Ramblings: Luna Marlena's Birth Story

Years and years ago, when I was a mere teenager I told myself that one day I would have a daughter and would call her Luna. In the years that followed I did not have a daughter, but did acquire a tiny little cat that I called Luna and who stayed with me for many years until she passed away from old age. And then I got pregnant and at 21 weeks we found out I was expecting a little girl. C. must have read a blog post that I had written one day in which I mentioned the above story, and told me that we should name our daughter Luna. Marlena (pronounced Mar-lay-na), is a nod towards Marlene Dietrich, my favourite actress and an inspiration. I love names that end in “a”. And we obviously chose right because her name fits her perfectly, although she has also kept the nickname of Munchie as it has followed her out of the womb and into our arms…

Luna Marlena was born on April 9th of this year, 8 days after her due date. Even though a premature birth was always something that I had worried about in the back of my mind all throughout the pregnancy, I had a gut feeling that she would not be in a rush to get out and would probably make it right up until they scheduled to induce me. Her due date of April 1st came and went and I was scheduled to be induced on April 8th. I had mixed feelings about being induced, and really wanted her to come naturally, but it was hospital policy to not let anyone go for longer than 41 weeks. And when I got to 41 weeks I was ready to give birth! I had some false labour contractions three days before, but nothing else, and when I woke up on April 8th at 6am I knew that she would finally be born within the next 40 hours as I was going to be induced that morning. Of course it all wasn’t going to be THAT simple, as my waters broke just before I got into the shower… Hence the fact that there was no time to take a photo of me at 41 weeks as everything became a little more urgent at that point! Seeing as I had been having what I thought were Braxton Hicks contractions all weekend (based on what the doctor had said on the Friday at the hospital after my baby stress test), I had no idea if labour was going to be long or short now that my waters had broken. We got stuck in traffic and it took us 90 minutes to get from Flushing to Fort Greene. I remained somewhat calm – to be honest I was more worried about making a mess in the cab and being late for the 8am appointment than being in pain (I am British after all). Thankfully little Munchie decided she was in no real hurry to make an appearance, so I got settled in at the hospital and checked out by the doctor on duty. 

The idea at that point was to wait and see if the contractions I was having were getting stronger or not before giving me any type of induction medication. I had a birth plan, but it really wasn’t set in stone – I was only intent on making sure I had the option for an epidural if I felt like it, but that I had the choice to not have any pain medication if I didn’t, that I could breastfeed exclusively without having to worry about anyone feeding my daughter formula if I had to have a c-section, and lastly, that I would only have a c-section of absolutely necessary. To be honest I had no idea what to expect so wasn’t going to put any demands on myself or on my child. Through-out my pregnancy I had always hovered between being worried about everything and just listening to my body and knowing that everything would be OK if I were healthy and happy. I was right. While pregnancy was all too real, especially when I started really showing, the actual idea of child birth was totally surreal. You mean a baby was going to come out of me? I know it’s been done a million times before, but not to me. So it was basically a “let’s see what happens when it happens” part of my life, and as soon as my waters broke I was excited, scared and actually composed. I had been waiting so long to meet my daughter and it was finally time (and the acid reflux towards the end of my pregnancy was driving me insane).

Unfortunately, even though I was having contractions they weren’t really doing anything and my cervix was literally still closed a few hours after I was admitted. Due to the fact that I had lost all of the amniotic fluid that morning I wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital bed (not even to go to the toilet which became really annoying. Why would I, extremely healthy person, need to use a bedpan?! UGH). The doctors decided to give me Pitocin to speed up the contractions and make them more affective as well as antibiotics to ensure that there was no risk of infection to the baby. Three hours later and I was only 1cm in and the contractions were getting a lot stronger. I was also exhausted and hungry (make that starving, all I had managed to eat that morning was a small bowl of cereal). They won’t let you eat or drink anything just in case you have to be rushed into surgery – even when you plead with them. I wasn’t even allowed to suck on boiled sweets. Only ice chips… By 3pm or so all I wanted to do was get some sleep and not have to use a bedpan so I decided to go for the epidural (and I am really glad I did for this birth, I think I may opt out with the next one though, more on that later). The anesthesiologist was lovely and took her time putting the epidural in to ensure that it worked, and I understood why they asked you to do it sooner rather than later – it takes about 30 minutes to do and you need to remain super still, which is quite impossible when you are having contractions every 5 minutes. By 4 pm my lower body was completely numb and although I could feel the pressure of the contractions, the pain completely disappeared. As did any ability to move my legs – I needed to ask C and my mum to help me move if I needed to change positions. It was around this point that I realised even more than I ever had before the depths of my love for both C and my mother – there was no one else that I would have been comfortable with having there all the way through, and at the same time couldn’t imagine doing it without them there. I knew at that point that this is where you realize there is no room for modesty in childbirth and that you don’t really care anyway – for someone who hates people even hearing me pee it still shocks me today how I just didn’t care what I looked like during labour – all that mattered was that I was able to give birth to a healthy and happy little girl and that my boyfriend was there to witness and live through the whole thing.

