Unexpectedly Expecting

Finding out that I was pregnant was the most surreal experience I think I've ever gone through.  Having had previous notions that it would just not be that easy to fall pregnant, considering how many girlfriends of mine have had difficulties, how long I'd been on the pill, how old I was (almost ancient in fertility egg years!), I never thought that it would be something that would just 'happen'.  I had gone off the pill in early August 2012, with the idea of giving my body a break.  Mark and I certainly weren't trying for a baby and were assuming that we were being careful when we needed to be, but our calculations were obviously way off!  We were in the process of packing up our lives and moving from London to New York, which was actually postponed by a week due to Hurricane Sandy, so an additional, crazy new element or experience was also not really on the radar.

The whole week prior to discovering we were pregnant, I'd felt totally out of sorts in a weirdly, physically-vulnerable way that I couldn't describe or explain.  I was waking up each morning to get ready for work with a funny feeling in my stomach that felt neither like hunger nor illness, and more like a weird, toxic feeling.  I really thought it must have been a form of alcohol poisoning and that my body was wanting a break, which made a bit of sense considering the amount that I had been drinking out and about with friends and visitors since we had arrived in New York.  Each night that week at home I was pouring myself (as normal!) a glass of wine and I could barely stomach a sip.. my taste buds were so off!  I also wasn't wanting to eat what I normally would during the day at work.  I'd go down to the cafeteria, which totally spoils for choice, and everything that I would normally pile on my plate was making me gag with one look.  Instead of my usual huge boxes of food for lunch, I was having small servings of lettuce and carrot, which was totally weird for my normally over-indulgent appetite.  I was also hitting a wall at about 2-3pm everyday, feeling like I had chronic jet-lag and putting eye drops in my eyes trying to wake up, not knowing what on earth was wrong with me.  My joints and muscles were aching, and each day at the gym I could barely manage a short 20 minute or so run.

My girlfriend, Lynds, and I had made plans to have brunch (lunch in NYC) on the Saturday (8th December).  We met at Isabella's, a lovely restaurant near her in the Upper West Side, and I began telling her how I was so looking forward to a wine with her, but that the whole week prior I'd weirdly not felt like wine or normal food.  She said straight away, "Oh my god, Chicka, you could be pregnant".  I said "Nooo.. Mark and I have been careful, and my cycle is so out of wack anyway, I can't be".  She made me go to the pharmacy on the next block to grab a pregnancy test before we started drinking, so I thought I would just go along with it for a laugh, as Lynds can be quite persistent when she thinks she is on the money.  I asked her to order the bottle of the Muscadet (our fave to drink together) while I was gone.  I came back and started on my wine and she said, "Please go and do it now, for my own conscience", so I went to the loo in the restaurant(!), and the positive result came up straight away.  I immediately thought that there had to be something wrong with the test, and managed to do the 2nd (luckily the packets come with two!), and that came up straight away too.  I got back to the table and was in shock.. absolutely floored!  Lynds was on the phone to Dylan and saw my face as I sat down, and was jumping up and down excitedly while I was shaking my head in shock!  I called Mark, who luckily answered while on his road bike riding downtown, as I had to tell him because Dylan was coming down to join us.  I told Mark that I had some news and he said, "What, you're pregnant?" as a joke!  I told him, "Actually.. I am".  After an "Oh my god, what?" and "I can't believe you're telling me this news over the phone" and me explaining that I was in shock and didn't know how else to tell him because Dylan was joining us, he cut short the bike ride to come up to the UWS and join us.  I could barely speak throughout the meal!

That afternoon we, coincidentally, had been invited to the 1st birthday party of Mark's cousin, Jess', daughter, Ally May.  The party was full of babies running around, crawling, screaming.. a world that we were now soon to be a part of!

Over the following weeks we told our parents and a few close friends, as we wanted to wait until we had a proper scan to make it more official and real.  We also told friends who we were seeing in person, as it was so obvious that something was going on with me not drinking alcohol!  I still had trouble believing it myself, and did two more tests in the following two weeks.  I also didn't know how far along the baby was, with my cycle being so out of sync, so couldn't estimate the due date.

