In those two jobs, there was no joy, no satisfaction. And if my soul doesn’t feel good at the end of the day, then no amount of referrals, or contracts, or retainers is worth the personal cost. I’d always known that, but I’d allowed myself to ignore it in those two cases. I swore never to do that again.
Mentally those clients exhausted me, but physically I felt great right up to the end of my pregnancy. The doctor told me I’d definitely go late, so I kept on working all day, and then I’d go to the gym to speed-walk on the treadmill. I didn’t think anything of it when pain started to climb up my back one evening while I trotted along. After all, labor was in your uterus, right? Everyone knew that.
After working out I went to the movies with Deanna, and when it was over, we walked down the street and I told her that I was having these funky feelings, like something was about to fall out of my vagina. Deanna said, “Okay, we’re getting you in a taxi right now.” I actually tried to insist on taking the subway home, but she said, “Jen, enough with the tough act.” Then she told me that if I didn’t get in a taxi, she’d call Bennett. So, fine, I took the taxi. At dinner that night, I kept alternating which butt cheek I sat on, because the pain was still shooting up both sides of my back.
After dinner I went back to working on the seating arrangements for my event. I did call a girlfriend who’d had a baby and described the pain. She said it was probably Braxton Hicks. I said, “Who kicks?” I was not kidding—I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. She told me it was false labor pains. That made sense to me.
It was now Sunday night of Presidents’ Day weekend, and a huge snowstorm had rolled into the city. It seemed ridiculous to call my doctor now—my girlfriend had assured me it was just false labor, my doctor had assured me I’d go late, and I probably wouldn’t be able to reach him anyway. By this point I was peeing or pooping every hour, and the waves of pain were hitting me every five minutes, then every thirty minutes—there was no regularity. Still I refused to call the doctor. I had a high threshold for pain, I told myself; I’m no hysteric. What would the doctor do, anyway? Most likely he’d just be annoyed that I’d disturbed his weekend, and then he’d tell me I was in false labor and to go back to bed.
So I called my girlfriend again. She asked me if I was timing the pain, and I told her that it was all over the place. She said I should just drink a lot of water. So I did.
Then I was still in huge amounts of pain, and on top of it I had to pee every minute, but it hurt to sit on the toilet.
I called my girlfriend again. She said, Take a bath, it will relax you. I took a bath, and I did feel a little bit better.
Not long after, the pain was just as strong and I was starting to get a little panicked, so my girlfriend suggested I drink a glass of wine because it relaxed the uterus. I remember my own doctor suggesting this to me after my amnio, and considering it was my due date, this baby was cooked. A little wine certainly wouldn’t hurt the baby, and it would definitely help to keep me calm. So I drank half a glass of wine.
Now I was waterlogged and slightly buzzed on top of it, which definitely didn’t help with the constant peeing. And I was still in pain.
Finally I decided to call the doctor, and of course I got the service. When the on-call doctor called me back, he sounded none too happy. He asked me what my doctor had said the last time he’d examined me, two days before. I told him the doctor had said that my cervix was closed. The on-call doctor said, “Well, then, your cervix is closed.” He asked me if the pain was regular, and I told him it wasn’t. Then he said, “Look, it’s the middle of the night, there’s a snowstorm, and I’m not your doctor. You can either go to the ER now, or you can wait until the morning and call your regular doctor.”
A normal person would wonder where my husband was during all of this, and the answer is that he was asleep. I had been so sure earlier on in the evening that I was in false labor, and I’d just refused to believe it could be anything else. So, I reasoned, what could Bennett do except pat me on the shoulder and tell me I’d be fine? I couldn’t sleep myself, so I’d shooed him off to bed with the assurance that I’d be in soon.