My first nurse was lovely – she came to check on us every hour on the dot, was really friendly and answered all of my questions. As the baby was still faring well and had a healthy heartbeat they just continued to give me Pitocin, antibiotics and check on progress every 4 hours. I managed to doze off a little, as did my mum and C in their uncomfortable chairs. My lovely, wonderful M. came to visit and smuggled hard candy into the room so that I could try to alleviate the heartburn I was feeling, but by this point I started to feel really woozy and completely out of it. My day time nurse was replaced by the evening nurse, who wasn’t as kind or friendly, and didn’t come in nearly as much. I knew that they had monitors at the nurses’ station anyway, so I wasn’t too worried about anything bad happening… But it would still have been nice to have someone who appeared to actually give a damn! By 7pm I still wasn’t even at 2cm and I started to worry that I was never going to be able to give birth naturally. The doctors reassured me that I still had a lot of time, that everything was going OK and that I should relax, so I tried to do just that. Not easy when you have a bunch of wires coming out of your arm and back, no feeling in your lower body and are then told to wear the oxygen mask, even though your acid reflux was so bad you wanted to vomit. The nurse also started to worry me because she said the oxygen was for the baby – making me immediately think that the baby didn’t have enough oxygen! All this sounds just delightful, I know… It wasn’t that bad, just very strange for me, seeing as the last time I had been in hospital was for my own birth. I was just very happy that I was in the best hands if anything happened to go wrong, and was honestly not expecting to feel comfortable at all… It all still felt very surreal. Kind of like an out of body experience to be honest!

By 11pm when the doctor came back I was worried that there wouldn’t be a change yet again, but I had jumped to 8cm! The doctor seemed pleased, but said he would come back to check up on me around 2am, and told me to sleep. I tried, but I couldn’t sleep – not with knowing that my little one would be born at some point that night! The doctor also told me that severe acid reflux is a sign of imminent labour, therefore a good sign, and to not worry about it. I’m sure that if they had let me eat it would have been better though!!! Argh! More dozing… More watching the movies that were playing on the TV (I honestly can’t really remember what the movies were, and I couldn’t really focus on anything at this point, not on the TV, not on the magazines or the books I had, and definitely not on any type of meaningful conversation!). I’m so glad that C and my mum were there, even though they were probably exhausted and bored. It was reassuring that they could be my voice if for any reason I couldn’t use mine anymore, and that they were there to hold me when I felt awful and in pain. 

Just after 2pm another doctor came in to check me, said that I was ready and told me how to push and then disappeared. At this point I was wide awake and ready – but had no idea if I was supposed to start pushing immediately, or wait for someone to come and assist me… I asked the nurse that question when she came in to change the heartbeat monitor paper and she mumbled that I should be pushing and walked out again. At this point I started getting a little distressed and teary – what, was I supposed to push my baby out by myself?? What was the point of being in hospital?? My mum called the nurse back and she finally transformed herself from zombie into a wonderful human being and stayed with me, helping me to practice my pushing technique. The problem with the epidural is that it’s sometimes hard to determine when the contraction starts so you don’t always know when to push. You have to really focus, and if this is your first child you have nothing to compare it to. The woman in the room in front of me was obviously having a difficult labour as I could hear people going in and out for ages, and the woman in the room behind me had been howling in pain for hours, so I guessed that the night doctors weren’t ready for me to give birth right at that moment as they were busy, hence the fact that nobody actually told me that it was really time (even though I was ready?!).

And then, around 3:15am, doctors and nurses poured into my room and started setting everything up. My bed suddenly became a labour chair, a huge light beamed down on me and three doctors crowded around, getting ready to deliver my daughter. The head doctor gave me a lovely speech on how having an epidural is a great way to control the pushing and therefore helps them to preserve to perineal area, which is always their aim (yeah… well that backfired completely, but no one needs to read about those kind of details) – and then handed the reigns over to the student and the intern. I started to push, and felt so strange doing it, C and my mum holding my arms on each side. I had a feeling I was never going to be able to do it, that the baby would get stuck – even though they kept telling me that the head was right there… Then all of a sudden I heard a short baby cry, and realised that my daughter was already crying while she was still mostly inside me, and in shock pushed her out in one go, head, shoulders and the rest of her body… She was already howling while C cut the umbilical cord and was whisked over to be measured and weighed and tested and cleaned and wrapped up. I was in shock – crying and laughing and not really believing that I had just delivered a baby, my own baby. My eyes still tear up when I think about how amazing that moment was, there is nothing in the world to compare it to. All I wanted was to cuddle my baby for the rest of time, but the doctors spent about 45 minutes fixing what they had to fix (and this is why I am glad I had the epidural), so C got to cuddle her, until one of the nurses said that they needed to take her to the nursery for more tests and to be cleaned properly. Thankfully I got to cuddle her for a few minutes before she was taken away. I was still pretty much in shock at that point – while the whole experience, from losing my waters less than 24 hours before to seeing her little body be pulled from me, still seemed surreal, all of a sudden everything was very, very real. The past 10 months had all culminated into this very moment: the birth of my daughter.

