Mary and I started out together in Manhattan. By the time we met I had long since sold the tiny convertible I had foolishly clung to when I first moved to New York, and ditched the over-priced parking space I had rented in a garage in Jersey City. Mary was smarter than that. She sold her car before moving to New York from LA.
Since moving to Boston we've had two apartments, one in Beacon Hill, and our current place in the Back Bay.
So you can see that we're urban-dwellers. Although we've toyed with the idea of buying a little Subaru or something, it just doesn't make economic sense to own a car right now. We can spend several thousand dollars a year renting cars and it's still cheaper than owning (especially in the city like Boston where a deeded parking space can cost upwards of $100,000 and monthly spaces in garages are considered reasonable at $300+ per month).
The fact that we don't own a car is a wonderful justification for buying lots of other expensive things, though. For example, our neighborhood is littered with $700 to $800 strollers, and since we don't have a car, we look at a fancy stroller like that and say "hm... we can maybe justify that!".
So for reference, when I imagine rolling along in the city with our new baby, I picture myself behind the wheel of one of these monster techno baby carts.
But people are telling us that one of the few things we absolutely must have before the baby is born is a car seat for it. The fact that we don't own a car doesn't seem to matter. You see, the hospital won't let you take the baby home until they see your car seat.
But the hospital is so close to our home that I've always assumed we'd take it home in my dreampt-of convertible super-light adjustable high-tech baby-buggy. Surely a device like that should satisfy the hospital?
Mary says "no". Says they probably won't let us roll a newborn baby out into the Boston winter in late December, stroller quality notwithstanding.
So we'd have to get a cab. And of course, we would need a car seat for that.
It's a bit of a waste of money though, isn't it? Having a car seat and no car?
And then there's the bigger problem of how to get to the hospital. Imagine a dark night in December. At 3:30 AM Mary announces "it's time!", and then what? Two scenarios:
* I invite Mary to walk to the hospital with me, as we always have for our prenatal appointments (it's less than a mile, cmon!)
* I stand on the corner in the cold waiting for a cab to pass, hoping the cabbie doesn't begin to suspect my wife is in labor, because cabbies know quite well that clichés (like the cliché of babies being born in cabs) usually have some basis in reality, and so it could be a good idea to avoid fares like us.
Those don't sound very good... how about this:
* I dash down to the garage under the Boston Common, fire up the little Subaru we keep stashed down there, and speed back up the street to pick up my laboring wife.
That sounds much more reasonable and reliable. And owning a car totally justifies the cost of the car seat we'll need to buy anyway.
So to fulfill this little vision of how to get wife and child to and from the hospital, we have to buy/acquire:
* A car seat
* A car for the car seat
* A parking space for the car
I guess we'll have to justify this expense by getting the less expensive stroller.
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