After I hung up with the incredibly mean on-call doctor, I went to the bathroom—again—and out came something that I can only describe as an elephant booger. I rushed in, hysterical, and poked Bennett awake, screaming, “What the hell is this thing that just came out of me?” and at two in the morning we both Googled and turned up the answer (it was the mucus plug, such a lovely name), and found out that it can come out anywhere between ten and two days prior to birth. Okay, so I was going to have a baby in a few days. We knew that already. Bennett said he’d go get the car so it would be downstairs and ready when we went to the doctor’s office in the morning.
That reassured me for a little bit, but by the time Bennett got back from his trip to get the car, I was babbling. “Something is happening,” I kept saying. “Something is happening.”
Finally, at 6:30 a.m., I emerged from the bathroom like a caricature of a woman in labor—hair askew, blotchy face streaked with sweat, bulging eyes, my hands braced on either side of the doorframe. I was in horrible pain coming in waves every two minutes, three minutes, five minutes. “SOMETHING IS HAPPENING,” I yelled to Bennett.
At 7:00 a.m. we were bouncing along the snowy Manhattan streets, headed to the hospital. On the way, I called the doula I’d hired. Why hadn’t I called her before? Because still, in my mind, I didn’t believe that I was in labor. The really insane thing is that I didn’t even have my hospital bag with me. I was headed to the hospital without my bag—even after the night I’d just had, that’s how convinced I was that I wasn’t in labor. I got the doula on the phone and said, “Hi, I wanted you to know, just kinda FYI, that I’m on the way to the hospital, and I’m sure I’m fine, I’m just feeling a little nauseated.”
The doula said, “What do you mean, you feel nauseated? Have you gone to the bathroom?”
I told her that I’d been doing almost nothing but going to the bathroom all night.
The doula said, “Honey, you’re in labor. Did you call Dr. Steve?”
I explained the situation to her, and she asked me if I wanted her to meet me at the hospital. I said, No, she shouldn’t do anything like that yet—I’d call her from the hospital.
While Bennett parked the car, I was admitted to trauma. I still remember the nurse who examined me, and how I babbled a steady stream of nonsense about how I was sure it was nothing, and my doctor had told me I’d go late, and on and on. The nurse kept quietly examining me, and then she said, “You’re eight-point-five centimeters dilated. You’re having this baby now.”
I burst into tears. I wasn’t crying because I was having my baby. I was crying because it finally hit me that I’d been in labor all freaking night, by myself, with no drugs. And on top of it, I was an event planner who had left her beautifully packed hospital bag at home.
By the time the doctor came, I was already bearing down. He said, “Okay, on three I want you to push.” I remember I actually asked him to clarify what he wanted me to do—did he mean one, two, push, or did he mean one, two, three, and then push. Maybe I would have known what to do if I’d read one of those books I’d thrown away, but oh well.
Then it was one, two, three pushes and my baby girl Blaise was born.
I had no bag, no perfectly planned-out wardrobe for the hospital, no stuffed animal for Blaise’s bassinette or barrettes for my hair. It was just me, and Bennett, and Blaise—which of course was all we really needed.
PART V
Faith
Blame no one.
Forgive everyone.
Thank someone.
—J.P.G.
Chapter Fifteen
Class Parent
Marrying Bennett, then becoming pregnant, and then having Blaise—all those things opened me up, layer by layer. Now the little bud inside of me was
in full flower. For certain, the first and most important step had been accepting Bennett into my life as a full partner. I had never before been in a relationship where there was so much give-and-take. Initially it was terrifying, but over time I shocked even myself with how naturally I was able to mesh my hopes and desires with his.
I had lived on the Upper East Side for my whole life in New York, and everyone I knew was there. Bennett had moved to the Flatiron area before we married. After we got married, he was ready for a change—he wanted to move farther downtown. I decided that he was as entitled as I was to a fresh start, and if it would make him happy to move downtown, then we would. But I was nervous. We were starting our family, and my sister Rachel, who had already had my one-year-old niece Lila, lived around the corner, as well as every one of my “go-to” girls. Bennett, however, had his heart set on Tribeca.