I soon discovered that everything I would do with regard to my pregnancy here in the U.S. would, thankfully, be covered by my private medical insurance through work, which is extremely lucky.  If we were having the baby in the UK, none of it would be covered under the medical insurance through work.  As I'd only enrolled in the private medical on the Friday prior to finding out, I had to wait until the enrolment cycle was processed the following week to make an appointment to see an OB/GYN.  I finally managed to make an appointment at the Columbia Medical Centre near my office on New Years Eve, as that was the next available appointment.  When the appointment date arrived, I thought that it was a meet and greet with my OB/GYN, but not only were my urine and blood tests taken, he did an internal sonogram as well, which was a surprise.  He stuck the camera up and all I saw at first was this lifeless blob and thought to myself "Oh no", but then he moved the camera around and it became more recognisable.  He pointed out the head and I said, "Is it alive??!" and he said, "Yes, yes, it's alive!"  I was suddenly overcome with emotion and started crying when he pointed out the heart, which was going crazy like a butterfly, and then the little arms and legs.  Then it started moving like it was dancing, and I really could not believe that what I was seeing was inside me.  I asked how far along I was and my Dr. said that I was (surprisingly) in line with my last period and around 10 weeks.  At the end of the appointment, he gave me his cell phone and said to call him straight away if an emergency was to crop up.  The sonogram was such a surreal experience, ironically making the whole thing more real.  A crazy end to the year, and an exciting indication of the crazy year to come!

New York Living

Our departure from London in November 2012 was quite a process.  We had begun packing, boxing or binning all of our belongings in the months prior, with most of our things being sent back to Australia for our eventual return to Oz, whenever that may be.  Our farewell was happening on the 26th of October, and we were moving out of our lovely Mews flat in Fulham a week later.  We were lucky to be staying with friends during the transition, as our flight was booked for the 6th of November.  However, due to 'Superstorm Sandy', which was the hurricane hitting the west coast of the US at the time, we decided to delay our flights by a week.  Most of Manhattan was without power, and people were having to pay crazy rates to secure hotel rooms.  We finally left on November 11th, myself with hugely mixed emotions.  I was so sad to be leaving London and my girlfriends after it being home for 10 years, and was extremely sentimental about all of the memories I had and people I would miss.  On the other hand, moving to New York with Mark was going to be the next chapter in our lives, and there was so much to look forward to.

Our first month in NYC was a bit of a whirlwind.  We were in and out of four different places with our suitcases and an ever-increasing number of carry-bags in as many weeks.  Our first place of temporary NYC accommodation was a gorgeous two-bedroom Soho apartment, which we were lucky enough to take up on our arrival due to a friend, Natalie, whom Mark had met on his visits to NYC, being (coincidentally) in London at the time with her husband, Steve.  Nestled in the heart of the trendy Manhattan neighbourhood and literally next door to some of the most exclusive designer stores, it almost gave us a false first impression of what NYC living was going to be like!  However, knowing that Steve's employer paid for the $9k-a-month apartment soon made us realise that our visions were probably more fantasy than reality.  Following our week in Soho, we shifted downtown to the Financial District apartment of our friends whom we had met on honeymoon at Namale in Fiji.  Another lucky coincidence, whereby Richie and Mary had, unfortunately though fortunately for us, been inconvenienced by the hurricane and were spending several weeks back home in Arkansas due to their office in downtown Manhattan being without power.  Luckily their brand new apartment building, which had also been without power in the first week or so following the hurricane, had had its utilities and power restored by the time we took up temporary residence there.  Towards the end of that week, we then moved in to a sublet apartment on the cusp of the West Village and Chelsea, which Mark had found on Air B&B and had actually stayed in previously.  It was in an extremely convenient location for both of us work wise, and gave us another neighbourhood to explore whilst we found something more permanent.

Although NYC was our new home and Mark and I had been heading to our respective offices each day, it surreally felt like we were on some sort of working holiday, as we were living out of our cases and bags and had not unpacked for several weeks.  We had already been looking at apartments with the idea of taking something between 6 and 12 months.  Mark had looked at numerous places, sometimes six in one day, and we were starting to tire of the whole tediously laborious process.  We had several brokers on the look-out for us, one of whom was the broker who had found Natalie and Steve their apartment in Soho.  Aware of this, David, was showing us amazing loft-style apartments in TriBeCa, Soho and Chelsea, which were all in the region of $6-8k a month.  With the heartbreaking broker fee of (typically) 15% of the year's rental amount, we were looking at parting with a substantial amount of money from the outset, which is normal practice for Manhattan rentals.  Add to that the cost of having to buy all of our furniture for these unfurnished Manhattan apartments, and it was really was going to be a sickening exercise.  I was highly offended one morning when David met us in Chelsea to show us a one-bedroom apartment that was being advertised for $8k a month, which was apparently under market rate.  We were meeting with the agent representing the apartment building, who had already shown several prospective tenants the apartment and was confident that it was going to be rented imminently.  David showed up wearing what looked like his pyjamas, a pair of flannelette pants with a jumper over the top and teamed with some laceless Dunlops.  Knowing that we were potentially going to be paying this man an extortionate amount of money for simply rolling out to bed to 'represent' us to the apartment building's agent incensed me somewhat!  Nonetheless, we were eager to find a more permanent place of abode and discussed the required process for us to register our interest in the apartment.  We soon realised that we were to have difficulty being accepted as tenants, and were told that as neither of us had any US rental or credit history, the likelihood of us being accepted by the management rested solely on the leniency of their application process.  We had already had a similar situation, with an apartment that we'd seen in our first week in the Little Italy neighbourhood end in disappointment.  Having seen it one evening and being very excited at the potential of it being our new home, we turned up the next morning to go through the application process, which we had been told by our broker would be easy for us as long as we both had jobs and payslips in relation thereto.  We were told by the apartment building's agent that as neither of us were US citizens and neither of us had US rental or credit history, we would need to either a) pay a year's rental upfront; b) have a US citizen earning 70 times the rental month per year be our guarantor; or c) pay a guarantee company a month's rent to be our guarantor.  It was almost laughable, and so hugely frustrating.