Luna Marlena was born at 4:13am on April 9th, 2014 at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, weighing 7lbs 13oz, and measuring 18 inches, perfectly healthy and with a good strong pair of lungs and a full head of hair – looking like the spitting image of her dad (with my hair, hands and feet). A pure beauty. I was already in love with her from the moment I found out I was pregnant, so there was no exact moment that I felt like I fell in love, it was more like a feeling of not knowing how to express or communicate all the love that I felt once I had given birth to her. I felt completely gobsmacked and overwhelmed, and a little confused too – I didn’t know why they were taking so long to fix me and why I couldn’t go and join my baby immediately. We were reunited again an hour later in a room in the post partum ward, Luna fast asleep, and me unable to sleep because all I could do was stare at her beautiful little face and hold her tight in my arms. Even today, a little over a month later I still hold her tight and stare at her for hours, still amazed at how C and I created this perfect little human being who already has a strong character and who rules this house like no other.

It’s as if all I have done in my life was preparation for the next stage: life with the loves of my life, my daughter and my boyfriend, and maybe one day with another little blessing…

Ramblings: Setting up a new home and those last few weeks

Ah it has all been a bit of a whirlwind these past few weeks, and I have been getting so tired that between work, the commute and trying to make our new apartment into a real home before the baby gets here I haven't had a moment to really write anything down. Although there is a lot to be said... I feel like so much has happened and I need to record it now before I forget due to baby brain, or have even less time on my hands! I know full well that the moment the baby gets here I will hardly have time to sleep let alone anything else!

Between the endless (or what seems to be that way) snowstorms and icy winter days and nights we managed to move a lot of our belongings from the old apartment on Troutman St in Brookyn to the new place in Flushing at the beginning of February. Our moving truck man got stuck in the slushy snow pile outside the building, and tried to put Joey Ramone the howling cat in the back with the furniture, but we managed to make it to our new home without breakages or damages. And what a home! It's big, airy, bright and so quiet. I slept so well the first night and woke up to the sounds of birds singing, not to the sounds of the endless construction on the streets of Bushwick. There were still quite a few of my belongings left in the old place, but my mum and wonderful best friend went to pick it all up for me last week so I didn't have to deal with it. I just don't know if I could have faced any more moving at that point.

Setting up home has been so much fun, apart from the fact that every time we save some money, we end up spending on very important things... Necessary things of course, but the money part is beginning to worry me, as we have 4 weeks left until the baby gets here... I know deep down everything will be fine, but I am taking 2 months off, and am not used to not making my own money and not being financially independent! All for a very, very good cause though, as I will be busy looking after our little Munchie and giving her the best start in life that we can give her. Buying a new couch was the most fun part, turning up at Bob's Furniture and walking around trying all types of different couches, and looking at sectionals as we have the space for one. We ended up going for a lovely coffee coloured one with large pillows and enough room for us to both lie down on it and watch TV on our brand new 42 inch HDTV... Which we ended up getting at a super discount price because someone had messed up on the pricing at Best Buy... There are still boxes and boxes that need to be emptied or put away, but there is no real rush with this. I've been doing one or two a night, and trying to imagine how I would like our home to look like when it is all done. I feel like we are finally really making a home for our family, a place that is ours and no one else's!

I'm still working 40 hours a week, and C. is still at his 60 plus hours, and it's been a little strange for us both as I am now working day times and he is still working the usual night time hours. We are going to have to make real efforts to spend enough time together on this schedule as I spent a lot of the first week feeling a bit thrown off and missing him, even though we live together and work on the same premises. I know he did too. Thankfully we both have Wednesdays off together still and these have become even more important than before. We have been trying to explore our new neighbourhood (we already have found "our" deli and "our" diner), looking for places to eat and shop and hang out. It's been a little difficult with the weather that has limited my movements a lot (on top of the fact that I get tired fast when I am walking now, as Munchie is really growing fast). I love how multicultural the neighbourhood is, how there is a church that has service in 5 different languages on Sundays, that it feels like it's still NYC, but a little quieter and more relaxed than where I lived in Brooklyn before. Then again, I wasn't too happy when I had to get the shuttle bus instead of the subway last week and people kept pushing me, despite the fact that I have a very obvious baby bump. I'm sorry to anyone who got my elbow in their face, but being pushed and squashed makes me do those type of things!

I don't really want to get started on the whole getting up and giving your seat to a disabled, elderly or pregnant person on the subway, but I do want to mention it. I was brought up in countries where this was a normal thing to do. You don't look up, look at a person and look down again, without getting up from your seat. Yes, maybe I chose to be pregnant and ride the subway, but standing up for long periods of time in a crowded subway at this point in my pregnancy actually makes me feel light-headed and faint, and easily able to lose my balance. In any case, it's always other women who give me their seat, never has a man offered his seat, not even when I am standing right above them. I'm not the type to ask for a seat, nor am I going to glare at you angrily to make you feel bad, but people need to be a little more aware. It's quite sad really! The best moment for me was the time I asked a woman to move her bag so I could sit down and was looked at as if I were some kind of cockroach trying to crawl into her personal space. Of course I didn't feel bad ha!

