The Diapers – They are here !

Introducing my son – he gets his nose from Vishal and the frown from me ! And he was born on my birthday, 27.10.2010.

Happy B’day in advance !

My birthday is coming up in a couple of days. I don’t know if its my advanced state of pregnancy or enforced house arrest but apparently my family feels sorry enough to shower me with gifts ! We were thinking about getting a 40’’ LCD T.V. for the bedroom but it was stretching our budget a bit.  As Vishal and I are both sitcom junkies and  I am going to be watching a lot of T.V. in the next couple of months, it was a good idea. However, we balked at the price and didn’t feel like settling for either a smaller size or a Plasma screen instead and decided to postpone the purchase by a few months. My other options were to change my phone or get a new camera. All gift ideas are electronic heavy due  to my distorted physical state. I am due a major shopping blowout once I can bear to look at myself in the mirror again, having survived the last six months in three pairs of XL Fab India kurtas and a bunch of T – shirts Rahul left behind. Talk about maternity fashion.

The phone was of course being pushed by Vishal in a big way. You’d think he was on Nokias  payroll, the rate at which he tries to convince people to change phones. I decided against getting a new phone on two counts. First, my current phone is perfectly adequate for texting and making calls ( that is what phones are for, people ) I considered upgrading to a phone with a good camera as I have to carry a digital camera now for taking photos and video clips in the opd. However, I am still not really convinced that the clarity of the pictures taken on any phone equals that of the camera.( I was considering the newly launched Nokia N8 with a 12 MP camera, I currently use a 7.2 MP Sony Cybershot) But again the  Rs 25,000 price tag proved an effective deterrent. How hard is it to lug around a digital camera anyway ? Also, as I am going to be at home for the next three months, there doesn’t seem to be much point in changing my phone now.

The camera idea came up because I know the kid is going to wind up getting photographed  to within an inch of its life in the first few months. Oh look, he/she is blinking ! Let us document it for posterity ! Click, click ! We were planning to get it in January as a birthday gift for my father-in-law but in view of the imminent arrival of the photo-subject decided to prepone the purchase. After much googling and multiple consultations, we bought the Nikon D3100, an entry level SLR camera with HD video capability as well. Those are all the specs  you get from me, what is this, a tech blog ?

We took the camera out for a trial run to Lodi Gardens today and I am rather pleased with the results. The weather was lovely and I got my daily recommended dose of Vitamin D.

38  weeks today

Now coming to my actual B’day gift. Vishal ordered me a Kindle 3 from Amazon which arrived yesterday ! He has a pretty bad track record with gifts, ranging from the banal to the truly bizarre. Case in point- this wooden snake which he picked up in Kodaikanal.

But the Kindle, that is a stroke of genius ! I have obviously kept an eye on Kindle since it was launched but was never too enthusiastic because of the cost of purchasing e- books on Amazon.( This entire entry seems to be a dirge on the cost of this and that, just reflects on the poverty of my soul )They cost about 10$ each, at which price I can buy a paperback. Also, I don’t like reading books on my laptop so I was not too sure about an e-book reader.

Anyway, to come back to the Kindle, I just finished reading Andre Agassi’s autobiography “Open” on it and I have to declare it an unqualified success. It is really light and portable , does not feel too delicate, the absence of backlighting ensures almost zero strain on the eyes and you can read on the loo. You can also read in any position like a paperback, holding it in either hand as the buttons for clicking back and forth are available on both the left and right edge. Mine is the basic Wi-Fi model sans 3G. The only drawback I can see till now is that it requires a case to transport it around. The original Kindle cases cost almost half as much as the device and cheaper versions don’t seem to be  available in Delhi. e-bay.in is selling one but doesn’t have a photo available. I may buy that or ask Rahul to pick one up in Hong Kong.

As should be obvious, I wouldn’t be this thrilled with it if I hadn’t solved the problem of getting cheap e-books. In the interest of not getting jailed for piracy, I refuse to elaborate further but Torrent Zindabad !        

