Pregnancy
I think I should have written this post at least an year back. Now I can’t remember half of it. Overall I think I had an easy pregnancy. No morning sickness, vomiting or anything of that sort. I kind of feel like the whole year “2011” I was pregnant lol.
2011
January: We celebrated our 3 yr anniversary 🙂
February: Pregnant (First Positive)
April: 12 weeks reached and announced it to everyone!
I was gaining weight like a maniac. I think I was looking at pregnancy as a “license to eat”. My MIL suggested me to avoid any food with artificial color in it. [on a side note: one of the famous south indian restaurant in bay area actually told me the only curry/appetizer that they have without any artificial color is aloo gobi]
End of April/Beginning of May: We got to know the gender of the baby (Its a BOY!!). From the beginning itself, we both wanted to know the gender of the baby. From the beginning itself I had this gut feeling that it will be a boy. I’m sure Ab thought (50%) otherwise.
mid MAY: BANG!!!!! Failed the glucose test and got diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes. I was not too thrilled to hear about that. But I thought it just meant “avoid anything sweet”. The GD specialist gave me a list of things to avoid/cut down. The first line said “CUT DOWN ON CARBS”. I had this “WT*” look on my face. I’m a south Indian, that too from Kerala. How can I cut down on rice. I live on rice & curries (and yes I live to eat 😛 ).
So my day went like this:
Wake up: Poke and test the fasting glucose level
Breakfast: 1 slice of whole wheat bread, 1 egg white scrambled with few veggies.
1 hr: Test glucose level again
Snacks: few almonds
Lunch: 2 whole wheat chapati & curry.
1 hr: Test glucose level again
walk for 20-30 minutes
Snack: nuts/veggies/fruit
Early Dinner: again 2 whole wheat chapati & curry
walk for 15 mins atleast
1 hr: Test glucose level again
It doesn’t look that horrible for a regular person. But for a pregnant lady the whole menu was like a snack :P.
I followed the diet religiously and my weight gain slowed down and I was feeling healthy.
August & September: Baby shower months.
FastFwd to October: Last 4 weeks of pregnancy. First 2 weeks were ok not too great and not too bad.
Then the last 2 weeks came. It was not easy to walk/sit/move etc etc etc.
oh did I mention… I was working too. I worked till the end of my 35th week.
It was really hard to turn once you lie down. Some of the muscles (which I never knew existed in my body) also started to hurt. At the last doctor’s check up she told me “it seems like your LO wants to stay inside his mommy and don’t want to come out that easily”. So she set a date for inducing. The day before my due date.
(The date after my due date is Ab’s birthday btw). Ab kept telling me that no matter what I do LO will only come on his birthday. I didn’t want to believe him.
So on Saturday, the day I’m supposed to get induced, I started calling at 8 am to the L&D (labor & delivery) @ the hospital to check when I should go in. They told me they will call me back and let me know. They didn’t call back until 5pm.
5pm – we all (Ab, me and my mom) got ready and went to the hospital. I was all happy, smiling and taking pictures. Amma looked very tensed. I told her “no big deal… every one goes through this”. Poor thing (me) had no idea about what is coming :D.
6:30 pm – They started inducing. They hooked me up to all these machines, put an oxygen mask on me and started monitoring the contractions. It was not bad at all. I was thinking “whats wrong with all these people complaining about contractions and pain… in 4-5 hrs I can go home with my kiddo”.
Next day 1 am: contractions were getting strong and I could see what people were talking about. I thought by then I will be at least 4-5cm dilated and ready to get epidural. So when I complained about the pain, the Dr. came over and checked and to everyone’s surprise she said “you are not even 1cm dilated… may be .5cm”. l couldn’t believe it and I asked her to check again lol. I couldn’t sleep at all. The contractions were getting closer and painful. Ab also stayed up with me asking me to “breath in and breath out”. I didn’t feel like kicking him or cursing at him at that time (unlike many comments I heard from other woman). I felt bad for him because I could see that he was feeling “helpless”.
anyhooooo… Another 14 more hours in pain and no pain meds and not dilating fast enough… I couldn’t wait to get all these over with and hold my baby. I think around 4pm they gave me epidural and told me I was just 3cm dilated and its going very very slow. After the epi, it felt like “heaven” for the next 3-4 hours. I could smile again… talk properly… and even get some sleep. Around 7-8pm, there was no pain but I felt like my legs weigh a ton. It went on like that till 1am (next day). I wished Ab happy birthday and I told him the next time the doc comes in I’m going to ask for a Csection. He agreed!. The doc came in at 3am and checked on me. She said I was fully dilated and the baby will be here probably in 1 hr or 2 (which is normal for the 1st delivery). 15 minutes later, I was holding my 7 lb 7oz baby boy. We (family) were all crying. My DS stopped crying and looked at me and made a face (I claim that it was a smile). Ab was really happy that DS and him will be sharing the same bday :).
We named him a name that starts with D. Few close friends came over in the evening to see us.
We stayed in the hospital for 3 days before bringing our DS home.
FFWD again to Present Day:
DS completed 8 months. He is slowly getting naughty and learning all the tricks to get attention. Like most of the parents, we both love him more than anything in this world. :). Hopefully he will turn out to be a good human being.