 My amazing mother came out for a week to help us with everything and to participate in the baby shower that my lovely best friend threw for me. It was really perfect, as I really don't like being the centre of attention, but she made it into a lovely tea party at the Kings' Carriage House where people I love joined me to celebrate the impending arrival of my little girl. Everyone has been so generous and it is really helping us get ready for having a baby in our home. I have the best people in my life, and I hope I am the same type of friend to them as they are to me. Mum took some wonderful photos of the afternoon that display how lovely (and pink) it really was. You can see them HERE

So this is it really... Four weeks left (give or take a few depending on when she decides its time to come out), and I am hovering between stages of feeling elated and intensely nervous. Not about the actual birth which still feels like something surreal that is going to happen but that I have no idea how, but more about afterwards. Am I going to be able to breastfeed easily? Is everything going to be OK? Will I be a good mother?!? Will my baby be happy and healthy?

In the meantime I shall continue to feel content and to breathe through all the mini moments of panic, and just know that everything WILL be OK. Both C and I are happy and healthy and are prepared to do anything to make sure our child is happy and healthy too. And I really really really can't wait to finally meet her outside of the womb, and talk to her little face and tell her how she spent the last month inside me kicking my ribs and making me laugh.

This continues to be the most amazing journey of my life.

For more of my mother, Alison Toon's photos from her recent stay here and more check out her website here: Alison Toon

Ramblings: Happiness, Moving and Getting Closer to that Date

I’m so happy.

Despite the fact that it has snowed at least once a week since the beginning of the year, that the pavements are icy and slippery and despite the fact that the wind is bitterly cold. Despite the fact that my belly feels like it’s getting heavier by the day and despite the fact that I feel like my bones have expanded and I have become a clumsy woman with a waddle.

I’m so happy.

Every day I wake up and feel excited as well as nervous about the idea that we are one more day nearer the moment that I will give birth to our daughter, and therefore one more day closer to the fact that I am nowhere near ready. Or I don’t feel anywhere near ready. Mentally I have always felt ready, but practically I feel that there is so much more to do, so many things to fit into so little time. I know that everything will work out and I am forcing myself to stress out as little as I can about it. Which doesn’t make it too hard when I am walking around in such a state of happiness…

After signing the lease and then a lot of back and forth on getting the keys to the new place we finally have our new home in Flushing, Queens. It is fully renovated and cleaned and waiting for us to move in as soon as we can.  Our room in Brooklyn now looks in a state of distress, half full with boxes and half full with just stuff. My next steps are to cancel the electricity here and install a new account at the new place, find movers and decide on a day to move that is on the only day C. and I have off together, and then set up the new place in the way we want to before the baby arrives. That’s the really exciting part as we are really starting from scratch again, new couch, TV, dresser, tables… All furniture that we need to buy at some point in time. Nothing can be rushed though, for 3 weeks we practically lived like paupers so that we could pay the three months upfront for the apartment. Thankfully we work enough hours in a restaurant that we can eat most meals there, and I wasn’t too tired to take the subway home at 2am. The latter is only something I can do while still in Brooklyn as it’s only 6 stops away - once we get to Flushing I don’t think I will be doing the late nights anymore, so there won’t be the anxiety of having to find a cab that doesn’t charge you through the roof to take you to Queens…

We are now into the single digits, with 9 more weeks to go. I love how so many of my regular customers at work take a real interest in how the pregnancy is going and love to chat about it and hear updates. I love how everyone at work is excited to see the growth and excited to finally meet the baby. I also love how surreal it still seems to this day. Even after I finally managed to put my registry together another pregnant friend and I were walking around baby stores exclaiming how we still couldn’t believe that this was us, deciding on the best type of stroller rather than the cutest new party dress. I am pretty sure that I will always talk about the best party dress to pair with a Doc Marten boot, but nowadays I’m more into what type of sleepwear I want to dress my daughter in when she comes home from the hospital with me.

C. and I went for a tour of the Labour and Delivery department of Brooklyn Hospital the other day as that is where I will be having the baby if all goes to plan (and I really hope that it does).  It’s a lovely hospital (if you can actually say that about hospitals…). Not that I have much experience of hospitals – the last time I was in one for myself was when I was born. My knowledge of hospitals comes from the TV show ER. But I am determined to have my baby in a hospital. I want to have my baby naturally, but I want to be hooked up to monitors and have access to pain medication if I want to, and also be surrounded by people who can help if something goes wrong. Of course I am hoping that the delivery will be as easy and as great as my pregnancy has been – but who can predict that? Walking around the labour and delivery rooms, and then seeing the rooms that you stay in after the baby is born reassured me a lot, and made C. feel more nervous. This is all very very real now, even if it still feels surreal! The lady who showed us the rooms asked me if I had a birth plan, to which I just responded “Umm… delivering the baby here?” Should I be writing one of these? Yes I want to breastfeed so I suppose I need to write that down so people know. At the same time I am hoping I am going to be fully conscious so I can voice all of this myself, and I also don’t want to set a rigid plan that probably isn’t going to work out anyway. I want to be flexible and make sure that whatever happens is the best for me and the baby. 

