Maternal Age and Pregnancy

So many scans if the mother is aged 35 or above. Such a headache. The father could be an 80 year old budda (old man), it doesn't matter. As the foetus grows in the mother's body, her age matters a hell of a lot. With Tan, since I was 28, there were hardly any scans that needed to be done. This time, one after the other, the S word!

My suggestion to those planning or eager to have two kids, plan the second one well before you hit 34.  That way, there will not be any worries about so many scans and blood tests just to see if there are any defects in the growing foetus due to the mother’s age. 

Babies are emotional decisions for most parents but the fact is money is an important part of it too. Why be ashamed of the fact that babies are expensive? 

Scans are expensive. A scan starts at Rs 1000. Blood tests start at Rs 600. Medicines - your vitamins and minerals - cost a minimum of Rs 400 a week. Doctors consultation starts at Rs 300. We have already spent close to Rs 7,000 for three of these in three months of check-up. And that is just for the scans and blood tests. It is excluding medicines, doc's consultation fees, trips to doc's clinic!  This is even before the baby is born. 

Once it is born, the cost just sky-rockets. It’s nice to cuddle and coo-coo to a baby that giggles when it sees you but without proper care, which also means money, in addition to love, things can get bumpy.

So, if you are serious about adding a second member to your family, plan it! Make sure you, the mother, conceive before you hit 34! Save money!!!

First Trimester Completed

5th Aug entry:

We had our NT (Nuchal Translucency) scan on 3^rd Aug. Sathya was beside me while the doc showed our baby and its position and shape. She said everything looks fine. The baby showed good leg and hand movements. She showed the heart and the in-&-out movement of the blood flow. I love hearing the heart beat. It’s so loud and fast. The doc measured the baby's length from head to toe and said the baby is 6 centimetres. I was like “Are you kidding me? 6 cms? That’s it!!?!! All that trouble of the first 3 months for just 6 cms?!!!” 

It felt good to have Sathya next to me in the room; unlike last time, when he would be busy smoking outside with Nayan while I went in alone for the tests and scans. This time, it felt like we were in it together. He later told Tan, “Mummy is giving us a good healthy baby. Thank you Mummy.” 

We got the maternity diary to record the monthly details like weight (58 kgs), medicines prescribed and so on. I was asked to stop Finola tabs and start on Coracium, AtoZ Gold and Speedral - medicines for calcium, vitamins, and minerals - from the 4th to the 9th month.

The doc wanted us to go for further tests to negate the possibility of Down’s Syndrome. It troubled me that they kept saying it.  I came home and watched You Tube videos on it. It made me feel sad. The videos were heart-wrenching.

I reassured myself that just because I was 40 and according to medical science the chances of DS increases with the increase in the maternal age, it didn’t mean I had to worry or that my baby would have it. I am going to deliver a healthy baby, just like last time; particularly since I delivered the last one in not the best of the circumstances – both physical and emotional. This time I am taking a lot of rest, I am cooking all my meals, not eating out at all, eating every 3 hours. Things will be fine.

During the entire first trimester, I realized today, I had not eaten mutton or chicken, not even fish. I had just one piece of salmon, once. That’s it. I had cooked mutton and chicken for Sathya and Tan but I had eaten just a piece. I was not keen on it at all. Looks like, I have turned almost 100% vegetarian!!! I remember, immediately after I turned 40 in Feb, I had wanted to give up on meat and mentioned to Sathya the same. And now, it has happened, quite organically, I must say. I didn’t even know when I stopped eating or liking it much. I love the smell of dal and sabzi and I eat it almost as soon as the lunch is ready. I spend two hours cooking and as soon as I am done eating, within half an hour, I feel sleepy and sleep peacefully for an hour or two.

Only thing I want to do now, from the 4^th month onward, is to start walking. I have not walked since I got pregnant and I had not walked even before. I must start. June-July the weather was so cold, chilly and breezy I couldn’t step out even with a sweater on. I was shuddering. It is the month of Ashada, for sure. Now in Aug, the weather has warmed up considerably, I am sleeping with the fan speed at 5 which is saying a lot and yet I have not started walking. Walking made my last delivery easy. Even though it was just walking from home to office, less than 2 kms daily, it still helped a lot. It was a two hour labour and relatively smooth. The baby had turned its head a week before the delivery and everything went according to plan. 

I must start walking. I definitely don’t want a C section. 

The Conception

We did go to the doctor that day. Lakshmi Maternity Clinic in Malleshwaram. Same place where I had delivered Tanvi. Same doctor too- Mrs Leela Rao, a Mangalorean. 

We people from South Canara have this implicit faith in people of our own region - whether it is medicine, food or any other service - we blindly trust their expertise. We believe we will get good quality service, and won't be robbed of our hard-earned money. How much of it is true - I can never be too sure - but by and large it has been true, at least, in my case.

The screening doctor did the preliminary question-answer round. When I said I am 40, she immediately retorted, "Why did you delay your second pregnancy so much? There are high chances of Down's Syndrome." The way she said it, it sounded so scary and so discouraging and I felt disheartened. I came out and told Sathya how the doc warned me of a possible DS affliction. He got angry, "Thika muchkond hogok hel avlige. Yaval avlu?" (Tell her to shut her ass and fuck off.)

But Leela Rao was as cheerful and sweet as she was a decade back. She asked if we were planning to keep the baby and was happy with the affirmation. I was prescribed Folic acid tablets till three months and asked us to come for the first scan next month. Sathya told her she had delivered him too and his daughter as well and now this baby. She smiled.

Sathya called up his parents and his maternal uncle and gave them the news. 

I came home and searched YouTube for what folic acid did and realized the tiny tablets were so important for forming what is called the neural tube of the baby. I kept watching the video again and again...the fertilized egg repeatedly dividing into smaller, individual cells, each cell later forming an organ, the spinal shape and the elongation of the embryo. 

Sathya and I brainstormed about when exactly did I conceive. 

With Tanvi, we were just three months into our marriage, we were wild and young and madly in love and crazily physically attracted to each other. So, with her, when the conception happened was never a question because there were hundreds of instances! 

But this time around, we were puzzled. I had removed the IUCD sometime in June 2016 after using it for 10 years. 2016 to 2017 it took one year for the miracle to take place. If the baby was one month old, it must have happened sometime in May. But when?

Last week of April and first week of May, we were at his parents house in RR Nagar as it was school vacation for Tanvi. And when a couple is into their 12th year of marriage, they very well know how infrequent their romp sessions are. So we could easily pinpoint the day of the rendezvous. So it happened on the 5th! Voila! We zeroed in on the exact day!!!!

We had returned to our home on the 7th of May, a Sunday. And we hadn't had another session till the end of May when we were in Paradise Isle in Malpe. We were professional solvers of conception mysteries!!!

Sathya said, "Nodu, ee kelsa punyabhoomi alli agide" (See, it has happened in a holy place, his parents house) He even remembered that Tanvi had gone down to play in the swimming pool that day! I laughed my heart out.