L is for Lucky

or not!

I was lucky that I got pregnant, when so many women have problems.
I thought not, once the morning  all-day-sickness started!

I considered myself unlucky that I gave birth to Pickles in the beginning of the eighth month.
My doctor said I was lucky. Born at 2.5Kg, he would have weighed at least 4 kg if he was full term. 'He saved you a lot of trauma', she said!

I thought I was unlucky that I was cheated out of two months of pregnancy.
Maybe I was lucky that I was spared the most difficult part!

I was unlucky, I thought,  because I had to give birth without any pain medications at all.
The doctor said I was lucky, because a few hours of intense pain was nothing compared to the backache I could have had as a side-effect of the epidural.

Pickles was unlucky, I thought, to have not got two more months in the womb.
But I guess, he is lucky to have an extra two months in his mum's arms.

It's all a matter of perspective, don't you think?

K is for Keeping fit

I am not an extremely fit person. But I try to make sure I eat healthy and exercise regularly, although I tend to hit road blocks every now and then. When it comes to fitness, I'm not a very picky person. As in, as long as I have company, I'll go with the flow. If I find a friend who is a swimming enthusiast, I'll gladly swim. If I find company for a run, I will run. Call it a weak mind, but a buddy system is my best form of training.

I remember the best form I was in was probably around 10 years ago. I was single, had a good job and lived with my parents. Every morning, I would wake up at 3:30 am (insane, I know!) and head to the gym at 4 am. And then I would go for a run with my coach and a bunch of others. Coach was a veteran runner who represented India in the Asian games. He was still competing in the veteran category. For some reason, he had taken me under his wing and decided to coach me to get in good form. I would gladly accompany him for his morning jog (which was, of course a run for me!), irrespective of whether the others would turn up or not. Then around 5am, we would get back to the gym to hit the machines or join the cardio class, depending on whatever was the schedule for the day. Coach encouraged me to keep a record of what I was doing at the gym and what I was eating, also the amount of weight/inches lost or how close I was getting to my ideal weight and fitness levels. And during that one year, I think I was in the fittest form of my life, and why not? I was working out for almost 2 hours, six days a week.

And then I moved! Singapore is a runner's paradise. I would see runners everywhere and at any time of the day, be it hot afternoons, early mornings or late nights! There are tracks and park connectors all over town and what's more, it is safe to run at any time of the day or night. So, I got R to accompany me in the beginning and soon he was bitten by the bug too. We ran a few 10Ks in the first year and a half-marathon in the next. Then, we met friends who made running even more fun. We started training for the marathon together. R and I ran every day in the evenings. And every weekend involved a stay-over with friends followed by an early morning run and then a much-deserved breakfast/brunch. And we all finished the full marathon that year. Although the training was fun, I swore I would never put my body through that again (that is a story for another day). After finishing the marathon, I ran a few times again, but never so regularly.

Later, R and decided to get as fit as we could, when we could still do it. We both joined the gym and it became a regular thing again after work, three days a week. We would both push each other, eat healthy and follow a very strict regimen. We even went swimming once a week. And then, work or someone visiting would get in the way and our exercise routine would be destroyed. We would attempt to start again but only to let something disrupt it and from there things just went downhill. We played badminton with friends once a week, and that remained the only form of exercise for a long  time.

And then I got pregnant and I still continued to play badminton. But I had some complications with the pregnancy and then from then on, I was forbidden from any strenuous form of exercise. I went swimming once in a while and walked very often but that was it. After Pickles was born, however, I had no form of exercise at all. My only form of exercise was running for the bus and rocking him to sleep.

All that has slowly started to change. A month ago, I decided enough is enough and that I need more me-time. I started to go for a swim once a week with a friend. Then, this weekend, I went for a run in the morning, and it felt amazing! I ran while R walked Pickles in his stroller. I realized how much I miss the rush. And I want to do it more often. I am even contemplating joining a class, so I am forced to go but I fear it may be a bit too overwhelming and that I might give up something else. It's hard being a mom. It's bad enough to leave Pickles every morning and go to work. But doing something in the non-work time is another level of guilt altogether.  But I also think I owe this to myself and my sanity. Perhaps a run every weekend by myself, a kickboxing class maybe. But I'm hoping I can do more eventually. Wish me luck!

