city cooled off. The first time I felt cold in the hospital after Eli's birth, I literally wept with relief. I hadn't felt cold for so long, and it felt amazing.
Last summer, Eli turned 1. He was a late crawler, so he was newly mobile. It felt incredibly strange to bring him to playgrounds where I had once plopped him on blankets to lay immobile on his back, occasionally flipping over onto his tummy. Suddenly he was crawling off on his own. There was grass! Dirt to smear over his hands and stick in his mouth!
As this past cold, icy winter crawled toward spring, Phil and I were discussing how potentially awesome the coming summer could be. With Eli running around on his own, we could frolic at Citi Field and at Coney Island; we could hit all the zoos and overdose on playground time. Best of all, I get Fridays off.
I'll be training for the marathon in November, so I was telling Phil about how I was thinking of bringing Eli to daycare on Fridays and doing my long runs then.
"Well," I said, "It makes no sense for me to pick him up before naptime if he's just going to nap, so I figured, why not let him nap there, and I'll just pick him up when naptime is over, around 2, and this way I can do some errands on Friday mornings too, like the laundry and grocery shopping. What do you think?"
I expected Phil to endorse my plan wholeheartedly. After all, it would give us more errand-free time together on the weekends. So I was surprised when he said, "I think it's a terrible idea."
"Rachel," he said earnestly, "you only get this time once. You should be taking him on adventures! Go to the zoo! Park at the aquarium and go to the beach! Live it up! And then," he added, "we'll get a babysitter to come over after Eli goes to sleep, and we'll do your long runs together."
I don't know what that means for the grocery shopping and the laundry, but Friday adventures with my buddy always sound like a good idea.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Everything you ever wanted to know about my fertility but never asked*
(*because it's weird to ask someone about their fertility unless they decide to blog about it, right?)
In the summer of 2011, I saw pregnant women everywhere. They were walking past me down the street, their painted toes in flip-flops; hand-in-hand with their husbands, swaying as they walked.
I saw pregnant women everywhere because I desperately wanted to be among them. I had gone from casual "I'll just stop taking the pill and see what happens" to slightly more focused "I'll just use this Fertility Friend app to track what's going on so far" to all-out deranged "I'm going to pee on this stick every morning to find out if I'm ovulating."
I had reason to suspect that my ovaries were not in prime working order. Still, when you spend the bulk of your 20s diligently trying not to get pregnant, it's a startling shift in thinking to find out you might not be able to. When my OB gave me a referral to a reproductive endocrinologist (that is a fancy term for a fertility doctor), I remember thinking that if this were 100 years ago I'd be doomed to be childless forever.
In theory, trying to get pregnant should be fun (wink wink). In reality, it's draining. (Literally -- I once had 18 -- EIGHTEEN -- vials of blood drawn in a single lab visit.) My RE was trying to prescribe enough Clomid to help me ovulate, but not enough to produce twins. My other RE -- Dr. Google, of course -- suggested that I start "charting," which basically consists of taking your temperature every morning immediately upon waking to help you track incremental changes in body temperature that signal when ovulation has occurred. Charting works best when you take your temperature at the same time every morning before getting out of bed, which is a problem when one wakes up at 4 a.m. needing to pee like a racehorse. Dr. Google's other helpful suggestion was to begin tracking patterns in cervical mucus, which I don't even want to get into right now because it is exactly what it sounds like. I don't know how women charted before smartphones, but fortunately -- like everything else -- there's now an app for that.
So I charted. I took my temperature every morning and then peed on a stick that I scanned into a fertility monitor. Then in the afternoon I peed on a different stick (an OPK, or "ovulation predictor kit," that would display a smiley face if I was allegedly ovulating. (I say "allegedly" because I also got to visit the RE every week or so for a sonogram to see if I had legitimately ovulated or if my pee just made my ovulation sticks artificially happy.) Once, I accidentally dropped a Clomid pill (one in a 5-day cycle) down the sink drain. I was heading to Vermont for the weekend and I had to go to the pharmacy and beg the pharmacist for a replacement. I remember saying, "Would I really come in here and try to scam you out of a single Clomid pill?! Do you think I am selling individual Clomid doses on the black market?"
Every day there was a new Facebook pregnancy announcement, another pregnant teacher at school. One day while I drove to the RE's office on Long Island I cried to the Florence + the Machine song on the radio: "It's hard to dance with the devil on your back..."