Ah, before I forget, as a gift to ourselves (amidst all of the stress of finding an apartment and really not having any money to spare) we booked a 3D ultrasound in a place in Midtown. It really wasn’t too expensive, especially seeing as my Medicaid is covering for everything else and this really was a little extra, just because I wanted to see Munchie again… We went to Goldenview Ultrasound and booked the Silver package. It was a really lovely experience, although I would only recommend it to women whose placenta is not anterior – it’s much harder to get a clear picture of your baby if they are hiding behind the placenta all of the time! The technician was lovely and tried all sorts of techniques to get Munchie to move away from the placenta, which she was cuddling like a teddy bear, as well as take her hands away from her eyes. She finally moved in the end and we got to see her lovely little face, her chubby cheeks, her little hands and her big feet! I do have to say though, that seeing your baby that way is a little creepy and they look a little deformed. It’s a little scary and quite wonderful at the same time!!

I do have to apologise… Over the past few months I have pretty much only posted about being pregnant and having a baby. I have just been so consumed by all of this, as well as trying to work as much as possible and relax when I can that my writing has totally fallen by the wayside (which is also the most common excuse I always have whenever I start slacking in writing). It will get better… Once I have a little more time. But will I have more time?! Maybe I will be able to get a few sentences in here and there between baby feedings? Maybe I will be so overwhelmed by motherhood that all I will be able to write about is how much I love my daughter? (I kind of already know that is going to happen). We will see. In any case, there are still many stories and reviews and essays to come out of me, enough ideas for more than a lifetime of writing. In the meantime I am just going to keep them as ideas and hope to bring them to fruition in the near future. The first plan must be moving my blog over to my own domain and finding a template that suits me. Decisions, decisions…

In any case, despite the next impending snowstorm and despite the fact that I really wish I didn’t have to work for these next couple of months, I am still so happy. I feel like there is so much happiness that is still inside of me, waiting to get out and I can’t wait to share it with everyone. Well everyone who deserves it anyway ;)

Ramblings: Apartment hunting in NYC (often equivalent to hitting your head repeatedly against a wall)

I’ve lived here nearly 9 years now and the am convinced that the single most stressful part of NYC living is finding an apartment to live in. Finding a place to live, a place to call home. When I first moved here I lived in a small one bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side (corner of Rivington and Clinton to be more exact) for a month, courtesy of the company I worked for, so that I had time to find my own place. Yes, I thought that was small at the time. I loved the neighbourhood the moment I set foot in it, and spent the first few weeks walking around at all times of the day and night, grabbing a drink at random bars, observing people, buying Pringles at 24 hour delis at 4am, watching the people walk by from the apartment’s fire escape and writing poems up there. From the moment I started looking for a place to live I knew that the neighbourhood was completely out of my price range, especially after I had decided that for the first time in my life I wanted to live alone, without roommates… 

I was clueless. I had no credit (what on earth was this credit that everyone was speaking of), no real money to my name, no furniture and no idea how I was going to find a place. I had also never been to NYC before, let alone lived there, didn’t know anyone, and also had no idea on where it was safe or cheaper to live. Luckily, after trawling through Craigslist for a few days I found a 1 bedroom furnished sublet in Spanish Harlem, on First Ave between 119^th and 120^th streets. A tiny one bedroom for $900 (heat and hot water included, electricity separate) on the ground floor, with a little back yard (meaning a concrete area outside the bedroom door). It seemed pricy, but still affordable if I were careful, and it was finally my own place. Some people warned me that the neighbourhood was dangerous, but in 10 months I lived there I never had a problem. The guys who were always hanging out on my stoop were always courteous and opened the door for me, the man who ran the deli next door held on to my packages for me, and the only unwanted visitor I had was a rat, who appeared during my first week there, and after that never reappeared again (yes, you quickly learn how to plug up holes that may be found under the sink with wire…). Oh and a clogged toilet on July 4^th weekend just after I had moved in because the previous tenant thought that that was where you disposed of your cigarette butts. Lesson learned – always have a plunger at hand!

Ten months later I was able to secure a bank loan thanks to my wonderful mother (she probably wouldn’t jump at doing that again though, but that’s a whole other story), and started looking for a place that would be mine, a studio on the LES, where I was all the time anyway. With the help of a friend who also happened to be a broker I ended up finding a little rent stabilized studio in the West Village, on Sixth Ave between Houston and Bleecker, right above the restaurant called Bar Pitti. $1350 a month for a place to call my home. I spent over $7 grand on first month’s rent and security deposit and broker’s fees and furniture, and never thought about the fact that $1350 was going to be too much to spend if I didn’t curb my lifestyle in a little… And even though everything was super legit, I still felt like it was all kinds of shady, signing your life away to a management company or landlord that issues you with a lease with so much small print that your brain starts to hurt after the first sentence. Advice to all: always read the small print, especially if you have a vindictive landlord who will try to extort money out of you after your lease ends. I signed a 2 year lease on this place and although I don’t regret living there, and the experience of living in the West Village, the convenience to everything and the fact that I could literally walk everywhere I needed to go to, if I had to do it again I would have been a lot more financially savvy, and would have spent less money on rent and electricity and take-out and all the rest. But I still have fond memories of that little place, where the two windows looked out onto another building and where it got so hot in the summer there was no way you could live without AC. The convenience of the location was amazing – I walked everywhere. If I didn’t feel like getting out of bed I could call the deli down the street and they would deliver within 20 minutes. So convenient that I ended up spending most of my time outside of the apartment, and in the end it just became a place to sleep rather than a home. A very expensive place to sleep.

