Pregnancy & Baby

Tags

baby, birth, husband, love, pregnancy, son

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.

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Friends, Acquaintances or Strangers?

Tags

acquaintance, airport, book, boring, flight, friend, fun, smile, stranger, time, travel

What would you call two people who meet once and get to know a fair amount of information about each other or about their life but never keep in touch or might never see again? Usually when I travel I try to get some reading done or get some sleep. But this time unfortunately I picked a book by J.D. Robb and it was horribly boring. So there I was wide awake and bored to the core. I thought of chit chatting w/ someone but the man next to me looked little scary and when I smiled he kind of gave me serious “nod” and that took me right back to my boring book.

The next connection flight was for 4 hrs. Due the earlier “nod” situation I didn’t even bother to look at the person sitting next to me. The turbulence was really bad and unknowingly I had my palm on my chest.  Then I heard a nice friendly question from the next seat “are you nervous?” Then that person introduced him/her self as “MT” and we talked about movies, our lives, travel etc.  Sometimes MT asked for my opinions and I could give my honest opinions because I didn’t have to worry about this person judging me or keeping a grudge :P.  MT never asked anything too personal. Neither did I.  We had an on and off conversations for around 4 hrs.  Then the flight landed and we went separate ways saying good bye and a “nice to meet you” handshake. We didn’t exchange email addresses, phone number or social networking usernames. I don’t even think MT knows my last name.

So this takes me back to my previous question. What would I/you call a person like MT? A Friend? An Acquaintance? or a Stranger?

Change is inevitable…

Tags

change, control, feelings, Friends, inevitable, life, memories

“Change is inevitable. Change will happen. Change is happening. Every moment is a new moment. The last moment changed into this moment. And this moment will change into the next. This moment is all there is. That is it, this moment.

Yet, this moment is rarely what we want it to be. We try to stop change by holding on to someone or something even if we know that it would be better for us to let it or the person go. We do this because sometimes the unknown could be worse than our current situation.

We sometimes wish that change moved faster or slower or stood still but the more we will it to be what it is not, the opposite occurs. Needless to say many of us do not feel comfortable (to say the least) with change. Change doesn’t have to be a negative experience – it can be absolutely thrilling if you let go of trying to control the moment.”

I wanted to write about how people change or something related to that. But I guess someone else already said similar to what I had in mind.

Credit (http://embraceyourlifetransition.blogspot.com/)

Guilty/Innocent ????

Tags

angry, cake, cheat, drink, Food, guilty, innocent, kiss, lie, love, school, tag, Work

From Saima…

The tag name is Innocent..or Guilty?

Please read the rules carefully!

RULE 1- You can only say Guilty or Innocent.

RULE 2- You are not allowed to explain anything unless someone messages you and asks!

RULE 3- Copy and paste this into your notes, delete my answers, type in your answers and tag to your friends to answer this.

* Asked someone to marry you? innocent

* Ever kissed someone of the same sex? innocent

* Danced on a table in a bar? innocent

* Ever told a lie? guilty

* Had feelings for someone whom you can’t have back? guilty 😀

* Kissed a picture? guilty 😀

* Slept in until 5 PM? innocent

* Fallen asleep at work/school? guilty

* Held a snake? innocent

* Been suspended from school? innocent

* Worked at a fast food restaurant? innocent

* Stolen from a store? innocent

* Been fired from a job? innocent

* Done something you regret? guilty

* Laughed until something you were drinking came out your nose? guilty

* Caught a snowflake on your tongue? guilty

* Kissed in the rain?  innocent

* Sat on a roof top? guilty

* Sang in the shower? guilty

* Been pushed into a pool with all your clothes on? innocent

* Shaved your head? innocent

* Had a boxing membership? innocent

* Made a girlfriend cry?  guilty 😦

* Been in a band? innocent

* Shot a gun? innocent

* Donated Blood? guilty

* Eaten alligator meat? innocent

* Eaten cheesecake? Guilty

* Still love someone you shouldn’t? innocent

* Have/had a tattoo? Innocent

* Liked someone, but will never tell who? guilty

* Been too honest? Guilty

* Ruined a surprise? innocent

* Regret saying something while you were angry? Guilty

* Ate in a restaurant and got really bloated that you couldn’t walk afterward? guilty 😀

