Chapter 36. Bro, I Can't.

As February came to an end, Jaidan hit a major growth spurt. We went from taking selfies with a carrot, to holding an ear of corn, to making questionable faces with an eggplant—at one point we even considered a witty gender reveal with that one—to a solid spaghetti squash by early March.

As the produce got heavier, so did the realization that we were fast approaching the third trimester. The last sprint, as they say.

Little by little, Marina’s messages started to carry more than just humor.

“I’m like a little kid in the backseat at this point—are we there yet?” she texted, attaching a selfie where her bump seemed to arrive in the frame a full second before the rest of her.

“I feel awful,” I said to Jaime, staring at my phone. “I know she signed up for this, but still… it’s a lot to carry for us.”

“Literally,” Jaime said. “She’s been a champion.”

He was right. We’d hear about the sleepless nights—“Jaidan threw another dance party at 2 a.m.”—or how bending down had turned into a strategic operation—“I may need one of those extendable claws soon”—but she never complained. Not once. She joked. She sent photos. The occasional meme.

There must have been nights when she woke up, reflux burning, a full-blown dance party in her belly, and thought, what the hell did I sign up for?

We never saw that version of it. What we saw was the strength she chose to show us—the humor, the lightness. And maybe that was her way of taking care of us, even as we depended on her for so much.

Some nights, lying awake, that imbalance sat heavily with me—gratitude and guilt, tangled together in a way I couldn’t quite sort out.

Meanwhile, I’d find myself sitting on the edge of our bed in the middle of the night, wide awake, mentally running through our checklist. We had made progress—visited daycares, explored childcare options—but nothing could be crossed off yet. Everything sat in limbo.

Parental leave was the same story. We had done the research, read the policies, filled in what we could—but the actual paperwork couldn’t even be submitted until April.

We were doing something every day, every weekend. And still, it felt like we had nothing to show for it.

“We need to get started on the nursery,” I said one Saturday morning.

“The nursery?” Jaime called back from the kitchen, not looking up. He was deep into what he liked to call his secret chilaquiles recipe—which, judging by the number of pans involved, felt less like breakfast and more like a small-scale production.

“Jaidan is going to sleep in our room for at least five or six months,” he went on. “We won’t need a nursery until…”—he paused, doing the math—“November. Maybe December.”

The apartment smelled like fried tortillas and salsa.

He wasn’t wrong. If we shifted the TV a bit, we could fit a changing mat on top of our dresser. If we pushed the laundry bins into a corner, we could make space for a diaper pail. The bassinet could go right next to the bed.

“Besides,” Jaime added, “we’ll need the extra room for family when they visit.”

I followed his gaze, then looked toward the second bedroom—the door half open, just enough to reveal the situation inside.

The room had quietly turned into an expensive storage unit.

There were framed pictures leaning against the wall, still wrapped in paper we never removed. Stacks of books we had already read but couldn’t quite part with. A half-open box of cables whose purpose had long been forgotten. Random souvenirs from work trips that felt important at the time and impossible to justify now.

It wasn’t a room. It was a holding space for decisions we hadn’t made.

And definitely not the nursery I had imagined.

In my version, we’d go to Home Depot on 14th Street, pick a color, and spend an afternoon painting—our jeans splattered, laughing at how bad we were at cutting clean edges. We’d stay up too late assembling a crib, me reading the instructions out loud for the tenth time while Jaime tried to force two pieces together that clearly didn’t fit.

There would be prints on the walls. A couple of unnecessary stuffed animals. Soft blankets. A mobile that probably served no real purpose other than making the room feel complete.

Jaime, on the other hand, lived firmly in reality.

Painting a rental? A waste—we’d just have to repaint it. Buying a crib months in advance? Inconvenient for guests. Decorative anything? Dust collectors.

“Yes, it looks cute on TikTok,” he’d say. “But baby lungs are fragile. Do you want Jaidan breathing dust?”

“You said it yourself—he won’t even sleep there,” I countered.

“So who are you doing this for?” he asked. “Him, or you?”

He was right.

And I was right.

It had always been like this. I was the dreamer—the one who imagined what could be long before there was anything there to see. He was the grounded one, making sure we didn’t overspend, overprepare, or overreact.

I built us a bigger life, somewhere up in the clouds. He made sure we had a ladder sturdy enough to reach it.

But would a baby throw that balance off? Would exhaustion turn small disagreements into real fights? Would we still meet in the middle—or start pulling in opposite directions?

Eventually, I won him over. Baby steps—pun fully intended.

We started, as everyone does, online—scrolling through baby furniture, opening tab after tab. We reviewed dozens of options, and each time we’d pull out the measuring tape, stretching it across the room, trying to picture how it might all fit. After a few days, we landed on a beautiful set in olive green—a color that felt, for reasons we didn’t quite say out loud, quietly right. It had a seven-drawer dresser that could double as a changing table, and a small crib on wheels that would start compact and expand as the baby grew, eventually becoming a toddler bed. It felt like a good compromise—we could have a crib now, without giving up the space we’d need when family came to stay.

Then one night, as we sat on the couch rewatching one of our comfort shows, I downloaded a baby registry app. I entered the due date, a few details—and within seconds, it generated a list.

At the top, a progress bar.

“To reach one hundred percent,” I read out loud, “we need to add a hundred and sixty-nine products.”