J is for Jackdaws

For all of you who've been asking for the next part of the Escapade series, I'm sorry for taking so long but thank you for waiting. And trust me, the story will be worth the wait! If you haven't read the first part of the story, you can find it here.

So, there they were, all four of them, wondering what to do next. Now, the reality of the situation hit them. Tomorrow morning, they knew Uncle Chot would realize that Vee was missing and would immediately call their homes to find out what he could. They had to do something. They also had to make sure that none of their families found out, or they would all be in a lot of trouble.

"Let her stay here and we'll keep her hidden", Shee said.

'But for how long?!, Your parents will eventually find out and then what?", retorted Mee.

Everyone came up with ideas, only to be shot down by someone else. Finally, one thing was for sure, they had to get Vee out of town and to Bangalore and they had to do it without getting caught! The reasons for choosing Bangalore were simple: Vee and Mee had actually grown up there and had a lot more friends there who could help (or so they thought). Also, Vee's parents lived there. Vee was sure they'd be very happy to see her and would eventually come around to see her side of the story. Methodical as ever, they decided they would break the plan into little bits and take it one step at a time.

Part one of the plan was to convince Chot that they had nothing to with Vee's disappearance and also to keep Vee underground, until they could take her out of town. Specific instructions were then given to Vee and Shee. Sure, they could have fun but Vee could not be seen or heard by anyone else. Shee could go out of her room but Vee had to stay inside at all times. They were also not to let anyone inside the room. Shee had to also make sure she would herself answer all the phone calls that were made to her house, so that nobody would get the least bit suspicious. Soo and Mee had no phones in their homes (yes, it was that long ago!). So people would always call their neighbours' places and ask for them. The neighbours were of course nice enough to oblige as long the calls were not routine or didn't end in long conversations. Soo and Mee had to look out for phone calls to their neighbour's houses and make sure their parents didn't answer them.

Once their plan was made, they all hugged good night and Soo and Mee went home for the night. Everyone spent the night tossing and turning, thinking of what the next morning would bring.

The next day morning, as expected, Chot called Mee's neighbour's place. As Vee's best friend, she was the first one Chot suspected. Promptly, Mee went and picked up the call. Chot told Mee that Vee's relatives had not found Vee on the bus she was supposed to be on. He asked her if Vee had said anything to her. Mee feigned shock and concern over her friend's disappearance. Chot asked if he could speak to her in person and asked Mee to come over to their house to have a chat. He also called Shee's place to ask if she knew anything. Shee also played her role well and said she'd come over with Mee to see if they could help.

Shee left Vee hiding in her room and with Mee, went to Aunty K's place. They had discussed in detail what they should or should not say. At all costs, they had to stick to their story. Aunty K and Chot were very nice at first and seemed concerned but more about the fact that they would be held responsible for Vee's disappearance, rather than be worried about her well-being. They asked Mee, when she spoke to her friend, the last time. Very innocently, Mee replied that Vee had said good bye a couple of days ago and had forbidden them from coming to the bus-station. She also told Chot that Vee was unhappy about being sent off. They told Chot that they were very worried about their friend and would help any way they could.

Chot, who was initially very quiet and mild, got very frustrated that he was getting no information out of the girls and turned hostile. The girls still stuck to their story. Finally Chot threatened Mee, "I am sure you know more than you admit but if anything should happen to Vee, I will come and catch your neck!". Forever the loyal friends, they refused to budge an inch and just stuck to their story. Finally, Aunty K told them to leave and to call them immediately if Vee were to contact them. They assured Aunty K that they would and left.

The girls heaved a sigh of relief and quickly rode back to Shee's place and related the morning's events to Vee and Soo. They described everything in great detail and had a good laugh about Chot's threats and how they had got the best of him. Part one of their plan one was a success! Now on to plan two: Buying train tickets to Bangalore.