At this point we were a few years past 9/11, but Tribeca was still only a twinkle of what it is today, and to me it was a triangular-shaped no-man’s-land. Moving to Tribeca might as well have been moving to another country. Sure, I’d rented out spaces for weddings and parties in that part of town, but those were in converted warehouses. The first time we went down there to look at apartments, I said to Bennett, “Where are all the people?” I could swear I saw tumbleweeds rolling down the streets, it felt so desolate. I’d intellectually agreed to move there, but clearly, in my heart, I had my doubts, and the way I expressed them was by being incapable of making a decision about an apartment. Luckily our Realtor was my friend Tracie—anyone else would have fired me as a client. We almost got to contract on at least three apartments, but each time I would flip out before we signed.
By the time I was eight months pregnant with Blaise, we were living in a sublet because Bennett had sold his apartment. This small one-bedroom rental was not the home I had imagined bringing my baby into, and Bennett was despairing that I’d ever really agree to move.
One evening Bennett and I were invited to a dinner party, but I wasn’t feeling well, so I sent him without me. I was in our sublet with my feet up when I got a call from Tracie that she had an apartment she wanted me to see right away. It was for sale by the owner, and it wouldn’t last. The second I walked into the apartment, it felt like home. I loved it. I asked the owner what it would take to buy it. His response was, “Full ask.” So I said, “Okay, it’s a deal,” and we shook hands. I hadn’t even called Bennett, but somehow I wasn’t worried. I got him on the phone at the dinner party and said, “Honey, I just bought an apartment, so maybe you should come see it.” He was so relieved that I’d finally made a decision that he didn’t even take a pause. He just said, “Well, allrighty then!”
At eight and a half months pregnant, the night before we moved, I panicked. I called my sister Rachel in tears, terrified that I’d made a huge mistake, and would be doomed to live miserably in a wasteland forever. When I got off the phone, only slightly calmer, Bennett would have been well within his rights to be completely fed up with me. But he wasn’t, and we made a deal: I would give it twelve months in Tribeca, and if I still hated it, then we could move back to the Upper East Side. No questions asked. I breathed a sigh of relief. That’s all I’d needed—an escape hatch. I dried my tears, and we moved into our new apartment the next day.
Once again what got us through a tough situation was that I trusted Bennett, and he trusted me. It might take me a while—and I might torture him a little bit along the way—but with Bennett, I always came around in the end.
When we moved to Tribeca, I knew one person, Tracie. For a social person like me, it wasn’t just unnerving, it was traumatic. I wasn’t convinced that any of my friends even knew how to get to Tribeca, much less that they would come see us there. It was all irrational fear, but the way I dealt with such panic was to go to my fix-it place. I set about making new friends. Some people might do that one person at a time, but not me. I’d always thrived on knowing all kinds of people and mixing them together. Invariably when I planned a dinner party, it would start out with six guests and end up with fifty. Over the years I had denied myself so many things, but I never denied myself friends; I binged on them.
So even before we moved, I had started asking people I knew if they knew any women living in Tribeca. By the time we got downtown, I’d gathered dozens of names and e-mails. I invited them all to a big party and encouraged them to bring their friends. Finally I had seventy-five women in attendance. Bennett thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. Instead of a “Bring a Man for Jen Party,” it was a “Bring a Friend for Jen Party.”
For those last few weeks before Blaise was born, I was like a little girl at her first day of kindergarten—a little nervous, and a lot hopeful. I’d see another pregnant woman in a shop or a restaurant, and I’d strike up a conversation (Oh my God, you’re pregnant? I’m pregnant, too. Let’s be friends!). After Blaise was born, my whole life opened up even more. It was incredible to me that I could be hopelessly, unconditionally in love with this tiny stranger. Bennett would just smile when he caught me standing over her crib, looking at her in awe that she existed—and that we had created her. I wanted to be her safe place in this world and always to support her emotionally and physically.
Having my baby changed how I wanted to live my own life. I was like the Grinch in the Dr. Seuss story—my heart grew three sizes that day. I learned that my capacity for love was truly endless, and I got hungry for it. I wanted more, and more, and more.
