The next month, Jeff and I went to Illinois where I met his family. On the first day of my menstrual cycle, we told each other for the first time that we loved each other. On the last day of my cycle, I found out I was again pregnant with my brother’s baby. This time it stuck.
I spent nine months focused on one thing: having a healthy baby. I did other things in the nine months — worked a part-time job, finished grad school — but my priority was the baby. I knew the immense guilt I would feel if the baby didn’t come out perfect.
I decreased my medication dosage, stopped eating sliced turkey, started doing something resembling yoga. I tried hard not to ask Jeff for midnight ice cream runs — which was easy, since usually it was him asking. Once I had a specific craving for vegan breakfast sandwiches that were out of delivery range (even though I am not vegan), and he dutifully went out and got two for me.
I went into labor in the waiting room of the swanky Beverly Hills office of Jeff’s company. I was waiting for him so we could go to lunch. His office was right by the hospital, so he came in with me. Around the time I got my first dose of fentanyl and dozed off, he went home to eat lunch, take the dog out, and get my phone charger. He came back, even though the hospital was an hour from home, and waited with me until my brother and his husband arrived from their six-hour drive south.
I delivered a baby boy who was a little sensitive and had to spend some time in the NICU. It was nothing serious — I had been on anxiety medication, and this baby took his food a little gently. Yet even knowing that it was just standard procedure, the guilt of potentially having delivered an unhealthy baby crept up on me until he was released. It was less than 48 hours, and he even got to participate in an adorable NICU Halloween celebration. Now, one and a half years later, he is a happy, healthy, fast-growing boy.
Early on, when he was just a few months old, I visited them at their home in Berkeley and started crying as I watched my brother-in-law give him a bath. It was mundane — my brother-in-law was making up nonsensical songs, splashing around, and doing every silly voice in the book to get a smile. He used to be an actor, and it seemed he found the part he was born for.
