The Pregnancy Diaries 3: The highs. Weight slides off magically

Time Travel - and we are back in 2007

Looking back, I can safely say that pregnancy was an exciting and enjoyable phase. Other than the rather overwhelming bouts of nausea, pregnancy was both smooth and trouble free.

To begin with, I lost weight. Easily. As you can imagine, this came as a rather unbelievable shock to someone who has been pleasantly plump - maybe a tad too pleasant, but never too plump, of course! -  for the better part of her life. For the first time, I was adhering, albeit unintentionally to the Golden Rule that every dietician espouses.

“It’s really quite simple,” they say, as they peer at you, shuddering inwardly at your weight while outwardly managing to look completely politically correct and non-judgemental about your weight.

“Quite simple, your Output must be more that your Input,” They say.

Has it struck anyone that it isn’t really quite that simple? Has anyone noticed that stated Output, typically occurs once in morning, whereas Input can happen several times in a day?

Ah Inputs…they can take the shape of a fluffy white dosas or perfectly fried bacon and sunny side up eggs in the morning.

Ah, Inputs…they can take the shape of a juicy roast chicken with potato on the side with freshly made gravy or a lightly spiced Bengali fish curry with a heap of soul-quenching white rice. Did someone shriek calories?

Ah Inputs…what better way to have a sinfully sugary and milky Indian tea except with some perfectly cut sandwiches or tangy chilly sev puri, fresh off the road, infused with a tasteful helping of germs?

Inputs for dinner? Typical home-cooked vegetables, a light dal spiced with panch phoron (a favourite Bengali spice with which many dishes are whipped up!)  followed by a succulent mutton curry. The kind of curry that’s spiced, but a little sweet and all in all…groovy.

Mid-night snacks could be anything your heart desires. That’s why they happen in the dead of night. Secretly. Silently. As you raid the fridge!

If you are person who eats with the heart and soul and who equates mental well-being and happiness with food…you can see how Inputs cannot possibly be less than Output!

Exercise, I suppose, could be a viable option. If dreaming about good food burned calories, I would be size zero. Alas the jogging, dumb-bell pumping types, I am not.

So there you have it – I am always going to be a tad too pleasant…but never too plump!

Except. During the pregnancy. Nausea ensured that I could not eat - hence, reduced opportunities for Inputs.  At the same time nausea meant that I spent significant parts of the day throwing up - hence, increased opportunities for Output!

So there I was, as pregnant as can be, glowing, gliding and losing weight.

A non-pregnant pause in 2013…

 

Day 2 since I officially launched the blog and the focus seems to be veering strongly towards Pregnancy musings. Not wanting to scare away potential male readers with exponentially estrogenic content, I decided to step quickly into present day. I love blogs and how you can time travel!

April 2013. All is well. Sprout is now five and a half, has procured admission in a non-IB school much to the delight of her parents’ bank balance, has at any point more than 5 minds of her own, all equally opinionated and none that match with her parents and has in short everyone wrapped around her little finger. Oh Joy!

But I digress…

Day 2 since I launched the blog and over 500 views (promise that count doesn’t include me constantly refreshing the page to increase the number!)

“You need a twitter account,” shrieked a well-meaning friend, “You are practically a celebrity now!”

Celebrity, my foot, I wanted to tell her. Bengalis are not into frivolous and commercial activities like celebrity-hood. We are too busy being intellectuals/creating financial models/appreciating art and culture and, more recently starting illegal chit funds…

Ah, but I digress again. That’s another thing Bongs can do easily. Digress.

To come back to acquiring a twitter account. I have a fundamental problem here. I don’t think my creative genius can be possibly be contained within 140 characters. Creative genius apart, I also grew up in an examination culture where content wasn’t always king. But the weight of the examination papers you turned in certainly was. So, in general for me, more is better. (This applies to food too, by the way!)

The problem is further aggravated because I waste too many characters writing complete words. I can’t possibly write messages, sorry tweets like, “luv da match last nite” etc etc.

And I don’t know about you – but when I grew up, a “twit” wasn’t a very complimentary word. So can twit-ter be any bet-ter? I don’t know, so I am not writing it off.

At least not yet.  But I am not jumping on the twitter-wagon either!

Till then, you simply have to read my blog. Complete sentences. More than 140 characters. A bit of a strain, I know, but please do persevere.  Thank you. 500 times over for the 500+ page views…

The Pregnancy Diaries 2: Telling people you are pregnant...

So...we are still in 2007. Life is about to change forever...
 

