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 š
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 gotĀ diagnosedĀ 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 š ).
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. Ā 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 toĀ believeĀ 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”.Ā Ā 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’tĀ believeĀ 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. Ā 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.