* Wanted to change yourself for someone else? Guilty

* Erased someone in your friends list? Guilty

* Dressed in a woman’s clothes (if you’re a guy) or man’s clothes (if you’re a girl)? guilty… I sooo didnt look like a man tho 😛

* Joined a pageant? Innocent

* Been told that you’re handsome or beautiful by someone who totally meant what they said? Guilty

* Had communication with your ex? meh… not really… innocent..

* Got totally drunk on the night before exam? innocent

* Got totally angry that you cried so hard? Guilty

meh… not that interesting :P… I gotto to do some wild stuff :P…

well I tag  Priya, Anu, Vimmu, Sujatha & all others who want to take this tag…  🙂

Happy New Year

Tags

fold, happen, hold, images, life, memories, New year, old, quote, reason, things

” I believe that everything happens for a reason

People change so that you can learn to let go

Things go wrong so you appreciate them when they’re right

You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no-one but yourself

sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. ”

AND

“Here’s to the bright New Year, and a fond farewell to the old; here’s to the things that are yet to come, and to the memories that we hold.”

01:01:10

“Here’s to the bright New Year, and a fond farewell to the old; here’s to the things that are yet to come, and to the memories that we hold.”

Me & My Thoughts

Tags

angry, calm, Emotions, hate, last, me, mine, New year, privacy, rain, sad, Thoughts, Xmas, year

Only 2 more weeks for this year to end. I can’t beleive it’s over. I feel like last year xmas was like a month back or something.

I’m getting a little worried/scared on the side thinking about time. It never used to scare me and I always used to welcome every year with so much joy. For some reason I dont want this year to end. This year was not so special or important that I dont want it to end but still why am I feeling this way. I just can’t figure out why I’m little agitated. Is it because I’m getting old or is it because of the mere “thought” of responsibilities that might come on my way in the coming year/(s) or is it because of something else ???

I feel that there is some unfinished business left for me in this year. I don’t think I will be able to fix it in the next 2 weeks but hopefully it will be better next year. Actually this year was also good… not as much as last year… but still it was very good and I’m pretty sure it was better than most of the people in the world. Therefore, I don’t want to complain. If something went wrong this year then it was just because of my stupid mind and me. I felt little alienated even though I was around people most of the time. Isn’t it funny ‘coz you are not alone most the time but still you feel lonely at times.
Sometimes I wonder why people think too much about themselves & people around them. I have heard that few ppl can blank out their mind and be in that state. I wish if I could do that at times. I hate when there is a rush of thoughts especially with a lota ???????? for which I don’t have any answers. Is it just me??? lol I hope not :D…

I wrote another whole paragraph & just deleted it… I always wanted this to be a private blog so I could just write any gibberish I want to and not care about it. But I guess along the way I revealed my identity :P… no big deal… but still I have to watch my words… Its raining here… and I love watching it… it kinda calms me :)… so winding up w/ my crazy thoughts for now …

adios!!!!

Finally… The Wait is Over…

Tags

company, job, lay off, managers, time, unemployed, vendor, wait

Post Dated: May 8th, 09

In the last 2 months, I saw many people (friends, colleagues) losing jobs and leaving their companies. Our team had 7 (incld. me) contractors and I saw each one of them leave. Every time VP announced a lay off, my heart beats increased at least by 50 or 60.  😀 But my name was never on the list 🙂

One week back they announced a 15% pay rate cut for all contractors to avoid massive lay offs. To tell you the truth, I was bit relieved. 😛 Finally 2 days back, the vendor company told me “Sorry we have a bad news, “My Company” let us know that Friday will be your last day. Please work with Mr. MX to transition your work to someone else in the team. They also mentioned that they are very sorry to loose you… bla bla bla bla bla”. I didn’t say anything for few secs, and then I said “ok… thanks for letting me know”. Im not sure what I meant by that statement but that’s what came to my mind at that time. I was not surprised, depressed, sad or anything (may be confused 😉 ).