Ours is a one billion plus population that is not bursting at the seams. It has already burst, though no one appears to have noticed it. It is a culture in which people have absolutely no qualms in asking completely random strangers any or all of the following:

Do you have children? And God forbid if your answer is no, then

When are planning to have one? OR

Is there something wrong? I know of very good doctor. You should go to him/her.

Given this background, we are surprisingly shy, superstitious and secretive about announcing the pregnancy to the world when it finally happens!

Though couples these days are more open about announcing that they are pregnant, (honestly, is it illegal?) the three month milestone is still widely followed and buying clothes till the brat arrives, still taboo. And there exist very many allusions and metaphors for referring to the actual pregnancy.

There is the all-famous Bengali one… “notun khobor” (New news). I seriously haven’t figured this one out. Surely news is always new and surely, new news can refer to a vast plethora of things from chemical warfare and oil wars  to the more mundane divorce and marital scandals and for me…errr, where has the newest restaurant opened. (I admit it sounds a wee bit shallow, but food is an all-consuming passion, and I better be on the-first-to-know list!)

But here was my mother dialling every relative in questions once the sacrosanct three month milestone has been crossed, saying, “Aye-je, Tulir (yessssss Tuli is my Bong pet name, didn’t you know it!) notun khobor aache.” (Tuli has “new” news, i.e., she is going to have a baby) I wanted to point out it wasn’t really “notun khobor”, since it was already three months past, but decided not to act extra testy and hormonally annoying in my pregnant state!

Naturally, people were thrilled. My parents, typically more reticent, were worriedly happy, aware as they were of my generally complicated medical history. Amit’s parents were ecstatic, awaiting their first grand-child.

But the classic response was from my child-hood friend Rima who has known me since our bespectacled, neatly plaited, “good girl days” in Fort Convent. She was one of the first people I called to tell about the pregnancy, and after the initial “Congratulations, I am so happy for you,” there was a longish, uncomfortable silence. Dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, she said, “But whose is it?”

“What do you mean, whose is it?,” I shrieked indignantly on the phone, my moral righteousness all ruffled.

“No, it’s just that Amit has been in the U.S. for a while…and so,” she trailed off, sheepishly.

“My god, Rima. I see I don’t score very highly on your List of Honourable People,” I said, quite tickled.  

And today, as I stare into a pair of distinctly Bengali shaped eyes, looking at me however, with a stubborn, smouldering look, which I have encountered ever so often before, I smile. DNA mixes and works in mysterious ways...
 

…and while at times, you look and see a refreshed version of yourself, at other times, you see a glimpse of your co-creator. And in this miracle of the known with the new, you remember the One who is responsible for life. For creation. And for the incredible perfection of it all.

 

Our Very Own Frankenstein, sorry err, Creation!

Pregnancy Diaries 1: finding out I was pregnant...

Somewhere back in 2007,there was light, sunshine - and footloose freedom...

Once upon a time in 2007, I had a life. I had a packed social calendar, I could go out when I wanted without guilt and was footloose and fancy free - and then...

Then...life changed forever!

Having gone through a really rough ectopic pregnancy and the general low that follows a traumatic experience, a planned pregnancy was simply not on the cards.

I visited my gynaecologist in Jan 2007 and told him how pregnancy was simply not on my mind. My completely eccentric and totally committed Parsee doctor, whom I adore said, "Well, that's fine. Don't worry. Focus on losing about 20 kgs and then think about pregnancy."

I agreed. I enthusiastically booked myself into the famous Jindal health farm near Bangalore to lose all the extra kgs. Practically every one I knew who had been there had come back half their size with glowing moon-like complexions and svelte willowy bodies. I almost started buying a whole new wardrobe for the new, thin me. I even started thinking about an all new personality to go with the new, thin me. I would be chic, poised, my hair would always be in place, and I would not walk. I would simply glide, float and maybe gloat in some incredibly expensive clothes.

Alas. Fate just wanted me to stay fat. After all, the world is all about opposites and balance and I was simply meant to balance on the heavier side of the scales. Sometime in February, I started distinctly swoony. I started  feeling pukey in a very Bollywood-filmy kind of way. I remember the night before I went for a pregnancy test. I was with my sister Chordi and family friend, Gargidi at Indigo Belly. Personally, I believe I should get some kind of a loyalty card for the amount of Word-of-Mouth publicity I have done for them!

To come back to the dinner menu that day. There were barbequed spare ribs, roast chicken and my all-time favourite turkey and bacon sandwich in crusty bread with cranberry compote. The ribs did make my head swoon a bit and I felt that maybe I couldn't dig into the goodies. But since it was my all-time favourite turkey and bacon sandwich in crusty bread with cranberry compote, I managed to overcome the nausea (rather well, if I may say so) and polish off the sandwich, along with a rib or two to spare! (Sad joke, sorry, about the barbequed spare ribs, but couldn’t help it.)

