Chapter 28. Sizing Up

During the first weeks of pregnancy, Jaidan grew rapidly. So did our questions.

Jaime and I started a small tradition. Every Saturday, we’d shop for the fruit that represented Jaidan’s size and snap a selfie with it. Then we’d send it to Marina as a cute way to share these little moments of growth from a distance.

“Jaidan is now the size of a raspberry,” we announced in week seven.
Then an olive. Then a prune.

Whenever Marina went in for a routine ultrasound, she’d buy a card, tuck the little black-and-white snapshots of Jaidan inside, add a note, and send them to us along with little drawings from her toddler.

“Alex picked this card for you guys — she even signed it!”

We’d check the mailbox with an eagerness usually reserved for tax refunds. When the envelopes arrived, we’d carefully pull out the strip of sonograms and study them like scholars decoding ancient scrolls.

“I think this might be a toe,” I’d say.
“No, wait — is it a nose?”

We had no idea what we were looking at. But one thing we knew for sure: we were the happiest parents-to-be alive.

By Thanksgiving, we were taking selfies with limes and lemons and were just a few weeks shy of a major milestone: the end of the first trimester. Fourteen weeks — the moment when, statistically speaking, you could finally exhale. When the word miscarriage stopped hovering quite so loudly in the background.

Almost on cue, our social media feeds caught up to the fact that we were pregnant. I could practically feel corporate executives salivating as ads flooded our screens, trying to sell us everything under the sun.

Before the pregnancy, Instagram showed us luxurious hotels, fancy restaurants, or sexy underwear. Suddenly, those ads were replaced with bassinets, bottle washers, and aggressively beige onesies. Everything felt like a “must-have or your baby will die.”

An economy of fear — where every product was framed as essential.

“Did you know there’s such a thing as wipe warmers?” I asked Jaime one day, scrolling.

“Why? Is our baby’s butt too refined for a room-temperature wipe?”

The algorithms, too, seemed deeply confused about who we were. We were apparently too involved to be straight men, so the code decided we must be moms. Along with baby products came ads for maternity clothes, breast pumps, and stretch-mark creams. And even when products were meant for both parents, marketers defaulted to branding them “mommy-this” and “mommy-that,” as if fathers were just decorative.

Then Black Friday arrived and turned up the heat.

“If we’re going to need it anyway, we might as well get it now that it’s 30% off, right?” Jaime suggested.

“Isn’t it too soon? Where would we even store all this?” I countered.

Here’s what we learned: a baby is tiny — you could probably fit one in a drawer. But they come with an alarming amount of stuff.

Our one-bedroom apartment was large by New York City standards. But it was not large enough for a stroller and a car seat and a changing table and a “must-have-this” and a “must-have-that.” Even if we Marie Kondo’d half our belongings into oblivion, the math didn’t work.

In the back of my mind, a quiet question began forming:
Would we have to move before the baby arrived?

We had been in New York City for nine years — the first four on the Upper West Side, the rest in Long Island City. We loved our neighborhood. I remain convinced it has the best skyline view in the city. One subway stop from Manhattan without the chaos of Manhattan. Clean streets (by NYC standards), rats more rumor than reality. A beautiful park, local restaurants, a ferry to Brooklyn or Astoria. Families everywhere. Daycares. Playgrounds.

But it had become significantly more expensive over the years. We had been lucky — no rent hikes. The downside? Upgrading to a two-bedroom would mean a painful jump.

So we started exploring.

Manhattan was even more expensive. Brooklyn wasn’t much better. The perimeter of “realistic” began expanding.

“What about upstate?” I asked. “Hudson? Beacon?”

“That’s a ninety-minute commute each way,” Jaime said. “Do you want to be an hour and a half away from Jaidan if there’s an emergency?”

He was right. We’d seen friends do exactly that in 2020 — leave for Connecticut or upstate towns promising they’d be back in the city every weekend. They came twice. Maybe three times. Then their new lives took root.

We looked west, too — considering, God forbid, New Jersey. Aside from Newark Airport, it was largely uncharted territory. Which towns were gay-friendly? Where would we find rainbow flags versus MAGA banners?

Our friend Fede was dating someone in Montclair — a town that had grown after 9/11, drawing New Yorkers who wanted proximity without perceived danger. Montclair had a reputation: liberal, artsy, filled with journalists and creatives.

“Come over next Saturday,” Fede said. “We’ll do brunch. Taylor will show you around.”

When the weekend arrived, we left LIC and headed to Penn Station, trying to imagine this as a commute. The station was chaos in fluorescent lighting. Hundreds of commuters crammed into a waiting area. Announcements blared, indecipherable. Kids zigzagged through luggage. Teenagers shouted over one another. Tourists stood frozen, Google Maps open, looking for Madison Square Garden as if it might move.

The air smelled like someone had microwaved regret.

To get to Montclair, we had to take one train, then transfer to another that only ran every two hours. When the first train was delayed, we spent thirty minutes refreshing apps and recalculating timelines, convinced the suburbs were already rejecting us.

But we made it.

Fede and Taylor picked us up at the station.

“This is where the flea market sets up on Saturdays,” Taylor said as we drove. “And that parking lot turns into a stage during the summer festival.”

Main Street was charming — cute restaurants, small shops, a bookstore with rare finds you’d brag about discovering. It was the kind of town you’d visit for a weekend and come home with a candle and a story.

