Last night I spoke to Appa and Amma, just to let them know that the latest doctors appointment had been uneventful and to try and hammer out dates and airlines with them.
More importantly it was the first time they were seeing my belly, now that it’s reached the undeniably pregnant stage and they were both a little (too) awestruck. My father even had to ask if I hadn’t gained too much weight. The soul of tactfulness, Malayalee parents are.
Ro and I can’t sleep at night because once the lights are off we talk about the kind of parents we think we’re going to be (wonderful, FYI, thank you very much) but more obsessively about the kind of person we think Aditi is going to be. Will she be shy and stubborn like the both of us were when we were kids? Will she hijack some outlying genes and turn out to be a friendly and outgoing baby? We both think that it’s unlikely but stranger things have happened. Will she be a tomboy, a bookworm, a girly girl, an antisocial element?
Will she be a girl at all? A friend told us that her doctor told her she was going to have a girl at 16 weeks but by 6 months said, oops you’re having a boy. Dr. K was very definite about us having a girl, pointing out some definitive lady bits so we’re not worried really but I hate hearing stories like this.
I’m having quite a hard time thinking about buying baby stuff. I already have a huge bag of hand me downs from friends and some gender neutral toys bought while we were in Chile but there has been no progress beyond that point. It’s strange.
There are a couple of things that I am really lusting after despite the fact that they have kept showing up in every other design blog post.
The first is the more classic and that’s the Sapien bookcase.
I think it’s beautiful and I love the idea of stacking books in big piles. I would love to have this as my bedside table since invariably that’s all I ever have on my side of the bed.
The other thing that I want is the Keep Calm and Carry on poster. Until recently I’ve just been surfing through the sneak peeks and House Tours on design*sponge and Apartment Therapy without reading the comments. Now that I have started reading comments I find as ubiquitous as this poster is, people also seem pretty sick of them. Hopefully I do not know of these decorating snobs personally because I love this poster. It reminds me of my sister-in-law, it’s pretty much her unspoken motto and something that I aspire to.
I like the classic red but all the colours are pretty juicy. I think I would also resize the matting so there’s more of a border around the top and bottom.
Today was my monthly doctors appointment and unlike the last appointment where Ro and I were so excited to see the ultrasound we didn’t ask any questions, we managed to clear some basic things with her like how much weight I should gain over the next 18 weeks (15 pounds) and if there’s any food I should absolutely not eat (swordfish). We also found out that barring any complications there would not be any more ultrasounds thanks to the limitations of my insurance, so as Dr. K pointed out I really don’t want to see another ultrasound of Aditi. It was a little disappointing but on the other hand we got to hear her heartbeat for the first time and that was awesome.
Today was also uncharacteristically warm - 18 degrees centigrade - fabulous! It’s supposed to snow on the weekend since this is Indiana and the weather is famously schizophrenic here. However since I hardly left the house in January and had to do little or no walking outside the house, I have to say I miss the blanket of snow covering the ground. It made everything seem so mysterious, cosy yet menacing. I also liked to make the analogy that like me, the earth was waiting to burst forth and bloom ; )
This bit of the pregnancy is getting to be a little anti climatic…there’s no more morning sickness, which disgusting as it is provides a focus for your emotions, you’re just waiting for it to be over and in the coming months there is nothing much that will change. I will get bigger and bigger and sleeping will continue to get more and more uncomfortable. I don’t know, the warm weather has stirred up some longing that it’s June already and Aditi is here.
I’ve also heard some good and bad news, someone I know is pregnant (yay!) and someone I know just had a miscarriage. This is maybe the second or third time that things haven’t gone right for this person and I just don’t know what to say. It’s sometimes so hard to commiserate long distance, in person one doesn’t depend solely on words. I know when I speak to her she’ll sound brave and upbeat but I also know it’s a front and I don’t know know what to do with that.
I have finally begun showing, or rather I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I am showing. Although my rational mind knows that I am pregnant and not fat, there is a part of me that is reading up on diet tips a little too eagerly. Although I am not a dieter or an exerciser by nature, my changing body seems to have triggered this response in my mind that I need to lose weight. I think I am afraid that after having a baby I will be destined to be fat (or fatter to be honest). This is such a concern for me that I am shocked by my own vanity. I love clothes and dressing up and looking hot as much as the next woman but because I was so thin till I turned 23 or 24 I was never bothered by the weight I’d gained after getting married. I think I’d always assumed I could lose it when I wanted and it was a relief not having people trying to feed me up.