My mother called me in at office the next day to tell me the "notun" khobor (the "new" news). I was completely numb, to be honest. I called up Amit who was in Charlotte. He was equally numb. I think we were both excited and overwhelmed and a little bit freaked out, all together.

Then I remembered my gynaecologist and his "Lose 20 kgs advice." He was NOT going to be pleased.

My mother consoled me, "Hathiro bacha hoye." (Even elephants have babies). How that sort of consolation was going to make me feel better, I don't know, but you can always count on mothers to pep you up !

Talking of “hathiron bacha hoye”, I wondered if all elephant families are single-child families. Think about it.  If you were already large and had to go through a twenty-two month pregnancy, mostly standing on your feet, chomping on grass, to deliver, on an average a 115 kg baby, without the possibility of an epidural or a Caesarean, I bet you would start taking family planning Very Very seriously. Personally, I would take a vow of celibacy. With immediate effect and irrevocably.

Ah, but these pointless philosophical musings on elephants, their reproductive cycles and whether they are nuclear family units wasn’t really going to get me too far. For soon, I would need to meet my gynaecologist -   to whom I had categorically and emphatically stated that weight loss and not babies was my sole focus. He would think I was stark, raving mad.

Fortunately, my doctor was a discrete man and made no reference to my supposed 20kg weight loss promise. In fact, he was very pleased to see me. From this, I gather that there is a tribe, albeit small, of pregnant elephant mothers!

 “You are now properly pregnant,” he beamed at me (this was as opposed to being “improperly pregnant” the first time round, i.e., ectopic pregnancy, near death experience, emergency laparoscopy and all those happy memories. Hurrah for averted tragedies!)

And then. The ultimate proof of my proper pregnancy. My doctor whipped out a rectangular shaped, pristinely white, smoothly textured card. The white had an “Ujala safedi” kind of look to it and the texture was velvety soft. This was a departure from the blue cards he generally used to write up patient details. “Now that you are pregnant,” he said, rather matter-of-factly,  “I will be using this special white paper, specially bought from Ryman’s stationery in London. I use this for all my pregnant patients. This is extremely high quality. Even if you come 30 years later for your baby’s details, THIS paper, he said solemnly and with great emphasis, will still be intact. It’s expensive, but worth it.” (and then in a back to reality tone) “Of course, once you are no longer pregnant, we will go back to using the Indian blue cards.”

Wow, I thought, almost sniffing. Being pregnant sure had some privileges. My pregnancy details would now be recorded on high quality stationary, flown in from good old England, possibly, possibly with the Queen’s official stamp of approval!

Welcome to "Of Nappy Rash & Beer Bellies"

Are you ready?

To meet the Multi-Tasking Size 20 Mamma who discovers, to her joy, that pregnancy has been her best weight loss technique yet and then, much to her horror, that she has a man’s pelvis in the 9th month of the pregnancy? Nutty Wife to a Nuttier Husband by Karma, Loving Mother by Choice, Stressed Maid Manager by No Choice, Home Chef by Passion and Model Employee (we hope), this Mamma is ready to take on the world – with her Super Mom and Super Dad by her side.

To read about the impish child who rules the Family Roost with an Iron Hand, confident in the knowledge that she is Queen Bee. Doting grand-parents, a slobbering, goofy 35 kg Boxer she considers her Big Brother and an extended circle of fawning relatives complete her queendom.  She is happily quadri-lingual, has a violent passion for all things pink, is petrified of Shrek, secretly likes Bollywood actresses and all their “hot”, foot-tapping dance numbers but is scandalized by their sometime lack of clothes!

To meet the Couch Potato Gadget-Loving Daddy (affectionately called Worse Half by his wife) who spends most of his waking hours mesmerized by cricket (including the hours his beloved wife goes into labour!), is going grey already, worrying about the boys in his 3 year old princess’s life (and is already planning to buy protective Rottweilers for her 13th birthday) and who was easily talked into turning blonde just before his wedding day by the cute hairdresser…

Watch a modern-day drama unfold, where humour makes an every-day appearance and laughter an hourly occurrence. It’s a rollercoaster ride with no end – you’ll enjoy this blog if you’ve just hopped on the rollercoaster yourself, or are about to, or if you’ve been on for the ride for a long time….

Need more reasons to read this? Honestly – because we can all do with a good laugh!

Get hooked on to www.aarinieishaani.blogspot.com