Now that I have a child, I have absolutely no problem at all revealing that Eli is a Clomid baby. But when you are "TTC" (trying to conceive, in BabyCenter abbreviation parlance), it's a weird thing to talk about. Like, I can easily say, "I'm going to the dentist," but no one wants to hear, "I'm going to have my hCG levels checked to see if I ovulated!" There was a certain level of resentment and self-pity involves, which feels very ugly and lonely.
When you're charting, Fertility Friend will take note of a big drop in body temperature followed by a spike and helpfully mark it with a huge red crosshairs, meaning: You have ovulated! But the only sure way to determine whether or not you've ovulated -- well, besides getting pregnant -- is a blood test. So I had a lot of those, during which I tried very hard not to faint.
Once you have confirmed ovulation, you are in what BabyCenter message boards refer to as the "TWW" -- the two-week wait before you will either "POAS" (pee on a stick) or "AF" (your period) will arrive. (BabyCenter uses a lot of acronyms). During this period you'll misinterpret every minor bodily malfunction you have as a pregnancy symptom (am I imagining this, or do my boobs hurt?). Fertility Friend will also inform you that "if you conceive this cycle, your due date will be _____," so you start daydreaming of having a winter baby. Or a spring baby. Maybe early summer. Really any kind of baby would be fine.
One day at a sonogram in early November the RE informed me that my ovaries were characteristically empty. "Nothing is going on," he said benevolently. "Come back next week."
But by my next appointment, I had already ovulated. (I knew this because I was such a diligent charter and pee-er on OPKs.) I kept taking my temperature every morning -- during this "luteal phase" of your cycle, you're looking for your temperature to stay high (unless it drops one day and spikes the next, which can be indicative of an "implantation dip," meaning the egg has implanted itself into your uterus, in which case woohoo!). When your temperature plummets, it's baby game over.
At 3 a.m. on the day I expected my temperature to drop, I woke up and I couldn't help it: Instead of going back to sleep like a rational person, I stuck a thermometer in my mouth. Still high. I was no longer keeping pregnancy tests in the house, but do you think I went back to sleep and waited until morning? No. I walked to Duane Reade, and I bought a 5-pack of pregnancy tests because they were on sale and by that point I figured I'd need more of them.
I admire women who have the self-control to surprise their husbands with the news that they are pregnant. This is how Phil found out: At 3:30 a.m. I burst sobbing into the bedroom, flipped on the light and thrust a Clearblue stick in his face.
The sonogram at which we saw Eli for the first time was during Hanukkah. The RE was Jewish, and somehow he knew we were Jewish (we give off a vibe, I guess). I remember thinking about how he must have seen thousands of blurry, black-and-white, blinking blob fetuses by then, but he still managed to be amazed by ours: "Ah, see there?" he said, pointing out the screen. "You can see the heart beating already. Marvelous, marvelous."
On our way out the door, he handed us a tiny snapshot and wished us a happy Hanukkah. Then he winked at us. "Ah, but," he said, his eyes twinkling, "the miracle has already occurred."
In the summer of 2011, I saw pregnant women everywhere. They were walking past me down the street, their painted toes in flip-flops; hand-in-hand with their husbands, swaying as they walked.
I saw pregnant women everywhere because I desperately wanted to be among them. I had gone from casual "I'll just stop taking the pill and see what happens" to slightly more focused "I'll just use this Fertility Friend app to track what's going on so far" to all-out deranged "I'm going to pee on this stick every morning to find out if I'm ovulating."
I had reason to suspect that my ovaries were not in prime working order. Still, when you spend the bulk of your 20s diligently trying not to get pregnant, it's a startling shift in thinking to find out you might not be able to. When my OB gave me a referral to a reproductive endocrinologist (that is a fancy term for a fertility doctor), I remember thinking that if this were 100 years ago I'd be doomed to be childless forever.
In theory, trying to get pregnant should be fun (wink wink). In reality, it's draining. (Literally -- I once had 18 -- EIGHTEEN -- vials of blood drawn in a single lab visit.) My RE was trying to prescribe enough Clomid to help me ovulate, but not enough to produce twins. My other RE -- Dr. Google, of course -- suggested that I start "charting," which basically consists of taking your temperature every morning immediately upon waking to help you track incremental changes in body temperature that signal when ovulation has occurred. Charting works best when you take your temperature at the same time every morning before getting out of bed, which is a problem when one wakes up at 4 a.m. needing to pee like a racehorse. Dr. Google's other helpful suggestion was to begin tracking patterns in cervical mucus, which I don't even want to get into right now because it is exactly what it sounds like. I don't know how women charted before smartphones, but fortunately -- like everything else -- there's now an app for that.