When the rent just got too much and my lease was finally about to expire my friend Beth and I decided to look for a place together in Brooklyn, as she was in the same situation as me, and both of us needed something cheaper.  I also just wanted more space and light in my life. We had no idea where we should go in Brooklyn, visited a few places in Williamsburg, and branched out a little to Bushwick, even though most people we knew warned us not to. This was 6 years ago when no one wanted to live in Bushwick. We saw a 2 bedroom going for $1900 in a brand new building just off the Myrtle-Broadway stop on the J and decided to visit it. The place was amazing. Huge space with stainless steel appliances (a dishwasher!!), laundry IN the apartment (yes IN THE UNIT), and huge windows. The street itself looked pretty calm and there wasn’t much around in terms of restaurants or bars, but it was $1900… Meaning that we would both be saving around $400 a month EACH. Yes, we jumped on it. I still can’t believe that I thought that the commute would be a little long after living in the West Village for ages… Then we were told we had to present first and last month’s rent, as well as one month’s security deposit before we could sign the lease. And ASAP, in case someone else wanted the unit and got in there before us. That’s a total of $5700. Luckily we managed to get them to agree to first month and security deposit and got the money together within the week. We passed our credit checks and other checks, signed the lease and had the keys within a few days. The first people to move into a brand new, empty building. We felt like queens!! We discovered the neighbourhood and watched Bushwick change rapidly over the years. We negotiated our rent down to $1,700 and it hardly went up over the years… Until last year. Last year saw a huge influx in new buildings in Bushwick, and also a huge hike in rent. Ours went up from $1750 to $2000 (and even after a meeting with our landlords they assured us that they wanted to go up to $2200 but didn’t want to lose us so agreed to $2000). People were really paying these types of rents in Bushwick?? Apparently so. 

(The story of life on Troutman St will be relayed in another, separate account. It deserves its own post).

And so now it is time to move again. For multiple reasons, most importantly because I am having a baby in April, because I want to move in with my boyfriend in OUR own home, and because I want to pay less rent. Over the years my credit has gone from being nil to passable to completely crap, and C. has no credit at all, not making it any easier to secure a place. On top of that our lease runs out on February 28^th, and I don’t want to have to move when I am ready to give birth. The stress of finding an apartment in this city makes me want to cry on a good day – imagine being 7 months pregnant and traipsing the streets looking for a place that will take you without credit and that is actually affordable… We had already decided that Queens was where we were heading this time, with rents that are still affordable and places that were still of a decent size. I walked out of the first agency in tears because the woman told me she couldn’t help us as we didn’t have good credit. Didn’t even try. So we started grabbing numbers from leaflets on lamp posts on Roosevelt Avenue, and ended up meeting some type of broker guys in the back room of an Internet café (yes sketchy it was). They took us to a few places, one being a large one bedroom apartment in Flushing. Yes, large. And quiet. And on the ground floor. And airy. And light. And large. Did I already mention large? Oh, and with a rent of $1275 a month. 

Yes, it’s in Flushing. A few blocks away from the last stop on the 7 line (but still, no buses! It’s still off the subway!!). Does this bother me? Surprisingly, no. To be honest it’s a perfect compromise. I’m tired of being in the noisy parts of the city. I want to be able to take my baby to the supermarket and to the park without feeling that I am walking a stroller through a maze of unexpected obstacles. I want to be able to relax at home without hearing sirens and car horns and people blaring their music from their car stereo. So, Flushing it is… I hope! This time it’s even more shifty as we don’t want to have to go through a credit check just to get rejected, but the lovely gentlemen who showed us the apartment are helping us through it and we will be signing the lease tomorrow… Fingers crossed as I don’t want to jinx it, but with a little help from some friends, long hours at work and the art of living off pasta for a week we managed to cobble together the funds that we need to get the keys. It appears to all be legit too as the landlord/owner of the building called our workplace to check that we weren’t lying about our jobs… Honestly, looking for and finding an apartment in NYC always feel completely sketchy, as if you are doing something slightly illegal. Even when you have amazing credit and a decent salary and enough money to pay for 3 months rent up front.

I can’t wait to take this next step, setting up our child’s first home, living in a new borough of the city (for me) and just discovering a new neighbourhood. I’m excited to decorate a new place with our drawings and photos and belongings, making it ours. And I’m so happy that I don’t have to worry about this any longer, as once the lease is signed we can focus on moving and setting up the apartment for the baby… So long Brooklyn, Queens here we come!

