Chapter 32. Square Footage

Coming home after the twenty-week scan felt like we had turned a corner. Suddenly, Jaidan was no longer a possibility — he was a countdown. The abstract had become scheduled. And if the first twenty weeks had flown by, the next twenty felt like they were already lacing up their running shoes.

“There is so much we need to figure out,” I said to Jaime.

Jaime nodded — that small, controlled nod I’ve known for fourteen years. The one he uses when he’s spiraling too, but doesn’t want to be the person who tips us into a full-blown panic. The nod that says, I see the cliff edge. Let’s not run toward it.

“We need to decide whether we’re going to stay here or move. And we need to start touring daycares — except we can’t tour daycares until we know where we’re going to live.”

“That’s right.”

“And we probably need to sign up for one of those prenatal classes,” I added. “I haven’t changed a diaper in my life — have you?”

“I helped my mom when my brother was little,” Jaime said.

“You were eight. Not sure that counts.”

“Fair,” he said. “I think you’re not supposed to use baby powder anymore.”

“See? We don’t know anything. Diapers, feeding, swaddling, sleep routines…”

“You’ve read a few books,” Jaime said. “At least you know there’s such a thing as swaddling.”

“True.”

Books had been multiplying on my nightstand like they, too, were preparing for a baby. One promised the “French secrets to raising a baby.” Another encouraged “data-driven decisions to parenthood,” as if I’d be building a quarterly forecast instead of a human being. I had read three or four of them and somehow felt less equipped, not more — like I had access to all the information but none of the wisdom.

Then there were the moms on TikTok, delivering detailed and often wildly contradictory advice on how to put a baby to sleep, prevent colic, or potty train before their first birthday. Influencers — or influencers-in-waiting — would scroll through their “nursery must-haves,” each item sounding less optional than the last.

“I am obseeeeeeeessed with the Momma Ultra Junior Plus 2000 — seriously moms, if there’s one thing you get for your nursery, let it be this. I know it’s $400, but it’s totally worth it!”

The implication was clear: if you love your child, you will find the $400.

“We don’t even have a nursery,” I said to Jaime. “Let alone a white noise machine or a diaper pail for the nursery.”

“We should do a baby shower,” Jaime said.

“Ugh. Are we seriously going to ask our friends to play those tacky games?”

“No — definitely not that,” he said quickly. “Just a brunch. Or a night out. A way to celebrate with everyone we love.”

“Half of who we love don’t live in this city.”

“But many do.”

We started making a list of everything we needed to do — and potentially buy — over the next twenty weeks. Together, the items felt crushing. But if we could cross them off one by one, maybe the weight would redistribute into something manageable.

I opened the Notes app and began typing:

1. Decide where we are going to live

2. Sign up for daycare or find a nanny

3. Take a prenatal class

4. Plan a baby shower

5. Spend our entire savings on things we won’t need but think we do

6. Figure out parental leave

“We also need to figure out where we’ll stay when we go back to Fayetteville — an Airbnb or something,” Jaime said. “We’ll probably have to be there for two or three weeks.”

7. Find where to stay in Fayetteville

“Anything else?” I asked, already exhausted by a list that was still growing.

“Yes,” Jaime said. He took my phone and typed:

8. Do one last trip as a couple before we become parents.

I looked up.

“Should we be spending money on trips right now?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I have that work trip to Uruguay in March. We have all those miles and hotel points from work. We could probably get you a free ticket. You could tag along. We could go down to Argentina, get a hotel cheap, visit the vineyards.”

“Drink Malbec all day,” I added.

“And eat a good steak,” Jaime said.

It sounded indulgent and irresponsible and absolutely perfect — the kind of trip that would feel impossible once we had a child. Long flights. Lazy wine tastings. Entire afternoons devoted to nothing.

I counted the weeks in my head. End of the second trimester. Still safe to travel.

“Okay,” I said, already mentally packing linen shirts. “If we can get a free flight and some free hotel nights, let’s do it.”

That winter was particularly brutal in New York. One blizzard followed another. Sidewalks stayed buried for weeks, the snow hardening into jagged, gray ice that refused to melt. Boots carved narrow trenches through Manhattan, forcing pedestrians into single file — like a very cold, very impatient pilgrimage.

The transit system seemed to collapse under the weight of it.