Jaime didn’t even look up. “That’s insane.”

“We’re not opening a daycare,” he added.

I started scrolling.

Bottles? Keep.
Burp cloths? Keep.
A machine to make organic baby food from scratch—as if we were launching a farm-to-table operation for a newborn? Probably not.

After a while, the list blurred into one long stream of things we suddenly felt unequipped to evaluate. Crib, bassinet, pack-and-play—did we need all three? Was one secretly essential and the others a scam?

“We don’t have to buy everything new,” Jaime said. “I’ve seen people giving stuff away on Facebook.”

“Yeah…” I said, still trying to understand why a baby needed so many containers.

After a couple of hours, we closed the app.

The whole thing felt like doomscrolling. The more we clicked, the worse it got.

So that weekend, we decided to go analog—to an actual store, where a real human could answer our questions.

On Saturday, we headed into the city, walked down Sixth Avenue, and found the place—buried, like so many New York stores, in the basement of a building.

As we stepped off the escalator, the scene unfolded all at once.

A woman comparing three shades of beige as if the decision carried long-term consequences. Another couple debating stroller wheels as if they were buying a car.

And then there was us.

We stood out immediately.

A dozen couples moved through the store in a kind of quiet choreography: women in their third trimester, fully engaged, inspecting every detail; men trailing a step behind, half-present, half-checking their phones to see if they could still catch part of the game.

We didn’t fit the script.

A few glances came our way—not hostile, just… confused. Like we’d wandered into the wrong scene and hadn’t realized it yet.

“That’s not the shade of gray I asked for,” one woman said sharply to a salesperson. “Am I going to have to talk to your manager?”

We walked past strollers and car seats while salesmen drifted by without stopping, apparently confident there was no commission to be made from two guys who clearly didn’t belong.

A guy next to us chuckled and said, “Yeah, man, I just carry the stuff. She makes the calls.”

Another one nodded, half-laughing. “Happy wife, happy life.”

Eventually, we found ourselves near a small crowd gathered around a demo.

“Gather around, ladies and gents,” a salesman announced, holding a stroller in one arm and a car seat in the other like he was about to perform a magic trick. “Let me show you our newest travel system.”

He paused for effect.

“Picture this—you’re holding your baby in one arm. You’re at your car. You need to open the trunk. But you also have to fold the stroller. What do you do?”

A guy in a baseball cap jumped in immediately. “Call my wife,” he said, grinning. “Am I right?”

Jaime and I locked eyes—the kind of silent exchange that said, did we just time-travel back to 1955?

The salesman smiled—tight, practiced—and carried on.

With one smooth motion, he pulled a lever. The stroller collapsed neatly into itself.

The crowd clapped. Enthusiastically.

I leaned toward Jaime. “Kill me now,” I whispered. “This is our life now, isn’t it?”

We stayed a few more minutes—Jaime inspecting brands, me slowly inching toward the escalator like it was an emergency exit.

“This is the part I never thought about,” I said as we finally made our way out.

“That you’d spend your weekends shopping for baby gear?” he asked.

“Well, that too,” I said. “But I meant… this whole new social circle”

Jaime glanced at me, already smiling.

“Karens and bros,” I said. “The whole ecosystem. Guys who call their wives ‘the boss’ while double-fisting IPAs. Barbecues where someone says something mildly sexist and everyone just… nods, women included.”

Jaime laughed. “You’re spiraling.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “Parenthood is forcing us into the world we’ve been avoiding. We’re going to be trapped making small talk about grills and Bitcoin while someone calls me ‘bro.”

“My God,” Jaime said. “It’s like middle school all over again.”

“Yes —except this time we know how good it can get when you don’t live in it. Now we know what a queer community looks like.”

“There’ll be plenty of queer parents” Jaime said. “It’s New York City.”

But I didn’t listen.

“Instead, we’ll spend weekends at playdates, birthday parties, sidelines at soccer games making conversation about—what? Interest rates? Fantasy leagues? Elon M—

Splat.

I stopped mid-sentence.

There was a small, precise weight on my shoulder. Not dramatic. Not even loud. Just… final.

For a split second, my brain tried to offer alternatives. Water, maybe. Something from a window or AC unit above.

Then I turned my head.

White pigeon poop. Undeniable.

I stared at it for a second, processing—then burst out laughing.

“And now this,” I said. “Of course. Why not!”

Jaime laughed and gagged at the same time. He opened his bag—wipes, sanitizer, the full emergency kit—and extended it toward me at arm’s length, like he was handling hazardous material.

“Well?” I said. “Help me.”

“I can’t,” he said, recoiling. “This is all you.”

“Oh, come on. Diaper blowouts are coming. You need to learn.”

“I’d rather go back down there and talk about crypto,” he said.

We stood there on the sidewalk, laughing, as the city moved around us like nothing had happened.

And somewhere in the middle of it—the lists, the registry, the perfectly engineered strollers, the pigeon poop—it hit me.

None of it was going to make us ready.

Not the planning. Not the gear. Not the version of control I kept trying to build in that second bedroom. And definitely not trying to learn about crypto.

Maybe that wasn’t the point.

Maybe the point was just this—showing up for it together. Figuring it out as we went. Even when it landed on your shoulder without warning.

Poo and all.