However the last two years have been challenging for me because I finally realised that I wasn’t magically becoming slimmer and in fact my weight was creeping up way part pleasantly rounded/healthy and into the dreaded overweight category. Not that I was unduly bothered by it but I did make an effort to make it to the gym as much as I could to try and least be active and healthy, if not thin. I was just sick of the word thin, it’s so abused in the media and now to me thin connotes anorexic/sick.
Now my weight has become one of my underlying anxieties about my pregnancy (along with labour and hemorrhoids). I am not inclined in the least to diet but I worry that I may have put on more weight than is ideal. I’m afraid that I won’t lose the weight and just become more and more matronly until I become invisible as a woman and am just another mom. Nearly all my friends who are mothers still carry around a goodly percentage of the weight they gained while pregnant and complain of how hard it is to lose it when you don’t have the time to spend on yourself.They talk about this almost obssesively - and this more than the never ending anecdotes about their children is one of the things I find boring about motherhood.
and I am obviously well on my way there.
I’m listening to the Killers cover of Romeo & Juliet but somehow their cover doesn’t make me tear up spontaneously like the original one does. I wonder if I’d heard this version first whether it would have made it to the erratic & eclectic list of my favourite songs. I don’t think so.
Is it sad that this is the bed I currently love the most? It’s like a pale imitation of the bed I sleep on at my parent’s home. My great grandmother apparently once gave birth or almost gave birth in it. It’s ok, I have a new mattress.
This is the other bed/headboard I’m craving. Do you think if I used just the regular bed metal bedframe and a bedskirt (or whatever they’re called) it would look bad with the headboard or not in keeping with it’s “Eastern” character?
What do you think? Option A or B? Wooden bedframe or metal with a box? Should I make a surveymoneky poll the next time I solicit your opinion?
Yesterday Am. & I went to Michigan City to the outlet mall there. There are insane sales going on, but since I am pregnant something stopped me from going nuts over everything although Am. pointed out that I wouldn’t be pregnant forever. [Something called Rohit who met us there later, just in time to stop me from buying the cutest pair of shoes in Banana Republic by pointing out that my feet are likely to swell anytime now.]
I did manage to get a couple of shirts and a pair of maternity jeans. I am trying to work out a capsule wardrobe. So now I have a couple of casual/semi formal blouse/tees, a cardigan, a cute little black dress and a dressy shirt plus of course my first pair of maternity jeans and a pair of hand-me-down black trousers. I think this should work out quite well. I want to get a couple of accessories like a statement necklace and maybe a big chunky bracelet and a couple of flats when the weather warms up [and presumably when my feet are done swelling].
I do want Amma to bring me a couple of caftans from Anokhi. I love their prints and they do them in a really soft mul-mul that makes them ultra-comfortable.
I have been dreaming about what the baby is going to need, as well as how I’m going to do up the house. The saddest part about the whole thing is that I am sure that something is going to screw up. We get Ro’s relocation bonus around the same time that I am due. This means that we will rent a house/apartment only after I have a baby and then I am going to organize all the stuff we need from scratch while dealing with sleepless nights et al.
I know my parents are going to be there and I am depending on them to keep me sane but at the same time I don’t know how much they can do or how much I want to delegate. Currently the scenario I am working involves them staying at home while Ro and I do the actual shopping. I don’t know though. My mom likes to shop and it would be cruel and unusual to make her sit at home even if it’s with her first grandchild.
Whenever I talk to Ro he keeps telling me that it’s all going to be ok without making it clear to me how he sees it working out. This makes me pretty pissed off and then we fight and then we make up because this is the best trimester ever! I do believe it is going to be ok though. It’s all a question of how I present my questions to Ro. Requests should sound manageable – what is the timeline you envision for moving house for example has elicited a more specific response than how are we going to move and have a baby and shop, although I am in fact asking the same thing.
Anyway, apart from Ikea what are your favourite resources for doing up your house? Something affordable being the most important criterion although I am willing to relax this somewhat for unusual & gorgeous? hmm…? Help anone?