I tried to talk to my manager AD but he is in Japan for a conference 😡 . So I went and talked to KK (another manager, higher level to AD) and he was very surprised because he didn’t even know about this. I told few of my colleagues and they were also shocked. I guess only AD knows the real reason. KK is trying to track him down and kick his ***. lol … I guess I will only get to know the final decision by eob today…

I’m still not sure what I feel, but inner inner mind I’m feeling bit relieved.

Finally the wait is over….

yea rite… thats what I thought….

Update: May 14th, 09

On May 8th, I said “ I guess I will only get to know the final decision by eob today…” Its May 14th today and I still dont know their final decision.  I handed over most of my projects to other people.  I’m still in a standby mode waiting to hear a final decision. Either tell me “we are sorry… but you have to go..” or “hurrayy you are staying..” .. now im more like “chekkuthanum kadalinum nadukku” situation…  lol …

Update: May 28th, 09

I’m not in that situation anymore… things got finalized… today is my last day… hurrayyy!!! (not for loosing the job but for knowing the final decision) ;)…

good luck to everyone out there who lost jobs & searching for one… one more member to your club 🙂

Sleepy Day!!!

Tags

birthday, blog, brother, excuse, Friends, hariharnagar, month, Movie, night, sleepy, tweety, weekend

It’s been almost a month since I logged in here. I thought of writing here whenever good/bad, a disagreement, a fight, or anything that sort happened. But I was too lazy to open this up and write.  In the past 1 month, I got too busy at work… bla bla bla… I think I’m just trying to make up excuses to console me that I didn’t get time to check my blog.. lol. . anyways… 😀

This week was special to me, coz it’s the birthday week. It started off with my bro’s bday, and 2 of my friends’ bdays back to back  🙂 :).. We all are planning to get together for the night and most probably will go for a movie (“Hariharnagar 2”). I have heard bad & good reviews about the movie. But I’m just going to take my chances and watch it.

I’m not getting much to scribble down. I’m feeling very sleepy .. Don’t get me wrong thinking its late night, its just 2:19 pm.

All of you out there, wide awake and reading my blog…  :P… have a great weekend & have lotssssssssss of fun…

Adios…

March ??? Not my month in ‘09

Tags

babies, company, contractor, death, driving, health care, kids, lay off, love, march, month, parents, rip, stop, ticket, violation, Work

I usually hate Sunday evenings & Mondays, especially because of the thought of getting up in the morning to go to work/school. However I never totally disliked a month in a year. Beginning of this year was going totally well & then March came and all the bad things started happening. May be they are not the worse in your eyes but its worse for me.

1^st week – Violation

“If they think I’m going to stop at that stop sign, they’re sadly mistaken!”

Whenever AB & I go to our friends’ place, he is always the driver and I just entertain/torture him with my non stop talking. One day Smit… told me about her mom’s famous kappa biriyani and I just couldn’t stop drooling. She offered me some & I just couldn’t wait till the evening to pick it up. So I drove to her place following the GPS madam’s instructions. This stupid gps ammachi didn’t bother to tell me there was a stop sign coming up 😦 hence I missed it 😀 (ya she is the last person whom I can blame..) . Who knew a cop (on cycle) would be there waiting for someone like me to miss that stop sign. Anyways long story short, I got a $250 traffic violation ticket & I have to take an 8 hr (slow death) traffic class.

