| or ||

Tags

baby, delivery, husband, pregnant

I’m taking this tag from Boo & CA, almost 3 yrs after they completed it!

1. WAS YOUR PREGNANCY PLANNED?

Yes Yes Yes otherwise I don’t know how I would have reacted.

2. WERE YOU MARRIED AT THE TIME?
Yes (Thank God!)

3. WHAT WERE YOUR REACTIONS?
well… the first time I took the home pregnancy test it was a negative.
I was not too thrilled but few days later I got a clear positive.
The reaction/emotion can’t be explained. We were really thrilled but at the same time scared.

4. WAS ABORTION AN OPTION FOR YOU?
No

5. HOW OLD WERE YOU?
26

6. HOW DID YOU FIND OUT YOU WERE PREGNANT?
Home Pregnancy Test.

7. WHO DID YOU TELL FIRST?
AB’s parents.

8. DUE DATE?
End of October

9. DID YOU HAVE MORNING SICKNESS?
No

10. WHAT DID YOU CRAVE?
whatever my amma used to cook.

11. WHO/WHAT IRRITATED YOU THE MOST?
Few people..

12. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CHILD’S SEX?
Boy

13. DID YOU WISH YOU HAD THE OPPOSITE SEX OF WHAT YOU WERE GETTING?
Nope
(I’ll have my chance again 😉 )

14. HOW MANY POUNDS DID YOU GAIN THROUGHOUT THE PREGNANCY?
24 lbs

15. DID YOU HAVE A BABY SHOWER?
Yup. Two.

16. WAS IT A SURPRISE OR DID YOU KNOW?
I had a hint about the first one (from office)
2nd one I had nooo freaking idea. I still can’t believe AB could keep a secret like that from me for a month.

(I guess I’ll have to be more careful about him huh)

17. DID YOU HAVE ANY COMPLICATIONS DURING YOUR PREGNANCY?
Yes

18. WHERE DID YOU GIVE BIRTH?
California

19. HOW MANY HOURS WERE YOU IN LABOR?
34 hours

20. WHO DROVE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL/BIRTH CENTER?
AB

21. WHO WATCHED YOU GIVE BIRTH?
Husband, 1 ob/gyn, 2 nurses, and 1 resident.

22. WAS IT NATURAL OR C-SECTION?
Natural.

23. DID YOU TAKE MEDICINE TO EASE THE PAIN?
Yes Yes Yes!!

24. HOW MUCH DID YOUR CHILD WEIGH?
7 lbs 5 oz

25. WHEN WAS YOUR CHILD ACTUALLY BORN ?
A day after my due date…
He planned to arrive perfectly on his dad’s birthday 🙂

26. WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHEN THE DOCTOR ANNOUNCED THE SEX OF THE BABY?
I was not surprised. I knew it!

27. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST REACTION ON SEEING THE BABY?
He is the first newborn I’ve ever held :).
Again, the feeling/reaction can’t be explained.

28. DID YOU CRY?
Yes

29. WHAT DID YOU NAME HIM/HER?
Appoos

30. HOW OLD IS YOUR FIRST BORN TODAY?
10 Months

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.

October 2010 to July 2012

Tags

2010, 2011, 2012, baby, boy, coming back, Food, husband, kunju, love

wow it has been a very long time since I logged in or even visited my blog.
This doesn’t mean that this is a coming back blog. I might go away again and disappear for a long time. Who knows!

I hope Vimmu, Priya, Anu etc still remember me 🙂

So many things happened/changed in the last 2 years. My perspective, priorities, likes, dislikes etc…

I still like coffee, food (of course!) and yes I still talk a lot.
I haven’t been to a movie theater in the past 10 months (there is a reason for that)
I don’t like to go for shopping as much as before but the little stinginess that I had before is still staying intact 😀
Working in the same company as I was in 2010.
Made few new friends. Few old ones, whom I considered close, turned out to be not that genuine.

Still married to the same guy and planning to stay with him till death do us part … (cheesy..)

what else… hmm… hmmm… oh ya…

I’m a Mom (amma) to a naughty 9 month old baby boy now 🙂 …. how could I forget that big change in my life 🙂

 

 

 

 

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 🙂