All images  © Jade Anna Hughes

Music: Desert Stars - Habit Shackles

What do the words “desert stars” invoke in you? For me, they take me to a place where I am sitting on the rocky sand with a blanket over my legs, surrounded by a pure, open silence, and looking up into worlds that we only see from millions of miles away, flickering, bright, unknown worlds that we can only imagine the existence of. Imagination, beauty enveloped in silent dreams. Desert Stars album Habit Shackles evokes exactly that type of feeling in me: music that is dreamy, at times angelic, at times gentle and soft like a fuzzy cloud surrounding you, at times with an edge that teeters on the verge of dream and a nightmare plunge into something deeper and darker, pushing you somewhere that you may not be ready to go to.

There are elements of heartbreak, and sadness within the lyrics and the music that intertwines the words, as well as elements of hope and happiness. It’s the kind of album I want to listen to while lying on my bed, or the beach, or the desert, with my eyes closed, reflecting on my own life, past and future. Pure nostalgia linking every song together as a whole. Beautiful. Harmonies and soaring guitars and words that make you realize that within all of the dreaminess there is a real core that exists.

Desert Stars are Janelle Best, Carrie Ashley Hill, Eric Altesleben, Gregg Giuffré and Jane Herships, and are based in Brooklyn, NY. Their first album, Habit Shackles, was released on July 16^th. See links below for more information on the band and how to purchase the album and catch one of their live shows.

My personal favourites: Normal Man, Farewell Decade and Past in the Trash and the amazing guitar sounds in How Hard You Try.

Desert Stars Facebook
Desert Stars Website
Desert Stars Bandcamp

Photography - Bushwick Street Art 2013

A few years ago I started walking around Bushwick with my camera, capturing some of the pretty amazing street art that is around the area. There are spots that are covered in murals and paintings and words, entire blocks and walls that are vibrant in colour and meaning, and then spots where you will find a small piece of artwork, hidden amongst the brick walls of a house or a warehouse. I love living in Bushwick (which is probably why I haven't moved anywhere else over the past 5 years), but I haven't spent much time walking around the neighbourhood recently, and didn't even go to any of the events that were taking place during the Bushwick Collective 1 year anniversary party this past weekend. My room mate has been much better at becoming part of the community here than I have and knows everything that is going on, where the cool bars are and what restaurants are better than others. When we moved here over 5 years ago there wasn't much around except for a few bodegas, the gas station and KFC. Now there is a great selection of restaurants on Seamlessweb alone and a bunch of cool places to hang out in.

In any case, yesterday I took a visitor from Europe for a walk around the neighbourhood and was amazed by all of the new murals and artwork that exists on my street and the streets surrounding it. I noticed a lot of new pieces, but also old pieces that have been covered up by new ones. HERE is the link to the full collection of photos I took yesterday, mainly along Troutman St and Starr St. Below you will find links to different street art sets that I put together in 2011 and 2012.

For more information on The Bushwick Collective, check out their Facebook page HERE.

Bushwick Street Art 2013, a set on Flickr.

One Block in Bushwick - Photos
Bushwick Street Art May 2011 - Photos
NYC Street Art - Photos

Photography: Spring equals Happiness

Springtime!!!

Springtime!, a set on Flickr.

Finally. This past winter dragged on and on and on and I never thought it would actually start getting warmer and brighter and more colourful outside. I woke up this morning and went for a walk around Bushwick, taking random shots of tree blossom, flowers, new and old street art and enjoyed feeling the warm sun on my face. I can't wait for it to get even warmer and for all of the adventures I aim to go on over the next six months... To be continued...

See full set of this mornings shots HERE (and link also above).

Photography: Randomly in Spring

 

I finally have that FujiFilm XE-1 camera that I have wanted for so long... Bit the bullet and spent the money on it and I can't say that I am disappointed at all! It really is like using an old manual SLR (a lot like the Canon AE-1 film SLR that I have been using over the past few years), with all of the additional DSLR settings that you could wish for, including a "film simulation" setting, which produces photos that look like they have been taken with a film SLR. It's kind of like the best of both worlds for me, who still prefers to shoot film rather than digital, but don't have the time to develop rolls of film anymore. Or even the space really to store all of the prints I have.

The only issue I found was that I randomly got a "lens control error" the other day and couldn't take any photos anymore. I let the camera sit for a day, removed the lens and put it back on, flipped all the switches and dials, turned it into the fully manual mode, and the error message disappeared. It appears that this is a regular issue with this model, which is a little disappointing, but if you can't fix it yourself Fuji will service it pretty fast for you. I am just glad I took out an extra warranty on the camera, especially as it's not as sturdy as the Canon Rebel.

Anyway... Here are some of the first pictures I have taken on my new camera (see set below). I need to take it out more and play around with it, and find the perfect settings, but for now I am pretty happy with what it can do. I am still wondering if I should bring it with me on my trip this weekend, or just take the Canon. I am worried that I will get another lens error and be stuck taking photos on my iPhone all weekend. I may just go with the trusty older camera and leave the new one for other adventures.

Randomly in Spring, a set on Flickr.

Ramblings: Hurricane Sandy

It’s all too strange. There is half of the island that is running as normal, buses and trains moving, shops open and electricity working. And then there is the other half which is plunged into darkness: no electricity, no cell phone access, barely any running water. You can walk north then west from Delancey to the West Village and then north up Sixth Avenue and be surprised when the traffic lights start working and your phone starts pinging around 27^th street, because you had started getting used to not seeing or hearing them. It’s like walking through a ghost town back into the city, but so strange because it’s a ghost town that is usually bustling with people and noise and bars and shops and restaurants.