The curse of the symptomatically-pregnant

I was planning a blog entry listing the top five pregnancy symptoms I didn’t have. It was supposed to be very smug and ha-ha and I-am-wonder-pregnant-woman  and intended to rub all pregnant womens noses in it. Of course, I was just begging for divine retribution and God obliged. But more about that later.

Lets do the top five pregnancy symptoms that never were first and get to the divine thunder and lightning part later.

1.       Morning Sickness – All these years I’d always thought I was a very pukey kind of person with an overactive gag reflex. I puke before exams, I puke at bad smells, I puke on giant wheels, I puke on mountain roads and I even puke after a prolonged bout of coughing. So, I obviously assumed that my first trimester would be one long puke fest. And as I took a pregnancy test prompted by a prolonged bout of nausea and diarrhoea, it seemed the prophecies would come true. However, the nausea turned out to be as a result of a bout of food poisoning and soon settled down. Then came a lull where I waited for the dreaded morning sickness to set in armed with all the information that my aunt and the internet could provide. But as I neared the end of my first trimester with nary a puke in sight, I had to admit that I’d managed to beat the odds. Whoopee !

2.       Mood Swings – I greeted the two purple lines on my pregnancy test with a flood of tears and six hours of raving and ranting. My chief grouse was of course that the much planned for Italy trip was now postponed indefinitely. Once I got over the initial shock , I’ve been surprisingly calm and balanced. Of course, the fact that Vishal wasn’t around for the first six months and I really couldn’t snap at his parents probably helped. Barring a couple of episodes of snapping at my sister ( which may not be hormonal ) its been remarkably smooth sailing.

3.       Food Cravings – Generally my diet is extremely craving based. I have four designated stops on my commute home when I can stop to pick up aloo tikki ( the thela next to the hospital ), bhel puri ( at Sunder Nagar ), coconut water ( outside the park before Chirag Delhi flyover ) or  Shawarma ( at PVR Saket ). I invariably make a stop at one of these joints everyday depending on my mood and level of hunger. I also stop to pick up a bhutta almost everyday when in season. Sometimes I’ll stop off at two or even three of these places. But this is my regular routine pre, intra and hopefully, post pregnancy. Maybe, my eating habits are so governed by my cravings that I had no room for adding anymore pregnancy induced ones. So, no midnight ice cream trips. I have been obsessively consuming bananas and sprouts. But that is more my obsession with eating healthy than any craving per se.

4.       Skin and hair changes – There has been almost no change in my complexion. I am genuinely glad to have been spared the horrifying acne which I’ve seen on some colleagues. My dark circles are as prevalent as before and I have a noticeable lack of any glow. My hair has become even more frizzy and dry and unmanageable. I’ve probably also sprouted a few dozen more white strands than before. But if you encountered my tricoloured ( black, white and  mehendi – orange ) shaggy mane you’d agree that any pregnancy damage is trivial.

5.       Constipation or Diarrhoea – I am blessed with bowel movements as regular as clockwork. Just to rub it in, I also had no heartburn, no headaches, no varicose veins etc.

I’ve been having this nagging back pain for the last week, but I just assumed it was a sprain because of bad posture. A couple of days back, it suddenly got worse and I was in too much pain to even finish my opd. Then I realized that I had a new shooting pain radiating to my left leg which didn’t improve in any position. By the time, I got home I was in bad shape. Even a tiny movement of my spine would send teeth rattling jolts of pain down my leg. I was sweating and crying trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in. I finally managed to get to sleep lying on my side on a hard mattress on the floor. I can’t even describe the agony of trying to turn over. The next morning, my spinal muscles had developed a painful spasm limiting all movement. Anyway, I’ve taken leave and am gradually improving. I spent a couple of days resembling Frankensteins aunt,  walking with my right hip stuck out and dragging my left leg around. But my spinal mobility is improving gradually and hopefully I shall be as good as new by the time labour hits. The big question is - do I go back to work for a week or just kick back and relax and enjoy the last couple of weeks of uninterrupted sleep before the storm hits ?

By the way, 37 weeks tomorrow so no more Proleuton injections. Who-hoooo !