A Ticking Time Bomb Scenario That Even Alan Dershowitz Can’t Abide

The couple who survives in a 265-square-foot apartment* one-ups themselves by having a baby:

When Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan told friends late last winter that she was pregnant, they offered the obligatory congratulations. Then they asked when she was moving.

It was assumed that she and her husband, Maxwell, would have to go somewhere else. For four years the couple shared a 265-square-foot, one-bedroom rental on Bedford Street in the West Village, an apartment so preposterously miniature it could fit neatly inside the foyer of many apartments uptown. They made it work for the two of them in part by jettisoning clothes, a television and a home office. “It never felt too small,” said Ms. Gillingham-Ryan, 31, a food writer. “It helps to keep your life well edited.”

No amount of editing, it seemed, would create enough room for a baby. But after looking at more than a dozen apartments, and weighing the benefits of more square footage against the burden of debt, they decided to stay on Bedford Street, where they pay $780 a month for rent. And they would renovate to accomplish the seemingly impossible: accommodate a baby.

. . .

“The only problem with all this is kids,” Mr. Gillingham-Ryan said one day last month while Ursula napped in the bedroom. “She’s a ticking time bomb. She’s going to need room. We know we can’t stay here for long.”

*I guess the apartment gained 15 square feet since we last read about it.