...to be continued.

I is for Idli

We had idlis for breakfast today. I know those of you who know me, will be very very surprised. I used to be, until very recently a person who did not like idlis at all.

(For those of you who have never heard of them, idlis are a form of steamed savoury cakes, made with black lentils and rice. They are a very traditional south Indian breakfast, believed to be healthy)

From a young age, Idlis were just some of those things that I did not like. Home-made, restaurant-bought and made in any way/form, they were a no-no, except maybe the spicy rava idlis that Ma used to make. But yeah, white idlis and I were always miles apart. Whenever Ma made idlis for breakfast, I used to just devour copious amounts of the sambar she made with maybe one idli or two if I was caught. And the darshini idlis happened only when either one of us or Ma was sick. Since I was always assigned the duty of buying the idlis, I used to always make sure I had alternatives.

When I moved to Singapore, I remember having Sambar idlis at Komala's once and I just loved them. Maybe because it had a lot of ghee added, maybe because it was little idlis dunked in a lot of sambar or maybe it just reminded me of home. Still, I never liked the plain white idlis per se. But I became a lot tolerant to them. I guess that's what growing up does to you. You do love or hate anything with the passion that you did when you were younger.

When I married R, my mother-in-law bought me a set of idli moulds. Now, although I could tolerate them, they were never ever made in my kitchen. Although R doesn't mind eating them once in a while, he is not exactly a big fan. Another thing that discouraged me is the amount of washing involved after making idlis. I hated that my kitchen sink used to get full after them. So, the idli-moulds just sat in a corner of my kitchen, unused, for a very long time. They would get used only when either set of parents visited.

When I went to India this time with Pickles, Ma had made idlis. She decided that Pickles had to try some or he would be idli-deprived for the rest of his life. But to her conviction and my surprise, he really loved them. Then she made them another day, he liked them again. So, Ma made sure she had written and sent the recipe with me, just in case I feel like making them sometime. As usual, she was right! With my vision of making Pickles a good eater, I try and cook as many new things for him as I can. And one day I just made idlis for breakfast on a whim. Just the eagerness on Pickles' face was good enough encouragement for me to make them again. And again. And again. So, idlis are now a staple breakfast for us once a week. I don't even mind eating them so much now.

Motherhood has brought about a lot of changes in me. This is just one minuscule thing. Maybe I will tell Pickles this story when he grows up. I'm not sure how I'd take it though, if he begins to hate them the way I did when I was a kid. Will I be more tolerant and understanding? Or will I just make sure he eats them, whether he likes it or not? I'm not entirely sure. Only time will tell.

H is for Hero(ine) worship

So, I was browsing through some tabloids the other day. It had pictures and stories about a lot of Bollywood stars. It got me thinking, there are a lot of these young actors today who are competing for the so-called number one spot. When I was younger (a lot younger!), of course there were a lot of actors and actresses too. But the debate for the numero uno spot was simple. Based on this, people were also broadly categorised under two classes.You were either a Madhuri Dixit fan or a Sridevi fan! It was as simple as that and there was no third option!

I remember having been a very ardent Madhuri fan. And my sister A, a fierce Sridevi fan. We used to have routine arguments about who was a better actress. Every time, a movie of one was released, our home would be a battlefield, leading to enormous headaches for Ma. The walls in our rooms were decorated (or rather destroyed) with umpteen posters of the respective actresses. If I got one poster,  A would go out and get two more. It didn't really matter who the better actress was. It was simply a battle of who was the better fan!

I also remember our wars got more intense sometimes and we would slyly tear out the posters in the others’ room. Ok, I’ll admit it, I was the nastier one. I remember having drawn a moustache and a beard on one of A’s favourite posters with a permanent marker. I don’t exactly remember why I did it. How much she cried after that?! She swore she would never talk to me again in her life! She did, though!

