The 26.2 Mile High Club

In the birthing class that I took before having my first child, the nurse—not a pretend baby nurse who bought scrubs from buycostumes.com, but a real nurse from the Mount Sinai labor floor—told us, as I’d heard many times before, that giving birth to a child is like running a marathon. That’s how much energy you exert, that’s how tired you will feel, that’s what physical duress your body experiences.

What became very clear to me last Sunday, November 2, as I crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon for my first time, was that this nurse clearly never ran a marathon. I’ve given birth five times, last time a double whammy—two sessions of pushing 17 minutes apart—and that was all a piece of cake compared to the pain I experienced running 26.2 miles around our city’s five boroughs.

I knew from the moment I saw that strange wind icon on the weather app of my iphone I was in for a ride. I just didn’t know that I was literally in for a ride, getting blown around a few times crossing the bridges. Spilling Gatorade inside my sneakers before I started was not helpful either. And having my iphone go from 88% battery level to 1% on mile 2 made carrying it in my hand with headphones in my ears, feel awkward to say the least. I had some great marathon playlists I’d prepared, and I was addicted to the app Map My Run, announcing my completion of each mile, my overall pace, my splits, and all this other jargon we psycho marathoners want to know. For 26.2 miles (yes the .2 makes a difference), images of fainting, vomiting, dehydrating, breaking my knee, breaking my hip, maybe even dying flashed through my head, wondering what possibly had possessed me to do this in the first place.  

I had made the decision over the summer. I had always liked running, was very comfortable running four or five miles a few times a week, and said to myself—hey, how hard can this be? I’ve watched the marathon, I’ve seen a lot of these marathoners, and let’s be honest, they’re not all built like Greek gods. If they can do it, I can do it. That, and I got a little tipsy at a wedding and decided to reach out to the director of a wonderful charity organization called Beit Issie Shapiro  (http://en.beitissie.org.il) and ask for one of their guaranteed marathon spots (no, it’s never a good idea to drunk email). By the time I sobered up the next morning, I already had an elated response, taking me through the sign-up process, Staten Island Ferry and baggage arrangements, and telling me how much my fundraising effort will mean to the physically disabled children in Israel that Beit Issie seeks to support. And so, it looked like I was officially running the marathon.

I thought I’d wing it. A few normal jogs, some long runs, no biggie. But everyone told me I needed a program, so I signed up for a New York Road Runners 16-week virtual training program. Yes, as in I never communicated with someone live (I don’t even know for sure that he was alive), only through email, and took his daily schedules, tips, and suggestions as gospel. Hydration and energy strategies (to Gu or not to Gu?), emphasis on stretching, sports massages, the right shorts, how to prevent chafing, the perfect sports bras, you name it. He was a real wealth of information. It’s hard to believe I did this in retrospect but I even reached out several times to my  “virtual coach” with questions—my husband was always convinced my coach was a 500-pound couch potato who’d never run down the block, let alone a marathon—but I believed in him. Even if he seemed to answer most of my questions with brief retorts like “keep it up” or “keep at it” or “don’t worry” or his absolute favorite “let’s see what happens on the next run.”

As the race approached, though, I did start to notice there were some similarities between the marathon, and maybe not labor, but pregnancy. I had to start limiting my alcohol. No drinking Saturday nights since Sunday was always my long run day. I found myself getting very dehydrated all the time. I was hungrier. Knees, hips, and my back started aching all the time. I had trouble sleeping. I was getting muscle spasms. I packed all my gear for race day well in advance just as I packed a hospital bag before having a baby. Multiple layers were laid out in a marathon corner of my bedroom, along with all kinds of foam rollers, stress balls and other, what I can see in retrospect, were somewhat obscene looking objects.

And the excitement only built in those days right before, as they do before one’s due date, nervousness and excitement all bottled into one. I went to the Javitz Center where the 50,000 plus runners go to get their numbers, and shopped at the Expo like a pregnant woman picking out her first layette. I was buying t-shirts for the whole family (matching ones that said “My mommy is faster than yours” for my twins), new socks for me, all different kinds of head warmers, hats, gloves, even an insulated TCS NYC Marathon coffee cup. I had marathon virgin written all over me.