So I charted. I took my temperature every morning and then peed on a stick that I scanned into a fertility monitor. Then in the afternoon I peed on a different stick (an OPK, or "ovulation predictor kit," that would display a smiley face if I was allegedly ovulating. (I say "allegedly" because I also got to visit the RE every week or so for a sonogram to see if I had legitimately ovulated or if my pee just made my ovulation sticks artificially happy.) Once, I accidentally dropped a Clomid pill (one in a 5-day cycle) down the sink drain. I was heading to Vermont for the weekend and I had to go to the pharmacy and beg the pharmacist for a replacement. I remember saying, "Would I really come in here and try to scam you out of a single Clomid pill?! Do you think I am selling individual Clomid doses on the black market?"
Every day there was a new Facebook pregnancy announcement, another pregnant teacher at school. One day while I drove to the RE's office on Long Island I cried to the Florence + the Machine song on the radio: "It's hard to dance with the devil on your back..."
Now that I have a child, I have absolutely no problem at all revealing that Eli is a Clomid baby. But when you are "TTC" (trying to conceive, in BabyCenter abbreviation parlance), it's a weird thing to talk about. Like, I can easily say, "I'm going to the dentist," but no one wants to hear, "I'm going to have my hCG levels checked to see if I ovulated!" There was a certain level of resentment and self-pity involves, which feels very ugly and lonely.
When you're charting, Fertility Friend will take note of a big drop in body temperature followed by a spike and helpfully mark it with a huge red crosshairs, meaning: You have ovulated! But the only sure way to determine whether or not you've ovulated -- well, besides getting pregnant -- is a blood test. So I had a lot of those, during which I tried very hard not to faint.
Once you have confirmed ovulation, you are in what BabyCenter message boards refer to as the "TWW" -- the two-week wait before you will either "POAS" (pee on a stick) or "AF" (your period) will arrive. (BabyCenter uses a lot of acronyms). During this period you'll misinterpret every minor bodily malfunction you have as a pregnancy symptom (am I imagining this, or do my boobs hurt?). Fertility Friend will also inform you that "if you conceive this cycle, your due date will be _____," so you start daydreaming of having a winter baby. Or a spring baby. Maybe early summer. Really any kind of baby would be fine.
One day at a sonogram in early November the RE informed me that my ovaries were characteristically empty. "Nothing is going on," he said benevolently. "Come back next week."
But by my next appointment, I had already ovulated. (I knew this because I was such a diligent charter and pee-er on OPKs.) I kept taking my temperature every morning -- during this "luteal phase" of your cycle, you're looking for your temperature to stay high (unless it drops one day and spikes the next, which can be indicative of an "implantation dip," meaning the egg has implanted itself into your uterus, in which case woohoo!). When your temperature plummets, it's baby game over.
At 3 a.m. on the day I expected my temperature to drop, I woke up and I couldn't help it: Instead of going back to sleep like a rational person, I stuck a thermometer in my mouth. Still high. I was no longer keeping pregnancy tests in the house, but do you think I went back to sleep and waited until morning? No. I walked to Duane Reade, and I bought a 5-pack of pregnancy tests because they were on sale and by that point I figured I'd need more of them.
I admire women who have the self-control to surprise their husbands with the news that they are pregnant. This is how Phil found out: At 3:30 a.m. I burst sobbing into the bedroom, flipped on the light and thrust a Clearblue stick in his face.
The sonogram at which we saw Eli for the first time was during Hanukkah. The RE was Jewish, and somehow he knew we were Jewish (we give off a vibe, I guess). I remember thinking about how he must have seen thousands of blurry, black-and-white, blinking blob fetuses by then, but he still managed to be amazed by ours: "Ah, see there?" he said, pointing out the screen. "You can see the heart beating already. Marvelous, marvelous."
On our way out the door, he handed us a tiny snapshot and wished us a happy Hanukkah. Then he winked at us. "Ah, but," he said, his eyes twinkling, "the miracle has already occurred."
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
10 years ago this week, I became a runner
In 2004, I decided to run a marathon. This was not the decision of a casual runner aiming for a challenge. It was not the decision of a jogger logging 5Ks and 10Ks who was finally ready to go for a marathon. No, this was the decision of an aggressively unathletic non-runner who had enjoyed a run on exactly one occasion. This was an outlandish decision. This was like the phrase "Go big or go home" was literally invented for my decision to run a marathon.
I decided to train for a marathon using the same method I had employed for every other important event in my life: I turned to a book. It was called The Non-Runner's Guide to Marathon Training, which is kind of like titling something The Non-Football Player's Guide to Winning the Super Bowl or The Non-Writer's Guide to Getting a Pulitzer. My non-runner's guide to marathon training was adamant that if I ran four days per week, in newly-purchased cute matching Adidas outfits, I would be able to finish a marathon and not die.
