The Baby Has Arrived!

I’ve missed Citizens of Love! I’m so sorry to have neglected you for so long; I hope I haven’t lost you forever. But I do have something to show for my absence… my baby boy, Adam! Weighing in at a whopping 6 lbs 13 oz. and born on a snowy New York City Tuesday morning just before 8 o’clock.

So for those of you who think I was just twiddling my thumbs waiting around for Adam and ignoring my blog in favor of decorating the nursery, let me introduce you to a New York style labor… and just to dismiss in advance that I’m a workaholic fanatic, let me remind you that I voluntarily spent the last four years rambling in the countryside of Japan and had immediately rejected the comparisons of me to friends of friends who were truly workaholic-laboring-through-board-meeting types.

I started my new job in NY when I was already 5 months pregnant. Having hardly even had the time to shake off the last bits of jetlag from my return from Japan, was pretty much thrown into the life of a high-paced city career girl commuter. But I had a lot to prove.

Did I still have my A game after my dally in the country?
Would my experience in Japan really prove to be an asset?
Would my pregnancy hinder my performance, or even my dedication?
Would my new employer regret taking a chance on me?

With all these questions spinning around in my head, I did every thing I could to make sure no one else would ask those same questions about me. So I worked. I worked hard. I offered up the best asset I could offer — my ideas, thoughts, and strategies.

But my strategy left me in a quandary as I was fast approaching my due date… with a big research project to wrap up to culminate in an even bigger presentation to the client, I found myself working late nights and even bringing home work on the weekends. The recent snow storms put us behind and I was catching us up.

So on Monday night I was caught up in making the final adjustments to Tuesday’s presentation. I didn’t think much of the contractions that started in the late evening. I wrote them off as Braxton hicks false labor contractions which I have been having for weeks. But by the time 10:00 was rolling in my coworkers were getting nervous. In the office with me were two single twenty somethings who never hears about what a placenta was before they met me.

… to be continued