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Introduction
Let me introduce myself. I'm Rohit .
I'm just another baby, really; and yet , I thought it would be good for me to keep a blog of every thing that happens and every thing I do and research, so if I end up doing this again, I'll be able to look back and see what happened.
I'm just another baby, really; and yet , I thought it would be good for me to keep a blog of every thing that happens and every thing I do and research, so if I end up doing this again, I'll be able to look back and see what happened.
Anyway, I also thought that reading about what I go through it might be interesting to other people who just had baby or are about to or are working their way through having a baby of their own.
So I'll be adding chapters as I grow, so you can follow along as I progress through the various steps of my childhood. But first, a quick introduction.
So I'll be adding chapters as I grow, so you can follow along as I progress through the various steps of my childhood. But first, a quick introduction.
*****
My dad, Mr. B.M. Raghavendra, is a computer programmer living in Bangalore and working in TCS. He graduated from UBDT Engineering college, Davanagere in the spring of 2000. He has been married to my mom, Ms. Sridevi, on 10th Feb-2007.
I born on April 21, 2008 just after my parents first anniversary. And if you want to know anything more than that, well, read on.
*****
My parents were married on February 10, 2007. It was a joyous and wonderful day for them and they had a great time. And no sooner was the ceremony over than they were looking forward to starting a family--to having kids...!!! They felt it was time to move on--to become Real People, full grown-ups like my grand parents.
You see, while some of their friends were looking forward to waiting to have children, dad and mom wanted kids while they were still fairly young. At the time of their nuptials, they were both so young. But still they thought they were already late, if my grand parents were anything to go by.
*****
Pregnancy is a time when suddenly everyone wants to give you advice and tell you stories and expound on theories. Everyone has a Grand Pregnancy and Baby-raising Theory and they will tell you about it in detail without the slightest provocation. And mother’s aunt (kanthajji), once advised her see only males as she believes that by which baby boy will born…!!!
For as long as women have been having babies, I think, people have been coming up with ways of telling whether the unborn baby is a boy or a girl. Even today, despite perfectly good, accurate, and scientific ways of determining the sex, people are passing along their theories.
``If you carry very high, it's a boy,'' explains my Shree mama – mother’s brother- ``and if it's low, it's a girl.''
The logical question is, what if it's in the middle? But I haven't asked that yet.
My favorite sex-determination theory to date, though, was again advanced by my grand mother. ``You look really good, Siri,'' said her mother. ``Your complexion cleared up and everything.'' ``Thanks,'' answered mother, willing at this point to take anything as a compliment. ``You know, if you get a mask, it's a girl,'' grand mother told. ``A mask?'' mother asked. ``Yeah, a mask,'' grand mother explained. When mother continued to look confused she went on: ``If the mother starts to get very ugly, if her face starts to look old and drawn, that means that the baby is going to be a girl who looks just like her mother, because the baby is pulling her beauty from the mother.''
For as long as women have been having babies, I think, people have been coming up with ways of telling whether the unborn baby is a boy or a girl. Even today, despite perfectly good, accurate, and scientific ways of determining the sex, people are passing along their theories.
``If you carry very high, it's a boy,'' explains my Shree mama – mother’s brother- ``and if it's low, it's a girl.''
The logical question is, what if it's in the middle? But I haven't asked that yet.
My favorite sex-determination theory to date, though, was again advanced by my grand mother. ``You look really good, Siri,'' said her mother. ``Your complexion cleared up and everything.'' ``Thanks,'' answered mother, willing at this point to take anything as a compliment. ``You know, if you get a mask, it's a girl,'' grand mother told. ``A mask?'' mother asked. ``Yeah, a mask,'' grand mother explained. When mother continued to look confused she went on: ``If the mother starts to get very ugly, if her face starts to look old and drawn, that means that the baby is going to be a girl who looks just like her mother, because the baby is pulling her beauty from the mother.''
She added, ``And if the mother gets pretty, then her baby is a boy, because boys who look like their mothers are handsome and girls who look like their fathers are beautiful. And you got pretty, so it's probably a handsome boy.''
Who am I to argue….???
*****
It is almost certain that by the time a woman becomes pregnant, she has been so inundated--in some sense, indoctrinated--with the idea that she will suffer from morning sickness that whether or not she would ordinarily have gone through it, she will get morning sickness just from expectation. All the books say so. All the movies say so. All the television shows and radio personalities and plays and ballets and friends and family and pundits of all kinds say so. In every movie involving a pregnant woman, she wakes up in the morning and runs to the bathroom to throw up and neither she nor the father knows what's going on and we all have to shout at the screen, ``She's PREGNANT you IDIOTS!'' Yes, they would have us believe that morning sickness is like gravity, death, taxes, and laddu at Deepavali: It's inevitable, and it sucks.