There are so many things to be said about being pregnant, but somewhere after leaving Kottayam I feel like I lost my voice. It’s so hard to blog about stuff that you feel strongly about. I know this seems incredibly weird as more and more people get out there sharing more and more of what is important to them but more and more I feel like making the odd cryptic utterance and then deal with trying to decipher what I meant later.
Stuff like boobs stomach race bigger first. Ultimate winner stomach. Ok, there was nothing very cryptic about that. Seriously though - my body is not freaking me out as much as I thought it would. Maybe later when I can actually see her moving around in there but so far my body is reassuringly still familiar. I am clearly pregnant now. Although this season doesn’t do much in the way of enabling me to flaunt my body publicly ( you know, for parking etc), when I am at home, it’s amazingly wonderful to me to look down at my belly and know that my child, my baby, my Aditi kuttoose is in there.
My boobs on the other hand are just amazing. I’ve become used to not having any at all to having something there, thanks to an all round weight gain that I could have happily done without, but now I have bazonga boobs that are just out of control. Seriously not a week goes by without them expanding into a new zip code. I am a little scared of these boobs now. It’s like they’ve been hibernating till now but now they have awakened to their lifes purpose and they are on a mission now. A mission to feed those octuplets that were born recently.
I’ve heard that breast feeding can be hard, not from my mom though, who acts as though we fell painlessly from her womb and latched on without a fuss and only later became the demons that she recalls us to be. I think about all these things - like breast feeding and labour and will Ro still love me or will he love the baby more. Ro occasionally counters with will I still love him or will I love the baby more and depending on where my hormone level is, I worry about that too - not, if will I no longer love him but will he be jealous of the baby? Luckily for me, this is the best trimester and I know its all going to be ok. Thank god it didn’t occur to me when I was the hot mess in my first trimester in Chile who wept all the time because I couldn’t go out anywhere because it was smoky and everyone else was getting drunk just to make me feel left out.
What else do I have to say about being pregnant - it’s kind of sucky and wonderful all at the same time. I’m frequently constipated, always have the sniffles, can’t sleep at night and all this is considered pretty normal and I’m lucky I don’t have it worse. Then you go online and look at http://www.lennartnilsson.com/ and you realise to bitch about all this is just petty. I am growing a human person inside me and creepy as that it, its also so freakishly awesome.
My big problem is that I can’t figure out if I can feel the baby kicking or not. There is a more or less constant rumble in the area previously occupied by my stomach but I fear mistaking gas for baby movements. A lot of people say it feels like butterflies but whatever I’m experiencing is a lot more ungenteel than that. Actually I’m pretty sure I can feel her, but how much am I supposed to be feeling? Should I be able to count X no. of movements in a hour?
Last night I couldn’t sleep, nothing new and the new mattress is really soft so it’s twice as hard to fall asleep. Anyway, last night I couldn’t fall asleep and every time I’d move from one side to another, I swear I could feel her kick me,
In the morning, I was all, Ro! Aditi was kicking me and he was all, was she kicking or was she kicking you? I was like, she was Kicking me, so then Ro goes, Aditi don’t kick your mother, and I knew in that moment this was just a preview.
I’ve spent the whole day with a splitting headache. An afternoon nap and 2 Crocin later I am none the better. I just discovered Ro’s stash of Vicks in the bathroom and have slathered my face in it hoping that the burning sensation would provide a few precious minutes of distracton from the pounding in my head. So far it’s working, so let me share whatever bloggable news I have. (There is no unbloggable news but it sounds better)
Ro and I finally decided that we are going to have the baby in South Bend. In the end although I would have preferred to move to Chicago at least a couple of weeks before the baby and before Ro starts work, it just works out better to have the baby here and make my mother make the tough decisions of whether or not to throw away the fake butterflies I have been hoarding from a baby shower I threw months ago or are those sheets too faded and will I ever wear those pants again?
I am simeltaneously dreading and not able to bear the wait for my mom to come. She’s going to be here for 2 or 3 months telling me the best way to do everything. I love my mom, I do, I swear! but I know I am going to have at least one big fight with her. Then after she leaves my mother in law gets here. I know I’m not going to fight with her but that’s really no credit to me. And then; my sister in law has offered to come. Of all the offers I have this is the least certain and I think the one with the least pressure. Hopefully I won’t have to be alone with Baby Aditi until she’s at least 9 months old. She should be crawling by then.
Thank God for loving (and bossy) Indian families.
