mushy maternal memoirs and musings

the last 8 months have been quite a ride.

before i discovered i was pregnant, i was flummoxed by what was happening to my body and mind. a 3-hour trek in the hills and i felt like i was going to die. my lovely waistline was not feeling that lovely anymore, and those little dimples on my thighs were definitely cellulite. i was hyper-sensitive, especially to anything that s said, and i felt like nobody really understood me (not unlike the ridiculous storm-and-stress of teenage years, now that i think of it!). the slightest made me burst into tears. i became convinced that old age and dotage had finally descended upon me.

needless to say, we were THRILLED to discover the cause of these changes. if i may add, i was also relieved. my stamina hadn't just deserted me randomly. i wasn't going senile...yet. and those muffins had nothing to do with my sudden corpulence. phew! s claims something about me changed within the 1st hour of getting the news. apparently, i was suddenly grounded, calm and focused. i came across as though nothing would fluster me. you mean i hadn't always been like that??!! you're kidding! in truth, though, i think just knowing i was pregnant helped my hormones stabilise.

anyway, so began a new period for me. suddenly, nothing else mattered. in a strange way, i felt liberated. and distanciated from the world in general. the more i connected with others, the more i felt like i was flying away, away into an exciting and luminous unknown. i absorbed myself in information on pregnancy, spoke to friends who had had children, heard grandmothers' tales, delivery-room horror stories and loads of advice. and i loved every moment of it. we didn't share the news with our social circle here until the first trimester was over. i hugged my beautiful secret tight and close, like a little girl who has been visited by a fairy and nobody knew anything of their uplifting, other-wordly interaction. (i don't know if i'd have felt this strongly had i been throwing up thrice a day or suffering ill-health!). sometimes i wonder how my vacant smiles and distant stares didn't give me away. it was really hard to keep it to myself, and at times i thought i was going to explode if i didn't spit it out. thank god the time came to tell all soon enough.

s decided he was going to share the pregnancy as much as he could with me. starting with weight gain :) after the 1st three months, i hadn't put on any weight at all, and s had put on 3 kilos. i think he still hates me for it! every appointment with the gynaec was an event. i drew up long lists of questions to ask and typically forgot all about them once i got there..thank god s remembered the important ones! i always wondered what the baby was thinking when we were with the gynaec. how would you feel if you were there and everyone around you only talked about you and how you were doing, but not really TO you. i'd feel rather weird, and even indignant that nobody asked me my opinion. so of course, i have had endless conversations with the baby separately...well, more like monologues. may as well grab the opportunity and give gyan before the baby comes. the baby may not give me a chance later on :) and however cliched it sounds, hearing your baby's heartbeat and seeing him/her on a scan is indescribable. especially when it appears like the entire cosmos merrily waving away to you. it's ineffable.

and oh, HOW can i forget! the toilet was now my favourite room. no matter where we went or what time it was, my first thought ALWAYS was, "how far is a loo from here?'. god bless the numerous cafe waitresses who kindly allowed me to use theirs', though i was not a client. night-visits, ranging from 3-6 times each night, became the norm. after a while, it was as if i was on autopilot!

we had expected drastic changes in my eating preferences, given that cravings and aversions are synonymous with pregnancy. intially, the only drastic difference was that i couldn't bear chocolate. thankfully, my body has since returned to its senses and now i am back with a vengeance. though only chocolat noir for me now. s kept pressurising me to 'think hard...there HAS to be something that you are dying to eat'. no, nothing but fruit. he had imagined being woken up at midnight by a ravished wife demanding some obscure eatable, and he would gallantly scout the streets of bussels looking for it. it never happened. he still feels cheated about that! in some way, i have redeemed myself by demanding ice-cream (dark chocolate only, of course) for dinner last night!

while on the pressures of being pregnant...there was ALWAYS the "oh my, you're 8 months pregnant...i'd have thought 5 or 6!!!". having been thin all my life, it's an old childhood trauma with me. and now, i've simply learned to smile and say "je suis petite, ma bebe est petite aussi". then there's the endless guessing game on the gender. people here always get to know the sex of the foetus, unlike in india where it is illegal. so after "how many months are you?", the most oft-repeated question was "do you know if it's a boy or a girl?". for the longest time, we really didn't. and now that we do, we don't want to tell :) and between s and me, we just CAN'T make up our minds about the name for the baby!

i must confess, for the first time, i have made a genuine attempt to improve my singing, in vain. i am tone-deaf, as s once euphemistically mentioned. now, i wish more than ever before i could sing well...but i guess if the baby has dealt with the trauma of seeing mama with 'junkie-from-amsterdam-red' hair, terrible singing can't hurt much, can it?

one more month to go...and the excitement is really building up. and, i must admit, anxiety! i was up last night from 3-6 am with my mind racing about god-knows-what, and no matter how much i tried to just breathe slowly, i failed miserably. if i'm like this now, what will happen during labour!!?? s and r, give me hope :) sometimes, i feel like i used to before my exams...when l and i used to get so overwhelmed by anxiety that we could only laugh hysterically. but oh, now that i'm 'calm and grounded', i will just breathe. in and out. slow and steady.

if you have read this far, thank u for indulging me in my completely mindless rambling.