But the fact is I hated every minute of the race. I’d be lying if I said I got that runners’ high, or a high from the crowds, or a high from seeing my kids standing in the cold holding signs. I could barely crack a smile. I was in so much pain and I was so cold. All I could think about was the famous “Seinfeld” when Kramer gives the Kenyan runner a cup of hot tea during the marathon and how much I’d love a hot beverage myself. Perhaps my expectations had been too high. So many people had told me the marathon was the best day of their life.

I finished though. I made it to the end. And at many points I really wasn’t sure that I would. I was immobile that whole night, frigid, faint, tired, nauseous, responding to my day full of texts once my phone was recharged with “never again” or “I’m one and done.” I took a hot bath, a bowl of chicken soup, three Advils, and went to bed.

I spent the next two days walking around like Kevin Spacey in “The Usual Suspects,” but by Wednesday I was back and feeling normal. And then the unthinkable happened. I actually started reminiscing about the fact that I actually ran the New York Marathon—nostalgically recalling the early morning ferry ride, the sounds of Frank Sinatra blasting across the Verrazano, the random people who stood along the whole course watching and screaming “Erica, you can do it” “Erica, you got this” “Erica, you look great” (if you couldn’t tell I had my name on my shirt), the musical bands playing all along 4^th avenue in Brooklyn, the runners who stopped to take selfies on the Queensboro Bridge, the runners who vomited on the side of Fifth Avenue then kept on going, the runners who waited on long lines by the port-a-potties, the clock ticking away, instead of running inside a course-side Brooklyn diner, Queens nail salon, and Harlem White Castle like I did (yes, three bathroom stops for me, the bladder from six natural deliveries has its racing drawbacks), the excitement when you hit First Avenue, the excitement when you turn into Central Park, the letdown when you leave Central Park, the relief when you re-enter Central Park for the final meters. Yes, all of it came back to me.

And, as we so often do in life when we use some revisionist history, I decided that it was actually a great day, one of the best days of my life, and assuming no limb on my body worsens significantly before November 1, 2015, I think I’ve got to do it again.

I guess in that sense the nurse was right. It is a little bit like having a baby.  

Seven in the Sky

Don’t gasp, it’s not what you think. I did not have another child. First of all, there’s no time to make another child. Second of all, there’s no time to take care of another child. And third of all, seven in the city just doesn’t have a good ring.

But we did take a good friend’s child with us on the plane to Florida this year. We were simply his flying companions, responsible for transporting him safely to his camp friend’s family in Miami, and then returning him safely to New York. As if we didn’t get enough looks last year with our six, this year, with an 11-year-old boy in our crew, you can imagine the flood of questions. “Are these all yours?” everyone asked me at the check-in counter, the gate, on the plane, anywhere we went. “No of course not,” I would say and they would smile with relief. Then I’d say, “Only six are mine,” as if seven would be crazy but six is totally normal. And they would nod in what appeared to be a combination of shock and disbelief, clearly wondering if their seats were near ours on the plane.

I am getting used to these looks now and in some ways I kind of enjoy it. It gives me a new identity. I am “the one with the six kids.” Rob and I went out for dinner one night in Miami—my inlaws took the older four to a movie and we hired a babysitter to stay with the twins while they slept—and at the restaurant an older man started staring at me. He got up from his table and came over and said, “you look very familiar.” He did not look familiar to me, and my husband looked a bit suspicious until he said, “wait a minute, you’re the one from the plane. The one with all those kids.”

This trip was harder than last year. Yes, we did have our special “oversized family” easy access through security. We were the ones that as soon as they saw our herd approaching, they immediately opened an additional line for us and for the wheelchair assisted senior travelers. And yes, our double stroller was too big to collapse and fit on the security conveyor belt, so I was permitted to simply walk it through—which is a parents’ dream when traveling with young children, but that’s where the perks ended.