But could it be home?

Most people owned cars. Most lived in houses. As we drove through quiet residential streets, I tried to picture our day-to-day.

No more hauling groceries from Trader Joe’s, fingers numb and blistered from plastic handles cutting into our skin. Instead, we’d drive to a supermarket and buy oversized cans of olive oil and industrial-sized tomato tins to stack in a pantry. A pantry. The word felt luxurious.

Maybe we’d rent a small house. A room for Jaidan. A small home office. A porch. A backyard. An attic filled with things we’d forget we owned.

We ate at a local restaurant where tables were spaced at reasonable distances — no accidental eavesdropping required. The waiter made eye contact. Smiled. Spent time chatting without performing urgency. It was disorienting.

When the sun set, we hugged Fede and Taylor goodbye and boarded the train back to the city.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“It’s certainly not New York City,” Jaime said.
A pause.
“But I wouldn’t hate living here. Maybe it’s the right move for the life we’re about to begin.”

He might have been right.

We loved New York for reasons that felt less relevant once two became three: Broadway on a whim. Late Friday dinners spanning cuisines and continents. Art galleries. Museums. None of it particularly baby-friendly.

Maybe it was time to embrace a life with soccer practice and kitchen renovations. Where we’d know our neighbors’ names. Where the pace slowed.

My stomach tightened. I couldn’t tell if it was curiosity or grief.

December arrived, and I began looking at the city with nostalgia — prematurely, perhaps. We weren’t moving to California. Even if we ended up in New Jersey, we’d still commute in daily.

Still, the possibility of leaving after nine and a half years — just shy of the ten-year mark that would earn me my unofficial “New Yorker” badge — felt significant.

Bryant Park’s Winter Village appeared. Hot cider. Chocolate stands. The skating rink. Rockefeller’s tree rose again. Saks unveiled its windows. Fifth Avenue became impassable. That part, I would not miss.

And for the first time in years, it snowed in December — coating the city in cinematic charm that felt almost manipulative.

Then week fourteen arrived.

Marina FaceTimed us from the exam room so we could be there with her.

Jaime and I sat close together on the couch, my phone propped against a stack of books on the coffee table so we could both see. I realized I was sitting up straighter than usual, like posture might somehow influence the outcome.

“Hi guys,” Marina said softly. “I’m here.”

Her voice sounded different — steadier, but quieter. Behind her, the room was dim, lit mostly by the glow of a large monitor. Beige walls. A paper-lined exam table. Cabinets with neatly labeled drawers. The low hum of medical equipment filled the pauses.

“Hello!” the doctor said cheerfully as she stepped into frame. “So nice to finally meet you both.”

I felt a reflexive tightening in my chest — bracing for awkwardness, for confusion, for something that would remind us we were unconventional. But there was none of that. Just warmth. Just normal.

“Okay, Marina, if you angle the phone toward the screen, they’ll be able to see.”

The camera shifted, wobbling slightly, then landed on the monitor.

At first, it was disorienting — shades of gray and black, a storm cloud of static. And then suddenly, unmistakably, there was a shape.

“There’s your little one,” the doctor said gently. “See how they’re moving?”

We leaned in closer, as if proximity to the phone would sharpen the image.

“You can see the profile here,” she continued, tracing with her cursor. “That’s the forehead… the nasal bone… there’s the abdomen. And here—” she paused, “—that’s the spine.”

For weeks, Jaidan had been an abstraction. A raspberry. A lime. A statistic. A set of probabilities.

Now there was a head. A curved back. Tiny limbs shifting in real time.

And then we saw it — the flicker in the middle of the chest.

The heartbeat.

I reached for Jaime’s hand without looking at him. He was already reaching for mine.

Our baby wasn’t a blur anymore. It wasn’t a guess or a projection or a hopeful metaphor. It was a small, determined body, moving.

“Everything looks great,” the doctor said.

I hadn’t realized how much fear had been living just under the surface until I felt it loosen its grip. I exhaled so deeply it almost felt theatrical.

From off screen, Marina couldn’t contain herself. “Yaaay!”

We laughed too — relief spilling out in awkward, joyful bursts.

“The next big milestone is the anatomy scan at twenty weeks,” the doctor explained. “It’s longer. We go body part by body part. That’s usually when you can determine the sex. If you’re able, it’s a nice one to attend in person.”

In person.

After we hung up, the apartment felt very quiet.

I did the math automatically. Twenty weeks. Mid-January.

“It would be really nice to be there,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jaime nodded. “And it would give us a chance to see Fayetteville again. Feel it out. See where we’d stay. What we’d need.”

What we’d need.

The year was winding down. Holiday lights blinked in our windows. The fruit on our kitchen counter kept getting bigger each week — lemon, apple, pear — as if nature itself were escalating the metaphor.

For months, we had been sizing up Jaidan. Measuring growth in produce. Tracking inches and ounces on apps. Watching the shape sharpen on a grainy screen.

At the same time, we were sizing up everything else — apartments, towns, commutes, versions of ourselves.

Was our one-bedroom big enough?
Was New York big enough?
Were we?

The end of the year has a way of making everything feel transitional, like life is quietly packing boxes while you’re distracted by holiday music.

Somewhere between the ultrasound flicker and the Christmas lights, I started to sense it: our new life wasn’t some abstract future anymore. It was around the corner. Expanding. Taking up space.

Jaidan was growing.

And so were we.

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