There are all kinds of moments in life that change you. I remember vividly the exact moment when running changed my life. I was looking in the mirror of my dorm room after the longest run I had ever done (as a non-runner, literally every run I did during marathon training was the longest run I had ever done) and I found myself studying my thighs. Body-type quizzes inform me that I am a "pear," so my thighs are sort of oversized and chunky, but that day suddenly they didn't look chunky; they looked strong.
Why am I taking this walk down marathon memory lane? Because this past weekend I ran the women's-only "Mini" 10K in Central Park (so named because the inaugural 1972 event was christened the Crazylegs Mini Marathon, after the miniskirt -- and also because women weren't recognized as "full" marathon runners back then), which I ran for the first time in 2004, shortly after I made that momentous decision to train for a marathon. I had never run 6.2 miles before, and it was the first race I ever ran.
This year's Mini, then, was my 10-year runnaversary. After dozens of pairs of sneakers, thousands of miles and one pivotal first-date run in Forest Park that led me to my husband and the family we're growing together, I returned to Columbus Circle in my coveted red bib to run the Mini for the 11th year in a row.
Every time I run the Mini I think about all the women who made it possible for me to say, "I am a runner" -- Kathrine Switzer, who was physically accosted by the race director of the Boston Marathon when she became the first woman to enter; Grete Waitz, who literally crapped her pants on her way to winning the New York City Marathon -- and I get emotional. The first Mini had 78 runners. This year there were almost 6,000.
I'll never really be able to explain why I became a runner in the first place, but I know why I stayed one. Happy 10-year runnaversary to me!
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| 2007. This is the first year I could find a photo. |
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| 2009. Check out my sweet flip phone. |
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| 2010. Same visor! |
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| I got to meet Kara Goucher, one of my running idols. Isn't her pregnant belly adorable? |
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| And Paula Radcliffe, another running idol (also with an adorable pregnant belly). |
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| In 2012 I ran the Mini while I was 7.5 months pregnant. And it was my birthday! |
Friday, June 13, 2014
Love is just a shout into the void
When it comes to young adult literature, I've always been an early adopter. I was reading Harry Potter before the word "Muggle" entered the vernacular, and I'm proud to have been one of the first to read The Hunger Games.
So I read The Fault in Our Stars when it was still up-and-coming, before the backlash about how John Green isn't necessarily the second coming of YA literature and before they made a movie.
The Fault in Our Stars is narrated by Hazel, a 16-year-old terminal cancer patient. I've never been a terminal cancer patient, but I've been a 16-year-old girl, and that's how I experienced the book when I read it. In fact, I've always suspected that one of the reasons I love YA literature is because, at heart, I'm still a 16-year-old girl.
I felt that way until I saw The Fault in Our Stars, the movie. Probably because the book is narrated by Hazel, she's who I identified with when I read it: her crush on a boy, her struggles to relate to a friend.
In the movie theater, though, that's not who I focused on. There's a scene that flashes back to a critical moment in the ICU, when Hazel is 13 and close to death. Her mother tearfully assures Hazel that she can let go and that she shouldn't be afraid. Then she collapses back onto Hazel's dad.
"I'm not going to be a mom anymore," she sobs.
Cue the ugly tears. I know it's a hideous cliche to assume that there's something universal about motherhood, especially in the face of tragedy. But at that moment all I could picture was my boy, my Eli, and what it would be like to lose him. This terrible panic gushed through me, right there in the movie theater, as if I had never considered it before.
When you're a new mom, you spend at least 23 hours of every day convinced that you might accidentally kill the baby. You might drop him on his head while trying to cram him into the Baby Bjorn, or wrench off one of his limbs while changing his diaper. You might leave a blanket in his crib or let the stroller roll away or poison him with spoiled breastmilk.
As Eli slowly grew from a baby into a person -- a walking, talking, opinionated person -- those fears eased. Suddenly I was all cool as a mom, like, "Chill out, post-partum depresssion, I got this!" I let him climb ladders on his own at the playground and stick his hands in dirt and eat apple slices I hadn't meticulously dissected into 1-millimeter slivers. He was no longer an infant! We were safe!
But watching Hazel and her mom, I suddenly realized: We're never safe. "It's like I have to worry about him the rest of my life! Anything could happen to him at any time!" I said to Phil, who promptly pointed out that I just turned 31 and my mom still worries about me if I have to take the subway home alone after 9 p.m.