For starters, holding two 18-month-olds on your lap for a flight is not as easy as you might think. As you know, they don’t exactly like to just sit still at this age. We did a lot of walking up and down the aisles. Unfortunately, though, on the flight home, due to stormy conditions they never turned off the fasten seatbelt sign. That was fun. Luckily though we had ipads with every known episode of Yo Gabba Gabba on it. But unluckily we had a stewardess who declared that two babies cannot sit on laps within a row of three seats. Obviously she never had twins and never knew anyone with twins. So Barry and Eliana could not watch a show together, but instead we had to alternate and give the ipad to whomever was screaming louder.  Which, unfortunately for those sitting near us, was often a very tough call. But that’s the good thing about Florida. It’s close.

The other good thing about Florida is that medical care is easily available. The twins were healthy for a full 24 hours and then Barry came down with some pretty high fever, and a bad cold and cough. As all of us parents know, there are two ways to address sick children. We can run to the doctor immediately. Or we can ignore them and wait it out. I am normally someone who goes to the doctor pretty quickly, since my children have a tendency to get strep and so I always want to start the antibiotic asap—so I can send them back to school asap. But in Florida I decided to give it a few days. And yes, ignore it a little. I did that thing where I pretended maybe he was just hot from the temperature in the room not from any ailment. Or that he was teething (the oldest excuse in the book). Besides, Barry had a very wet cold and cough, and so I figured, at the most it’s a virus. And since he was sick he was very fatigued, taking long naps and waking up in the 7’s for the first time in his life--which for us was a good thing.

By day five though I decided it was time to sober up from my poolside “Ginger Mints,” (the hotel’s more alcoholic take on a mojito) and Absolute Pear with an itzy bitzy splash of seltzer and come to terms with the fact that I had a legitimately sick child who should probably be seen by a doctor.

I texted one of my old Harvard friends—whom I was planning on getting together with anyway, since we reconnected on what else? Facebook--who is a practicing rheumatologist in Miami and asked her if she had a pediatrician she recommended I try.   She told me her next door neighbor is a pediatric dermatologist and that she’d be happy to take a look at Barry. At her house. During winter break. With her whole family home. On her own free time. No, I certainly was not in New York.

Rob likes to tease me about the loser school I went to for college—the Michigan of the East as he likes to call it, U of M being his alma mater—but none of his Michigan friends seemed to be practicing medicine in the area, while my old roommate Elana picked me and my twins up at our hotel at 7:30 am (after she was done making rounds) and drove me half an hour away for a quick sick visit, then a drop off back at the hotel. “Don’t sweat it,” she said as if gestures like these were the most normal in the world. “This is how we roll here.”

 It turned out Barry had a double ear infection and some developing bronchitis. So much for my maternal instincts. Eliana, the doctor said, whom I brought along for the ride because she had woken up with fever that morning too—yes, shockingly, sharing sippy cups apparently DOES transfer germs--looked a day or two behind him.

The hardest part of this trip though was not the physical condition of my twins, but their emotional condition. Unfortunately, they got very comfortable spending time with me.  I spent more one on two time with them that week than I probably have since they were born, and so they have been a little clingy since we’ve been back. Who do they think I am? They seem to have forgotten they’re numbers 5 and 6. It hasn’t been so easy to leave them with our babysitter as it was before I left, but don’t worry, I will set things straight.  I plan to spend very little time with them in the coming weeks.

Besides, as we did last year, Rob and I realized that the only way to recover from a vacation with kids is a vacation without kids. We immediately booked my parents to come in two weeks so we can escape for a long weekend together without any minors. My older girls get a little offended when they see how excited I am to go away. But I try to turn it around on them and say something rhetorical like “I know you all need a break from me.” Or “it’s so special to spend alone time with your grandparents.” Or my favorite, “You guys are going to have so much fun without us, you won’t even want us to come back.” Have any young children ever not wanted their parents to come back?

They’ll be ok, I know. I just need to recharge—sleep late, read some adult literature, eat relaxing meals with someone whom I don’t have to take to the bathroom. A few days of this is all I need.

Wisely, though, my parents just asked that before we leave we show them our return ticket.