However, in the midst of suffering yet another setback, Mark found another apartment being sublet on Air B&B, which was in the middle of the West Village, in a gorgeous mini Mews-type cul-de-sac called Patchin Place.  The apartment itself looked adorable, and we quickly both the tenant to express our keen interest.  Mark viewed it the next day, and agreed our move-in date with the tenant, which was sooner that anticipated and would result in an rental overlap with the current Air B&B apartment, but necessary if we really wanted it, which we did.  We moved in later that week and, even though it was potentially only going to be our home for two months, we immediately felt more settled.  Dina, the tenant, was taking a break from her corporate life for a number of weeks and heading to Asia on vacation.  She had let us know that while she was gone, we would receive a number of packages in the post that contained DVDs of movies in the current award season, which she would normally be here to watch and vote for.  We quickly became increasingly excited at the mystery packages that we began receiving on a daily basis, and began making our way through the entire collection of movies that were being released in the cinemas in the lead-up to the awards ceremonies.  Les Miserables was the only movie that we had not yet received before Christmas and the one that I so desperately wanted to have popped in the postal tray.  Finally, however, on Boxing Day, we received that also, which made for a nice-post Christmas present from Hollywood!

We were in Patchin Place until late February.  We moved out when I was heading to London for two weeks while Mark was heading to Chile to take part in the Atacama Desert Race with one of his best mates, Richie.  I was going to London to see everyone and would stay with Emma, Richie's wife and also one of my best girlfriends, during that time.  I was lucky to able to work out of my London office, even having my old desk and name tag still there.  My visit to London really hit me emotionally, as I realised how much I'd missed everyone and everything and yet wasn't living there anymore.  I think it was also due to the fact that our time in NYC hadn't really felt like much more than a working holiday, as we had been so unsettled for the several months that we'd been there and we essentially living out of our suitcases for that time.  I was, once again, sad to leave London and slightly apprehensive about getting back to NYC.

As soon as I hopped off the plane, I was cheered up by the sun, an ever-present feature of NYC.  I made my way to our next place of abode, which surprised me happily by being bigger than the picture I had from memory.  We had been fortunate enough to secure another flat for our return to NYC, which had been the flat of one of Mark's good family friends, Dermot.  He was moving out and we were lucky to be able to take it over at the right time, after our previous nightmare experiences of finding a place.  We are now on Hudson Street (still in the West Village) between 10th and Charles, and have some great cafes and restaurants literally on our doorstep.  The weather seems like it has really turned a corner in to Spring, with gorgeous sunny days almost every day.  It's nice finally being unpacked after four or so months, and it's nice to finally feel settled in NYC!

Welcome to my Blog!

So I'm finally starting a blog.. yay!  I've been keen on the idea of getting one up and running for quite some time, which was partly as a result of doing a writing course in London a couple of years ago, but I was always a bit nervous or hesitant for some reason.  I think being the owner of a website and all of its content that is so exposed had seemed like such a daunting prospect!  For a while I've been using Evernote, a brilliant app that was suggested by one of my girlfriends, as a means of journalling some blog-type entries, but hadn't taken the next step to actually 'publish'.

I was finally given the nudge I needed when last week Mark surprised me by telling me he'd bought the domain 'nessypower.com'.  The excitement and novelty of having my own blog took over and we took the time to link it up to Blogger as the host.  I'm not sure to what extent of 'life' I'll be using the blog, but it will at the least be a means for me to indulge my hobby of writing about things relevant to my life as and when.  So here we go!