My Lady of the Lantern

So M arrived.  It must tinge your hazy awareness when the doc picks the baby from your open tummy and says, 'the baby is dull'. And then, tells that it is a boy and the baby is picked and Superped and his people get to work. I don't get to see the baby after that, except in the photographs clicked by the husband. And then next day, I get to peek at him in the NICU. Today M is eight days old. He went straight to the NICU with respiratory distress and tachypnea and all that goes with it. All my kids love getting too drunk on the amniotic fluid too.  He spent three and a half days in the NICU, including stay on the CPAP machine. The day he was shifted back to my room, he scared us again in the late evening after his breathing became peculiar after a feeding session. He again spent the night in the NICU. All included, we came back home past Sunday. It would be too early to say anything, but here are a few things I want to rattle. a. My hands are full. #...

I have never made pregnancy announcements on Facebook. I operate two accounts, with one of them filled with people I know in offline life.  I was seriously tempted to post this week about my pregnancy. I am almost at the end of this pregnancy. My chance won't come again. And I cannot put this announcement on pending list when I am most likely to be delivering the kid. I have wanted to feel what the ensuing two minutes of fanfare feels like.  I won't touch the sensitive account (the one filled mostly with ALI peeps), that is what I thought. And I still decided to not post anything.  I can't post this glowing bump because though I am having a trough full of heterogeneous folks on this account, I have people who would be hurt, even if they cannot show it.  This friend whose only son has DMD, this woman who can't have children unless they attempt ICSI, this beautiful couple that has been wanting children for years now and have failed repeatedly....

Tell me to shut my big mouth if I ever utter sleep and Figlia together again. I posted a while back about trying to get things on track sleep-wise.  Well, I give up. There are no rules. She can sleep when she wants. Because that is how it is.  However, sleep-deprivation for me is already setting in because she sleeps by midnight and by some biological o'clock I wake up any time between 1 and 3 a.m. for specific loo business, and I am fresh for a full 15 minutes after it, but I hate to sleep with interruptions. She is insistent on not closing the lights of the room. Insistent is the right word, and I feel like a bull being pulled by a capable torero into utter submission.  Can you draw a horse three times with your eyes closed? I can. Bow to me and kiss my hand, now. - - - I noticed that she uses her left hand sometimes to brush her teeth. She uses her right hand for most of the things, but she does switch hands while brushing her teeth.  ...

I am not very comfortable with how my body is shaped. While I can credit genetics for it, I definitely have dreamt of changing it. I am too lazy to actually get up and do something about it.  However, all my pregnancies have been a time of reveling. I love my baby bump. I love everything that happens to my body when I am pregnant. I even love the new shape I get into. If it were not for the sleep deprivation and postpartum bleeding, I might attempt pregnancy every year.  Pregnancy has restored my faith in my body - inside out.  This would be my very last (planned) pregnancy. Very soon, there would be a discussion on what I want to do next...and contraception still ribs my funny bone.  For now, I feel fulfilled and beautiful.