We had a good laugh about this a few days ago when we watched English Vinglish together. I loved Sridevi in the movie and I’m grown up enough to even admit it openly. So, I asked her “ I don’t really care any more but who is your most favourite actress today?”. “Why, Sridevi, of course!”, she said. A has now officially won the best fan award! And I wont deny her the title at all! In fact, if anything, I love her a little more for her loyalty even after all these years.

G is for GOODNIGHT MOON

For those of you who have actually heard of the book, I'm sure you either have babies or have grown up with this book yourself. The book is about a bunny who doesn't want to go to bed. So, he says good night to all the things around him. So he keeps saying good night and you hope your little one will doze off by the time he's done. I've heard a lot of parents who say that their kids loved this book. I wondered why!

It has lines that go something like this:

Good night comb and good night brush.
Good night Nobody, Good night mush!
And good night to the old lady whispering hush!

I find these lines almost eerie, don't you think! But Pickles too, for some reason, loves this book. Maybe it is the colour scheme of the book, alternating between black and white and colour. Maybe it is the rhyming words. I don't really know! Imagine my plight when I find Pickles actually smiling at the page which shows a blank white page saying Good night Nobody! Until I figured he was probably looking at the adjacent page which shows a bowl of food and a spoon saying Good night, mush. I think the food bowl seemed familiar to him and hence the smile of recognition.

But this post is also about something else. It is about the myth of parents putting babies to bed or rather scheduling sleep times for baby. The babies trick us into thinking that we put them to bed when in reality, they decide exactly when they want to sleep! They seem  to be thinking, "Take that, Gina Ford!"

I read a lot of books during my pregnancy. I wish Pickles had read at least a few of them. Because it seems like he knows nothing about what he is expected to do! He just does his own thing!
Coming back to sleeping habits, I had read that babies eventually get used to the rocking and it is best that they are not rocked when they are little. I followed this very diligently as soon as he was born for the first few months. I would snarl at anybody who as much as gently rocked the baby. I'm sure people thought I was crazy but in order to avoid the wrath of a sleepless mother, they all meekly agreed.

And then, one day, Pickles fell ill. He had some issues, due to which he refused to sleep. I tried everything and this little thing wouldn't as much as close his eyes. It was around this time that I got a new nanny. She offered to put him to sleep and sleep-deprived as I was, I handed him to her and went straight to bed. I woke up to the pleasant sight of a dozing baby. When I asked her, she said she had just carried him around and he had fallen asleep. So, after that, that is what we did. Eventually, even that did not work! Around this time, I had to go back to work. In my absence, I know the nanny rocked him to sleep a few times. I don't blame her. I know it is so hard to put my own baby to sleep. I can only imagine what it must be like to do the same thing for another's. So, there began the saga of rocking Pickles to sleep. At around the same time, I read an article that said it is ok to rock babies  to sleep and that will grow out of it as they grow slightly older. What it didn't mention, though,is the timeline.

After that, the nanny rocked him to sleep for his daytime naps. At night time though, I'm glad he fell asleep at my breast. So, I wasn't exactly complaining. As long as we all were happy, things were good.  Everyone else, however, thought this was a bad practice. I might have agreed if I was not on the other (read sleepless) side. If you want to judge, judge away but not until you've put my little  monster to bed at least once. My mother-in-law tsk tsked our putting-baby-to-sleep practices and vowed to make changes when she visited. She stayed with us for a month and tried. Eventually, she conceded and in fact started rocking him to sleep too.  When I went to India for a month-long-trip, my mum tried her hand at putting the baby to sleep in a lot of other ways. Nothing worked. In the end, rocking still rocked!

It has been a good one year now.  We have a good bedtime routine. We have a warm bath followed by a gentle massage. Then we read a book together, most often it is Good night moon! After that he is ready to drift off to la-la land. We still rock him to sleep but we don't have to, always! Sometimes, he just drifts off to sleep. I am hoping he will outgrow rocking to sleep soon. If not, I will just include it in my exercise regime!

PS: As I finished writing this, it occurred to me that I could have done this post for R : Rock-a-bye-baby. But, too late! I'm too pooped to write another one now!