I remember vividly the first time I ever felt like a mother. It wasn't when my newborn son peed on me or when I nursed him to sleep in the rocking chair or even that first moment when we made eye contact and he smiled, like, "Hey, I know you."
It was when Eli was nearly 4 months old and bouncing merrily in his jumperoo after our first family trip to the Queens Zoo, when we turned on the TV news and found out that 20 children had been killed in an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
It was the first time I had ever experienced that kind of tragic news as a mother -- the first time I ever looked at my son, all snuggly and smiley in his jumperoo, and imagined a world without him.
It's been said that becoming a mother is making a decision to have your heart go forever walking outside your body. I've always been a fiercely independent person, even as a mother, and I like my heart right where it is, thanks. But when I came home from the movie I snuck into Eli's room, basically a copycat of that creepy mother from I Love You Forever and unashamed of it. I loomed over my boy in his crib and watched him breathe for a while.
I am not the most sentimental mother out there. I have never been one to say "He's growing too fast!" or "I wish I could keep him a baby forever!" It's a big, deep world and I want him to get out there and explore it. But oh, how beautiful it was just to watch him sleep and believe with all my heart that I could keep him safe forever.
So I read The Fault in Our Stars when it was still up-and-coming, before the backlash about how John Green isn't necessarily the second coming of YA literature and before they made a movie.
The Fault in Our Stars is narrated by Hazel, a 16-year-old terminal cancer patient. I've never been a terminal cancer patient, but I've been a 16-year-old girl, and that's how I experienced the book when I read it. In fact, I've always suspected that one of the reasons I love YA literature is because, at heart, I'm still a 16-year-old girl.
I felt that way until I saw The Fault in Our Stars, the movie. Probably because the book is narrated by Hazel, she's who I identified with when I read it: her crush on a boy, her struggles to relate to a friend.
In the movie theater, though, that's not who I focused on. There's a scene that flashes back to a critical moment in the ICU, when Hazel is 13 and close to death. Her mother tearfully assures Hazel that she can let go and that she shouldn't be afraid. Then she collapses back onto Hazel's dad.
"I'm not going to be a mom anymore," she sobs.
Cue the ugly tears. I know it's a hideous cliche to assume that there's something universal about motherhood, especially in the face of tragedy. But at that moment all I could picture was my boy, my Eli, and what it would be like to lose him. This terrible panic gushed through me, right there in the movie theater, as if I had never considered it before.
When you're a new mom, you spend at least 23 hours of every day convinced that you might accidentally kill the baby. You might drop him on his head while trying to cram him into the Baby Bjorn, or wrench off one of his limbs while changing his diaper. You might leave a blanket in his crib or let the stroller roll away or poison him with spoiled breastmilk.
As Eli slowly grew from a baby into a person -- a walking, talking, opinionated person -- those fears eased. Suddenly I was all cool as a mom, like, "Chill out, post-partum depresssion, I got this!" I let him climb ladders on his own at the playground and stick his hands in dirt and eat apple slices I hadn't meticulously dissected into 1-millimeter slivers. He was no longer an infant! We were safe!
But watching Hazel and her mom, I suddenly realized: We're never safe. "It's like I have to worry about him the rest of my life! Anything could happen to him at any time!" I said to Phil, who promptly pointed out that I just turned 31 and my mom still worries about me if I have to take the subway home alone after 9 p.m.
I remember vividly the first time I ever felt like a mother. It wasn't when my newborn son peed on me or when I nursed him to sleep in the rocking chair or even that first moment when we made eye contact and he smiled, like, "Hey, I know you."
It was when Eli was nearly 4 months old and bouncing merrily in his jumperoo after our first family trip to the Queens Zoo, when we turned on the TV news and found out that 20 children had been killed in an elementary school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
It was the first time I had ever experienced that kind of tragic news as a mother -- the first time I ever looked at my son, all snuggly and smiley in his jumperoo, and imagined a world without him.
It's been said that becoming a mother is making a decision to have your heart go forever walking outside your body. I've always been a fiercely independent person, even as a mother, and I like my heart right where it is, thanks. But when I came home from the movie I snuck into Eli's room, basically a copycat of that creepy mother from I Love You Forever and unashamed of it. I loomed over my boy in his crib and watched him breathe for a while.
I am not the most sentimental mother out there. I have never been one to say "He's growing too fast!" or "I wish I could keep him a baby forever!" It's a big, deep world and I want him to get out there and explore it. But oh, how beautiful it was just to watch him sleep and believe with all my heart that I could keep him safe forever.
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