I was really lucky. I live in an area of Bushwick that isn’t in a flood zone. I also live in an area where there aren’t that many trees (usually something that I wish were more of). My power didn’t go out, nor did my cable internet. I wasn’t even sure that Hurricane Sandy would hit us that hard to be honest, not after Irene last year, where the city was spared the brunt of the storm, and we didn’t really suffer that much damage, compared to New Jersey and upstate New York. We closed the restaurant at 4pm on Sunday and I really was expecting to be back at work as normal on Tuesday. Beth and I huddled up with a couple of friends in the apartment on Monday morning and watched the coverage on TV, texting friends in the city, watching as bridges and tunnels were closed down, listening to the wind get louder and louder and eventually really started to worry when all of the transformers in the Con Ed substation exploded and we pictures of major flooding in the city began appearing on the TV and on Facebook. 

On Tuesday morning my friend Henna and I couldn’t stay in the apartment anymore. We walked from Bushwick over the Williamsburg Bridge amidst some spurts of heavy rain and a few gusts of wind and walked down Orchard St to assess the damage. Apart from scaffolding that had fallen, shop awnings in the street and the complete lack of any type of power, both my places of work were intact and undamaged. No signs of flooding. We walked through the West Village, encountered many lost tourists along the way, and went up towards Midtown in the search of an Irish pub for Guinness, Powers and lunch. We met up with friends and everything gets a little hazy after that, pubs full of people trying to charge their phones, walking around the West Village completely lost in the pitch black where everyone looked like ghosts or axe murderers until I made it into a cab back to Midtown where light and life appeared to be normal again. There are so many stories of friends not being able to go home because their apartments are still flooded, and I still have vivid images of huge trees squashing cars and houses in Queens and Brooklyn. My mum’s old home in Mastic Beach had at least 3 feet of sea water flooding, and her neighbours who lived nearer the bay came through unscathed but with a lot of damage to their houses, damage that may or may not get covered by insurance, because, well it was a flood zone after all. For all of the people who don’t live here and are commenting on how people should know better than buy a house in a known flood zone, well, I have friends who have actually lost their apartments that were NOT in any flood zones. It’s not like we often have hurricanes or tropical storms heading straight towards NYC every day. 

Now it’s Thursday and I still don’t know when I will be able to go back to work, and how long it will take for the power to come back in Lower Manhattan. The subway system is back up in a limited fashion, still no trains below 34^th street and roads are still gridlocked with cars, people trying to get into the city to work, or to find out when and if they can actually get back into work. Night time is so eerie below 34^th street, some bars are reopening with candlelight and selling liquor and bottled beer, some places are running on generators that probably won’t last forever, and all you can see when you are walking in the streets are headlights from cabs and cars driving around slowly. There are lines of people waiting for buses into the city, so I think I will remain in Brooklyn until I know I definitely have to work again. I’m just glad that everyone I know is somewhat safe and alive. 

And now to find a decent pint of Guinness in Bushwick. 

Literature/Poetry: Megan Falley

Poetry and I have a love/hate relationship. There will be days that I will only read poetry, and then I won't read any for months on end. Sometimes even years. I have written my own poetry from the darkest days of my early teenage years, and then of and on in splurts. All of these poems are hidden within journals and books, and sometimes I come across one that I had forgotten I had written, standing out on a page, in my scrawling handwriting. I stare at it with surprise, and then with recognition. Ah yes. You. I remember you.

I've been inspired lately. Not only to compile some of my own poems (more about that another time), but to write poetry again, and especially, to read it. Around the time that all this started again I picked up Megan Falley's After the Witch Hunt at the book store I work at, after one of my colleagues had recommended it to me. I started reading it on the train home, and nearly missed my connection stop. You know that feeling of being punched in the stomach and completely elated at the same time? The feeling of all of your senses buzzing against and with each other, vertigo and stability at once? Yes, that. You can open the book on any page and will probably need to hold your breath while you live through the poem. Live, laugh, cry and breathe against until you start on the next one. Each poem inserts itself into your brain and your heart, melds with your own experiences and life and tells you how it is. Out loud, raw, beautiful, personal but universal all at once. A voice that could be anyone's, but has the talent to create lines of words that are so intensely woven together that it is difficult to pull yourself away and forget what you have just read. I know I sometimes overuse the hyperbole, but, honestly, I am not exaggerating here. Megan Falley is just brilliant. And so inspiring.

I want to post lines from all of the poems in here, but for that you can just head over to Megan's website and/or buy her book. I'll just post some lines from Rain, the ones that I felt touched me the most today.

Give me that stupid, reliable cloud

because it might be the only thing

that never leaves

Because being only happy

is like having just one crayon - 

even if it's the prettiest crayon,

it sure gets boring.

Give me that cloud.

Give me this ache that lets me know

I'm alive.

Megan Falley's website
After the Witch Hunt