F is for Friends and Family

Family has been very important to me for a long time and has always taken priority over everything else. Needless to say, so have friends. I do not have 876554 friends on my FB profile but I have a few VERY good friends. In fact,  I can almost count them on my fingers. When I count my blessings,  I  would count my family and friends first. But I digress. This post is about something else.

When I was expecting Pickles, like all expectant moms, I had a plan. My in-laws were supposed to arrive at the end of the 8th month to have the baby shower and stay on until a week or so before the due date. My parents would arrive just as the in-laws would leave and then stay on for a couple of months. So, in any case, the plan was to have either set of parents around when the baby came. But Pickles, I guess, had other plans.

So, when I was somewhere in my 8th month of pregnancy and having a good time with friends, I thought I felt my amniotic fluid (water bag) leak and went to see my doctor at the hospital. Just to be safe, they admitted me and said I had to be on bedrest until the baby came. The baby, however, did not want me to be on bedrest for too long and arrived that very night!(more on that on another day). His arrival caught R and me totally off guard. We had not even decided on a name for him, not to mention, done any baby shopping for him at all. Since he was premature, he had to be in the NICU for a couple of weeks. I, on the other hand, was discharged the next day. I had no family around to help. I had a tiny baby in the NICU, who I had no clue what to do with. And I came back home from the hospital, minus the bump but without a baby. It goes without saying that I was terribly depressed.

I had no clue what I was going to do now. My parents couldn't travel immediately due to my dad's health and for reasons I can't remember, neither could my in-laws. In some sense, I was glad that Pickles was in the NICU, because had he been sent home, I would have freaked out because I had absolutely no idea how to take care of him.

When I came home, I had my friend, A, who did a small ritual to welcome me home, like my mum would have, had she been with me. I remember being so touched, that I held on to her and bawled my eyes out. She left after making sure I was ok and that I had food and after giving specific instructions to R about how to care for me. In the next few days, I went to A's place for several meals like she insisted. The only thing I kept doing was pumping breastmilk like I was advised to, every three hours, and promptly ferry it to the hospital, so that they could feed Pickles. It also helped that A lived closer to my hospital, so travelling back and forth was not so hard, between pumping sessions.

The next few days after that are like a crazy dream. Days just whizzed past with repeated daily visits to the NICU and trying to do some preparation to make  the home ready for the baby. It was at this point that my other friend P, who had her hands full with a 5-month old and another toddler, made sure she sent home-cooked meals for me. Not only that, she made sure she cooked nutritious food like she was given when she had just given birth. How she managed all this with two kids, is really beyond me. Even though I told her I was ok, she just kept sending food until the family arrived.

In between this, I had another friend, Sayesha, who went one step further. Because she lives far away from us, she decided she could not do much from being afar. She arrived with her little girl, Xena and stayed with us for a few days. She cooked meals for me, gave me moral support and also helped me shop for the gazillion things that needed to be bought for the baby. Since she had been through a similar ordeal, her being there provided a lot of comfort for me. At this point, I have to mention Xena, who was my personal stress buster. Having her around helped distract me from the yoyo of depression that I was going through.

Those few days were the hardest days of my life. Watching my little helpless baby in the NICU, dealing with the health issues that come with having a premature baby, dealing with the feelings of guilt that I was somehow responsible for his early arrival, all this was not easy. But I pulled through, thanks to my friends! Eventually, the in-laws arrived just on the day we were supposed to bring Pickles home. Later on, Sayesha even had a post-baby baby shower for me, because I had missed my baby shower. Do I have the greatest friends or what?!

I remember speaking to my mother everyday. She herself was feeling very depressed and helpless because she could not be there. And I would give her detailed accounts of what I ate and what I did etc. She always said "You are blessed to have friends like these. With them around, I'm sure you don't miss family at all." I am indeed blessed. I remember that when I came to Singapore, I used to think I'll never feel at home here. Now, I think, I feel at home and it is not because I'm used to the place. It is the people I met here, my friends, my family!