Rutvi - Day One

Rutvi was born at 3:16 p.m. 

Tanvi's school would leave at 3:30 p.m. When she left for school in the morning, she had no idea she would return to see her baby sister. We got her picked up in a cab and brought straight to the hospital. She was in her school uniform. 

She was beaming when she saw the baby. Her hands were steady as she held her - quite surprising for an 11 year old. 

I have heard of adults being fearful of taking a new born in their arms. They are either plain scared to touch a new born or afraid they might hurt or concerned that they might pass germs or an infection. 

Tanvi was confident from day one.

Rutvi's Day 2 - thinking pose. The way her index finger is on her cheek! What was she thinking? 

                                                        

All of us were pleasantly surprised to see her head full of hair - long, straight, black, silky. Tanvi didn't have this much hair when she was born. Rutvi came after a full 40 weeks, Tan 37 weeks. That could be a reason. I have read that acid re-flux during pregnancy causes hair growth. I did have acid re-flex but just the usual amount. Quite a normal occurrence during pregnancy. Nothing worrisome. So wonder how she has such a good hair growth. 

Her picture with her father

    

On day one, no one remembered to click a pic of the baby with her mother! Not even on day two, day three......and so on. A friend had rightly commented on Facebook that the person is charge of keeping the memories is seldom photographed. It took a month for the father-daughter duo to realize the mother too needs a pic taken with her darling.

Baby Feet

Different people love different things about a new born baby. Some love the smell, some the mouth, some the skin, some the bald head, some the eye, some hands, some the tummy.

Sathya loves the smell of baby skin, the smell of powder on them, the smell of milk. He used to keep smelling Tanvi saying, "haal haal vaasne" "My milk baby". 

I love baby feet. This time I actually captured a picture of Rutvi's tiny feet. Tiny, soft, fleshy, smooth...I am falling short of adjectives to describe them. There is nothing as sweet as tiny little baby feet.

No matter what the color of the new born baby is, what the race, the weight...the feet are always beautiful ... of every baby.

Rutvi has the exact toes and fingers of her father. Her finger nails grow SO fast that I have to cut it every week and the toenails so SLOW that I can leave them alone for more than 2 weeks - exactly like her dad. 

When people tell you that they feel overwhelmed when babies hold their fingers, it is true. It is an amazing feeling. Rutvi, even as a month old infant, would easily hold Sathya's big, fat fingers. She took a while to hold mine and I would be so jealous! I would complain to him, "How can she not hold my slender fingers but can hold your fat ones even in her sleep?" 

When I first held her and saw her fingers, I was really surprised at the resemblance with Sathya's. It was like I was looking at his miniature hand. I have short, square fingers. Both my daughters have his fingers - long,  slender, pointed. They say people with such fingers tend to be artistic. Mine are those of people who help. I have been so tempted to paint Rutvi's finger nails. I am sure they will look great. 

Babies take so long to open their palm. For the first quarter after their birth, their fists are mostly clenched. Once they learn they have fingers and the fingers move and do stuff like touching and grabbing objects around them and bringing them to their mouths, it is a beautiful discovery - for the baby AND the parent who is proudly watching her every move. 

The Best Day

I don't agree. I don't think it was the best day of my life by any stretch of my imagination. This image, according to me, is just another way of glorifying the whole birthing process. I have delivered two babies. Both the days were MESSY, to say the least. Normal or C-section - it doesn't matter. You are a MESS.  

Read on to get a sneak verbal preview of what happens on that day. 

Doctors (yes, plural) stick their fingers into you, nurses disrobe you, one staff puts a bed pan under you (in case of normal delivery) and asks you to relieve yourself so that you don't shit during the delivery (the truth is, some still do!!), you can feel your stomach and large intestines emptying into that pan and then the staff takes that pan in front of you into the toilet and flushes it and you almost die of shame (if it's your first delivery), another staff comes and "cleans" you. Add to that, your mad-woman like screams during the contractions and unbearable hunger, your body being paraded and handled most unceremoniously and you cannot even protest .... I could go on. 

Point is - it is NOT a pretty sight. 

In India, most hospitals do not allow the husbands into the labor rooms. I don't think it is a good thing. I feel husbands should be allowed to see their wives in their WORST possible avatar and see if they still love her as much.  Indian husbands have no idea what their wives go through, on the D-day, to give them their DNA, in flesh and blood, angelic and cherubic,  wrapped beautifully in softness of cloth and skin.  

And those videos that show the baby and the mother bonding - well, with both my babies (I delivered them in the same hospital, 12 years apart), the nurses took them away almost immediately to be weighed and cleaned and a thousand other things to be done like noting the time of birth etc. The bonding and the skin-to-skin contact that pregnancy websites emphasize so much on happened a few hours later in my case. 

