Aditi - birth story - III

From Part 2, here.

Before, writing about my Chennai experiences, I want to thank my two devoted house helps in Bangalore. My maid, Kala, who by taking at least a couple of days off every fortnight, helped me flex my muscles. I did all vessels during that time. I also regularly dried clothes because that was not Kala’s job and did some cleaning on and off. But then, to give her, her due credence, she was and is still damn good (we’ve shifted house though). My cook, Lalitha mami, was great. While Sri always cribbed about her cooking, she wasn’t bad at all. She never missed a day. I had her cook for me both in the morning and the evening. She was literally godsend. She came at a time when I needed someone most – at the start of my second trimester when hunger pangs struck. My previous cook, Krishnamurthy, was also good. But I think he got paid much higher for the same time slot in another place. He took a week off and never came back.

In Chennai, I ate and I slept all I could and generally caught up with loads of friends. My good friend’s mom makes awesome puliyodarai and aviyal (being Iyengars). When I just told him one fine day that I wanted to taste it, he took so much pain to get 2 dabbas for me from his house in Velachery to mine in West Mambalam. A couple of my friends who were new moms, both who’d had c-sec, told me all about their ordeal. I just took the information in, without thinking too much about it or trying to figure out how I would react when my time came. I never did any baby shopping, I never read up about breast-feeding. I just read a lot of fiction which I’d missed during my office days.

Come first week of December, enters my grandma (my mom’s ma) from Hyderabad. We have a picture of all 4 of us together! Well, as soon as she set my eyes on me, she said, I would very likely have a baby boy and in that case, I would deliver at least 2 weeks in advance of my due date. I never asked her too many questions. It is better not to. Never try to reason things out. Just nod. Then in a week’s time, she’d expected my belly to shift downwards indicating some head-fixing and all that. When that didn’t happen, she was anxious because, she had booked her return tickets for the last week of January. This means, she had just about a month to spend with the new-born.

In the meantime, even I was getting a little too restless, I was angry with my dad for having pulled me out of office and work and Bangalore and Sri, way too early. I looked forward to alternate weekend visits by Sri. He worked the other weekends, just Saturdays. Everyday I religiously paced my mottai-maadi (terrace floor) up and down. I walked briskly all throughout my pregnancy period. And, last few weeks did not make any difference. I walked at least for half an hour once or twice a day. Just before my patti (grandma) arrived, I had some anal fissures and piles due to the extensive traveling in the first week of November. I’d traveled from B’lore to Chennai (for my parents’ anniversary), then from Chennai – Coimbatore for the shower and then back to Chennai. Food, heat and some constipation did me in. I suffered like crazy. The doc told me that in case, god forbid, I had to have a c-sec, he will operate on me for my anal thing too. That was scary. I was in bad pain. Regular application of medicines and a bland diet gave me good relief.

To be contd….