This is not so. That is, I imagine it sucks, but it's not inevitable. Plenty of women do not get morning sickness. My mother, for example. She just got a sort of all-day sickness, gradually fading into an all-night sickness. There was morning sickness in there somewhere, certainly, but mother's system was not that delineated.
Besides morning sickness, there are only two other things that everyone can agree on in terms of pregnancy: First, there will probably be at least one more person at the end than there was at the beginning; and second, that the woman's body will be different during than it was before. Aside from that, opinions vary wildly on what is normal and expected as the pregnancy progresses. The woman will gain weight. She'll lose weight. Her hair will become stringy. It will become full. It will fall out. She'll be cranky. She'll be euphoric. She'll be ugly. She'll be pretty. She'll break out. Her complexion will clear up. She'll get varicose veins. She'll get a hunchback. She'll suffer from a clubfoot. She'll turn green. She'll sing like Lata Mangeshkar. Her legs will swell. Her jewelry will constrict her fingers until they fall off. Her cholesterol will go up. It will go down. Her blood pressure will go up. It will go down. And so on and so on and so on.
This is not so. That is, I imagine it sucks, but it's not inevitable. Plenty of women do not get morning sickness. My mother, for example. She just got a sort of all-day sickness, gradually fading into an all-night sickness. There was morning sickness in there somewhere, certainly, but mother's system was not that delineated.
Besides morning sickness, there are only two other things that everyone can agree on in terms of pregnancy: First, there will probably be at least one more person at the end than there was at the beginning; and second, that the woman's body will be different during than it was before. Aside from that, opinions vary wildly on what is normal and expected as the pregnancy progresses. The woman will gain weight. She'll lose weight. Her hair will become stringy. It will become full. It will fall out. She'll be cranky. She'll be euphoric. She'll be ugly. She'll be pretty. She'll break out. Her complexion will clear up. She'll get varicose veins. She'll get a hunchback. She'll suffer from a clubfoot. She'll turn green. She'll sing like Lata Mangeshkar. Her legs will swell. Her jewelry will constrict her fingers until they fall off. Her cholesterol will go up. It will go down. Her blood pressure will go up. It will go down. And so on and so on and so on.
*****
My parents went for doctor’s visit the other morning. Once again there was no wait--this time dad barely had time to pick up a pamphlet on maternity clothes and open it before we were called in. The lady doctor asked us if my parents had any questions, and again they didn't. Either they are the most well-informed people around or they are so hopelessly uninformed they can't even frame a question. Then she told them it was time to listen to the baby's heartbeat.
Now, at this point I was only about eight weeks or so old, and at this early age you can't hear heartbeat with a stethoscope. You need much more sensitive equipment--in this case, a Doppler doodad, which looks rather like a Geiger counter. It sounds rather like a Geiger counter, too, so perhaps this is just another fake technological wonder like the ultrasound machine.
The doctor began to run the small black plastic microphone over my mother’s stomach. After a few seconds, they heard my heartbeat. My heartbeat sounded remarkably like a construction worker's voice. Apparently those Doppler microphones are so powerful, they can pick up even the sounds of your baby being built by the microscopic union workers that ordinarily just sit around the womb whistling at passing ova and getting paid by the hour.
For my parents this was a transcendental experience, that it opened their eyes to the wonder of life, that they were overjoyed and uplifted in a way I have never been.
Now, at this point I was only about eight weeks or so old, and at this early age you can't hear heartbeat with a stethoscope. You need much more sensitive equipment--in this case, a Doppler doodad, which looks rather like a Geiger counter. It sounds rather like a Geiger counter, too, so perhaps this is just another fake technological wonder like the ultrasound machine.
The doctor began to run the small black plastic microphone over my mother’s stomach. After a few seconds, they heard my heartbeat. My heartbeat sounded remarkably like a construction worker's voice. Apparently those Doppler microphones are so powerful, they can pick up even the sounds of your baby being built by the microscopic union workers that ordinarily just sit around the womb whistling at passing ova and getting paid by the hour.
For my parents this was a transcendental experience, that it opened their eyes to the wonder of life, that they were overjoyed and uplifted in a way I have never been.
*****
The whole heartbeat thing made my parents ecstatic.
``I'm so excited,'' mom said, shaking dad.
``Are you excited?'' ``Um, yeah,'' dad said. ``Excited. Very. Yeah.''
Dad was clearly not excited enough, because mom gave him the cold shoulder after that. Dad was unsure of how excited he was supposed to be. he'd already seen a picture of the baby--or what they claimed was a picture--and seen the little heart beating. He believed the blood tests and so on. He knew she was pregnant. Hearing the heartbeat, well, this wasn't one of his concerns. I guess it was nice to know that it hadn't stopped between the ultrasound and now, but then he didn't think it would.
I think it’s a result of being female and pregnant, two things I will never understand.
*****