2^nd , 3^rd week & 4^th week – Delete (y/n)

These were the weeks of lay offs. I always thought the best field or the safest is the health care field. Well I still think it’s the safest comparatively but nothing is “safe” in this economy. My client company announced there will be a small cut down of resources mid 2^nd week and on Wednesday my coworkers Vid & Apm got their notices saying that they have 2 days left in the company. But they managed to contact some other group and found 2 positions there and moved there. 3^rd week Monday, they lay off 890 FTs and our manager told us that they will cut down the contractors as well. None of us knew who all are going to be kicked out. 3 days later, they announced the names. Luckily I was not one among them, but I really feel bad for the other 3 who had to leave.

The # of projects we are currently working on (incld. me) are very less and we got an email that says they will consider reducing the contractor staffing even more… 😛 hmmm, so nothing is for sure… There is going to be another set of layoffs pretty soon…

4^th week – Deaths

I don’t want to go in details here coz I don’t like to write about deaths. I heard about 3-4 deaths this week and all of them were about kids/babies. I don’t know why HE took them away from their loved ones at a young age itself.  I can’t even think about how their parents must be feeling now. And I really hope & pray that it doesn’t happen to anyone else.  May they all rest in peace!!!!!

I don’t think I need more reasons to dislike this month. Few days are still left in March for the 5^th week and I just can’t wait for the next month…

Dance Baby! Dance…

Tags

2009, competition, dance, Friends, fun, husband, weekend, wife

Several times in my old posts I mentioned that I loveeeee dance & I’m saying it again… I just love it!!! 😛

 A month back we (4 of my friends + me) participated in a semi classical dance competition.  The choreography was really good and it was a song about Lord Ganesha… Most of us messed up here and there but very minimal for the audience to notice 😉 … at least that’s what I think.  It’s really hard to get costumes here for any dances other than bangra or dandia costumes. We didn’t want to use any of those sorts, so we bought materials (net cloth, linings & lace) and stitched it. Thanks to Wal-Mart & Michaels !!!!  We dragged all of our close friends to watch the program. Since most of us have lotsa common friends; the audience list from our side was very less ;). But anyways long story short, surprise… we won first 🙂 🙂 🙂 ….

 

 2 weeks later we (5 of us) participated in a Holi dance program in a nearby temple. It was more of a cinematic dance & most of us enjoyed it during the practice. I think it was mainly bcoz the dance had too many quick movements & we thought “hey best way to burn calories”. Most of us are of the same kind “got a gym less than 2 apts away but too many excuses to stay away from it, like “apartment gym is too small”, “too many guys”… bla bla bla.  Coming back to the topic…this dance was not a competition, so I think the seriousness level was really low (for me at least). May be that’s the reason 😉 we forgot few steps on stage. The very funny part was that, 95% of the other participants were <10 aged 😀 and audience were quite surprised to see us. None of our so called “close” friends showed up for this program… may be bcoz we scared the he** outa them in the last one ;).. well cant blame them… even AB was not there to see the dance; he came exactly 10 minutes after our dance. I wonder whether it was intentional or just a GPS trouble to find the place (like he mentioned) ;).  I’m sure he was pretty scared thinking I might yell 😛 & he was very surprised to see me all chilled.  Actually I was glad he missed the program otherwise he would have seen me counting stars on the stage.

AB: oh Im soo sorry I missed your dance… are you angry?
Me : oh no… its ok hun… :P…
2 other guys: Bcoz of AB we missed our wives’ dance.
(ab was driving them to the temple)
AB: “shocked” :O… “ya coz of meee huh … trying to play safe?”…
Someone: hey our poor husbands missed the dance (so no photos of us L ) so why don’t we dance for them in the tennis court by Rsh’s apartment
Girls: great… sounds good… what do you think guys…
Guys: :O “huh” “hmmm” “erghhh…” nahh thats ok… u guys are tired rite…
us: oh no … thats ok… lets go…

Guys: “damn it” 😦  😦

 — The dialogues in quotes are my imagination from their facial expressions ;)…

We danced again in the Tennis court & made them video tape it again: D… this time w/ less mistakes.

Overall, It was a great day and we had so much fun 🙂