Face Presentation

Brow Presentation or Face Presentation (FP).   
Saw this word for the first time on my hospital discharge summary report. 

No matter how much you read on the topics of pregnancy and birth when you are pregnant, there's always something you miss. Who knew my baby would choose to come into the world through an FP? 

Statistics say only one out of 300 deliveries are FPs.  Normally, a baby is born head first. The chin is bent towards the chest. But in an FP, the chin is stretched, the neck is extended backwards, as if the baby is looking up. 

They say if an FP is mismanaged, there is the possibility of birth defects and skull trauma. 

Saw this video on FP while writing this post. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElhTjSukSeU

A million thanks to God and the doctors for ensuring my baby was delivered safely, that she was fine and did not suffer any pain/swelling of face or any other trauma. Today, the more I read about FP and watch images or videos related to it, the more grateful I am for my baby's safe delivery. My C-section delivery apprehensions be damned! I have a healthy baby in my hands. That's what matters. 

But on the day of the delivery and post that, I was really upset. I kept asking myself, and Sathya - why did our baby choose to come this way?  Why couldn't she have not flexed her neck muscles? Why couldn't she have 'looked down', tucked her chin into her chest and come out like hundreds of other babies? I could have easily had a normal delivery. We could have saved money and post-delivery recovery time spent in the hospital. I had no complications, whatsoever, during my entire pregnancy period nor on the day of the delivery. No pain or contractions or bleeding or high BP. Not even water discharge. Just the news that the baby will exit the womb today. So did the baby look up on the day of the delivery or at the moment of her entry into the world? When did she actually flex her neck? It certainly did not show up in any of the scan reports or during the weekly physical examinations. 

I have decided to take solace in the words of the operating doctor who said, "Nim magu thale yetti, aakasha nodkond bandide." (Your baby has held her head high and is coming, looking up at the sky.)

The Delivery Day

The operation was over. 

I was put on a stretcher to be moved into the ward. 

I lay there waiting to see the baby. Just then, for a fleeting moment, one of the doors to the labor room  opened and I saw Sathya and Tanvi outside. They were waiting to see us. When I saw them, the first thing that came to my mind was, "My world." 

Exactly those words! They really are my entire world. They are everything. They are all I have. And I have a lot. That image of them standing there, Tanvi waving at me, Sathya anxious to know if I was okay...that image is imprinted in my mind's eye. In that moment, I knew I had all I wanted - with or without the new baby. I was fulfilled, complete. The baby was a bonus!

I hadn't seen the baby yet and asked a nurse for her. They brought her. I couldn't get up. But I held her. Momentarily! So much for all those viral videos you see online of mothers weeping, kissing, clicking pics with newborn, baby smooching the mother's face and so on and so forth. Didn't happen. The nurse took her out to show her to Sathya and Tan.

I wondered if they were upset that it wasn't a boy. I felt sad for them. Tan had said she wanted a brother and Satty wanted a son he could play cricket with and teach bike riding to. I had disappointed them. I felt sorry. As for me, I was so happy that she was healthy and perfectly fine. That was all that mattered. Especially after the fear of Down's Syndrome. 

I can't believe I am saying this but on hindsight, I think Dr. Nishchitha was right. I had the experience of both cesarean and normal delivery. It opened my eyes. I was very skeptical of C-section deliveries. I used to think it was a way God was punishing the women for something. I thought it was a shortcut some women took to avoid the pain and have it easy. I thought if someone had to go for cesarean, it is because they were not healthy. Healthy women were blessed by God and had normal deliveries. I was a complete idiot. I was a moron, an asshole. How could I think like that? I had no idea of the pain the surgery involved. But after I went through it because my baby was born through Brow Presentation (face is the first thing at the opening of the birth canal, not head) and I had no option but to say yes to a surgery, I realized that I was SO wrong. 

In the case of a normal delivery, the pain is during the labor- it could be for a couple of hours to sometimes a day. In the case of a C section, even though the baby is out in a couple of minutes and there is no pain that the mother feels at THAT moment, the pain of the stitches and the back pain and the slow healing and the painful recovery is a long process. In one case, you suffer pain for a few hours but rest of your life, you will be fine. As in the case of Tanvi's delivery. In another case, you don't suffer pain in the beginning but suffer it throughout your life. Or at least, that's what people tell you about the lifelong pain. 

The image on the right.
I don't know about doing it all over again. I wouldn't! 

People glorify pregnancy and motherhood. I can totally understand and empathize if a woman would rather adopt than go through all this.