“Attention passengers — we are being held at this station momentarily,” the conductor would say through muffled, warbling speakers.

Momentarily often meant twenty minutes. Or forty. Or until morale improved.

Each morning I’d leave for work in snow boots and a parka, earmuffs over my earbuds, hands buried deep in my pockets. I’d clutch a coffee and take small, rationed sips, as if warmth were a limited resource.

On the train, I’d open Zillow and search for two-bedroom apartments. The map would populate with red dots like a rash: $7,500. $8,000. There was one in Chelsea listed at $13,500.

It had one bathroom.

“This city is insane,” I said to Fede one night over drinks.

“There’s always Montclair,” he reminded me.

It was true. The moment I shifted the map west, prices softened. You could get an entire house in New Jersey for the cost of a one-bedroom in New York. A yard. A driveway. Walls that didn’t share plumbing with strangers.

“By the way, I have to go — my train leaves in twenty minutes and if I don’t catch this one, I’ll have to wait two hours,” Fede said.

So there was that.

NJ Transit was famous for its delays and its infrastructure that seemed permanently on the brink of apology. To get to Montclair, you had to catch two trains — one of which ran every two hours on weekends. Miss it, and you were effectively exiled.

“We have to be in the office five days a week,” I said to Jaime later that night. We were walking down the hallway to our building’s laundry room, arms full of clothes and oversized jugs of detergent. “Do we want to be two hours away from Jaidan if something happens and we need to pick him up from daycare?”

“You’re right,” Jaime said, sorting whites from colors with quiet resignation. “And even if nothing happens, that commute will destroy us. We’re going to be sleep deprived already.”

He loaded a machine and closed the door.

“What if we stay in our current apartment?” he suggested. “Babies don’t need that much space. It’s a one-bedroom, but it’s big enough for a crib and a changing table. We could make it work for a while.”

“That’s true,” I said, pouring detergent and turning the dial to warm. “I’m less worried about where Jaidan sleeps and more about where we store everything else. A stroller. A car seat. Bottles. Formula. Diapers…”

All the objects that seemed to multiply in every TikTok nursery tour, as if babies arrived with their own inventory list.

“Ugh, and then there’s this,” I said, my face contorting.

Jaime looked up.

I had opened another washing machine. The drum was coated in wet dog hair, clinging stubbornly to the metal.

“Aren’t you tired of this?” I asked, using a dryer sheet to scrape it off. “Shared machines. We’re going to be washing things daily with a baby.”

Jaime sighed.

He knew I was right. I knew he knew I was right. But standing there in the fluorescent hum of the laundry room, surrounded by other people’s lint and someone’s golden retriever’s fur, it felt like we were trying to solve a Rubik’s cube with oven mitts on.

That night, as we sat on the couch pairing warm socks fresh out of the dryer, I thought about the day we had found this apartment almost six years earlier, in the middle of the pandemic.

Back then, we had been living in a tiny one-bedroom on the Upper West Side. We couldn’t fit nightstands beside the bed. Most of our clothes lived in suitcases under it. Our next-door neighbor serenaded us nightly with showtunes on the piano — enthusiastically, if not skillfully.

The day we walked through this door, we were enamored on the spot. It felt enormous. There were actual closets. The bedroom could fit a king-sized bed. When you closed the front door, you couldn’t hear anyone. And then there was the view — the windows looking straight into Manhattan, the East River slipping beneath the skyline like it belonged to us.

We did the math. Our two nonprofit salaries could barely afford it. We applied anyway, fully aware we didn’t meet the forty-times-the-rent requirement. We crossed our fingers and hoped someone would take a chance on us.

The day we got approved felt like winning the lottery.

When we moved in, we didn’t have enough furniture to fill the place. We sat on bean bags and ate takeout straight from the containers, surrounded by blank walls and possibility. We felt like the luckiest couple in the world.

Six years later, the same apartment was starting to feel smaller. Not because it had shrunk — but because we had grown. Our dreams had expanded beyond its square footage. It felt less like a destination and more like a chapter coming to a close.

I matched the last pair of socks and leaned back against the couch. Manhattan glittered through the window, steady and indifferent.

I took a deep breath.

And for the first time in six years, I let myself imagine what might be waiting on the other side of that door — and whether we were ready to open it.