A Bump Grows in Brooklyn

This time last year, A + I were roaming the streets of Paris, stuffing ourself with croissants and butter every morning, stumbling home from this uber chic New Yorker-owned speakeasy every evening and falling into a bed we said was filled with evil marshmallow people who held us sleepy hostage for a few hours every afternoon. We were on our postponed honeymoon, starry-eyed, drunk with love (and countless glasses of rosé), and just taking our first tentative steps towards becoming parents.

Halfway through our trip, I found myself crying in our Marais vacation rental, frozen with fear that we would not be able to conceive. Though we’d only been trying for a few months, I became convinced that we’d waited too long, that the supposed uber-fertility my doctors had cautioned me about in my youth was a bizarre clerical error, that my body was playing a cruel trick on me after FINALLY getting healthy and strong. I knew that I’d wanted to be a mother for a long time, but I was never aware of just how much until I found myself on that kitchen floor with mascara running down my cheeks.

A year later, and I feel happier and luckier than I would have ever imagined, watching this little person sparkle and smile, knowing the best is yet to come.

When I look at Max’s stroller, I imagine the Batmobile shielding itself with rolling armor upon Batman’s command. When I look at him crying, I imagine the tiny Venus fly trap mouths from ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ singing ‘Mean Green Mutha from Outer Space.’ More proof that I am most assuredly a product of my youth.

A: So what do you want to eat for dinner?
E: What I want to eat is a nap.

Yeah. I’d eat the hell out of a nap.

After a day of solid crying due to a bad case of colic, a clogged milk duct that has me in agony (and suffering from a bad case of melonboob) and several pre-feeding tantrums, the boy gave me the best goodnight ever: four giddy, gummy smiles. Funny, how the good can sweeten a whole four layer poopcake.

* Link goes to ACTUAL melonboobs. But not the kind you fondle, pervs. It’s just a pretty brilliant art installation at a restaurant in Hanoi.

** And for the record, my melons are nowhere near as pendulous. Yet.

Boy on one side, pump on the other, all whilst applying eyeliner single -handedly. Now THAT’S fierce.

I may grimace every time I catch a glimpse of myself in the gym mirror, but it just makes me push harder to get back into beast mode. Next Saturday, I start training again and couldn’t be more excited to conquer the challenges ahead.