I joined a new kids’ gym that had just opened, and they had an opening-night party for the moms. I didn’t know a soul, so I asked three women sitting at a table if I could join them. Jennifer, Michelle, and Daniela became my three new mommy friends, and we’ve stayed friends to this day. I met my friend Haley when we were both walking strollers down the street. She commented on some part of my stroller that she needed, and asked where I got it. I told her that she could have mine, because I was done with it. She stared at me and said, “But you don’t even know me.” And I said, “So what, you live a block away, and now I do.”
Now I had a whole group of new mom friends, and I decided to form a really casual new mothers’ group in my apartment. When word got out, I started getting calls from other women asking if they could “join my class, too.” I’d just laugh—me conduct a class? As if. I was the woman who didn’t even know she was in labor until she’d already started to push. But the more the merrier and our group got bigger and bigger.
Something about the insanity and vulnerability of new motherhood allowed me to relate to other women who were in the same situation, and that in turn made me want to open up to them. While in the past I’d felt that the attack was something to hide except in very select company, I now found myself not wanting to hold it back quite so much. I still wouldn’t share my history with just anyone, but for the first time I wanted the new friends that I made to know the real me—all of me.
We’d only been in Tribeca a few months when I decided to move my company’s offices just two blocks away. When Bennett heard, he said, “Well, I guess this means we’re staying.”
Moving my office nearby was just a natural progression. I realized I didn’t want to spend an hour commuting each day instead of being with my family. I wanted to be able to run home at lunch and nurse Blaise, or take her to a doctor’s appointment. And I wanted all the women in my office to have the same options. I’d always felt strongly about creating a company that I’d actually want to work for, and now I truly had it.
I knew that a flexible schedule was essential if I was going to be the kind of parent that I wanted to be. I never wanted to feel that I couldn’t be involved in Blaise’s school or life because it was too hard to balance it with work. I never wanted to have to say no to anything that was important to me. So at a time when it might have been advisable for me to take on less, I took on more. I heard another mom complaining that there was only one preschool in Tribeca and not enough space for all the k
ids who needed it. She said she was working on the idea of starting a new school. I didn’t even blink before volunteering to help—this was my new community, my new life, and I was ready to roll up my sleeves and go to work.
Naturally I struggle with guilt, but as my husband says: guilt is a wasted emotion. On the days I feel like I’m failing at everything, I take a deep breath and say, I’m only one human being, and I’m doing the best that I can. I know I’m a better mother/wife/friend because I work. After all, Save the Date® was my first baby, and what parent can desert any of their children? They all have to share your love.
One day when Blaise was about five and she had a day off from school, I was rushing out of the apartment to an important meeting. She looked at me and cried, “Mommy, why are you going to work?” She’d never said anything like that before, and I’m sure mothers everywhere can relate to the little catch in your heart when your child looks at you with her doe eyes and asks such a question.
I could have told Blaise that I was going to work to pay the bills, or to buy the new toys she wanted, but that’s not the way I wanted her to think of my work—or hers, someday. So I looked at her, and I said, “Because I love it. The same way you go to the playground because you love it.” And that’s the message I always want her to get from me. I do what I do because I love it, and I’m proud of the environment I’ve created for other working women as well. In the process, I’ve struck a balance in my life, and I want the same thing for her.
I’d been working with nonprofit clients for a while because I believed in their causes, but after Blaise was born, I started getting involved in a new way. One year a friend invited me to a charity event for Women for Women. This organization works in war-ravaged countries—Rwanda, Afghanistan, the Congo, among others—and offers local women training and support in the launch of their own businesses. Not only do they help one woman as a result, but they strengthen entire communities. This deeply resonated with me in so many ways, and I felt incredible empathy for these women who had been through terrible traumas in their lives, and who now wanted to build something beautiful and resilient out of the ashes of their past.
I Never Promised You a Goodie Bag Page 17