The Tyke’s arrival is getting closer and it seems like we actually get to chose a date to pick it up. As we sat out the weekend in uncertainty and a wait that seems to drag on and on, Z asked me what had happened to the old fashioned stork-delivery-of-baby-days. It was a far more efficient system and cut out on the parent’s wait and a state of preparedness that just but unnerves them completely. I was massaging my Momzilla feet at the time and once again thinking how Mom’s have temporary amnesia. Before I hold the Tyke in my hands and forget all about what I went through to get to the little bundle all my own (and a quart Z’s) I thought I should record it. For most parts, I seem to have forgotten what hell the first trimester was. Somehow I’ve actually, really forgotten what it was like to be nauseated at the mere mention of food…how just passing by a cafeteria made me sick. I just remember that I did not want to eat, but somehow the days passed with the aid of a nausea medication. But was that all to the first trimester? I can’t remember anymore, isn’t it strange? Oh and the tear-fest that I was prone to some of the time, that was Z’s bane and all he remembers!
Then came the second trimester with its back and feet aches. I remember my lower back and feet, particularly the heels killing me, even at rest, the nausea had subsided but oh the pains and aches that I’d put up with, and what else can I say but SubhanAllah…the second and longest gestational trimester also passed and with it all the pains and pangs. I bought the Tyke’s first outfits sometimes nearing the end of the second trimester.
One fine dish washing mid-November evening, I felt it’s first kick. We had company so I could not jump all over the place (I was not yet the plus plus size being I am now and could, with soime effort, jumo around with joy) and inform Z of what the kid was upto. All of a sudden it seemed so real and close, an actual being. So far it was just a nauseating, aching thing we could, if lucky, catch waving it’s limbs (I suspect it was the hand) during the U/S sessions. With its first jab it announced that its limbs were ready, hardening as it became more and more human, more and more our kid, the Tyke who’d take over our lives completely, wholly. I actually felt more closer to it after the kicks and jabs, it felt like I was the inside of a goal post most of the times when it was active, but SubhanAllah, it was beautiful. And the best of it all, it stopped moving the moment it’s father neared. All Z had to do was step in the room and the Tyke would’ve been kicking, head butting, jabbing, poking around Amma’s innards and be at complete peace! Seriously, I mean I know how kids are completely their Abba’s pets (I’d favor Pa over Ma any given day and time) but such blatant favoritism already, before arrival, was unkind. One moment a tantrum and the second it was an angel waiting for Abba’s approval with perfect behavior; it was amusing and annoying at the same time. These active sessions were spaced out through the day of course and I lived for them. That is all I remember of the second trimester. All the reading I’d done, online and offline, all the information I’d gathered distilled into those moments. Nothing else mattered. I’ve all the monthly U/S pics up to this stage as I changed doctors in the last trimester.
The third trimester, when things start getting real, a bit too real. On Eid Day, the Tyke waked me up by poking a limb out of me, really… a rounded thing protruding from the left side of my bump…just a bit, but enough to be felt. It was also the stage when I was eating or thinking about what to eat most of the time. My weight shot up drastically so much so that Z tried to enforce a chocolate ban on me and get me to eat healthy; eggs, milk, fish, fruits and vegetables, the kind of stuff I don’t even think classifies as food essential. I managed to get past the embargo some times and got my chocolates and as he saw that I was eating properly or at least making an effort to, the embargo was relaxed and we could get chocolates when doing grocery. In the meanwhile, I’d lost my crazy craving for brown bars, I still can't get all that excited about chocolates and merely think of them as an item in the fridge that has to be finished, that’s all. Not the anticipation and excitement that was once a part of the choc-binge. I blame the Tyke and its obedience to its Abba, what else can explain this sudden loss of appetite for chocolates?
Third trimester also meant more activity for the Tyke, more amusement for Amma and shape-shifting of her bump. And then the U/S session, the first indication of what a worrier Tyke’s going to be…it was breech. Also the radiologist threw a tub full of water on my Tyke shopping so far by announcing that the gender was not what the previous doctor had confirmed. I was advised to walk every day and let gravity direct the Tyke into a proper position, of the gender, we had to wait till the next U/S session when it would co-operate with the doctor and let us know if the shopping had to be more blue or pink. It was week 29, I believe, when the U/S was done and the next two weeks I walked despite feet that refused to carry me, a back that declined to support my weight…and a fatigue that threatened to collapse me 24/7. I was showing now, though I did not realize how much obvious the Tyke’s presence inside me was till I stepped into the lift one day and saw a woman I could not recognize as myself. Bloated beyond belief, nose the size and shape of New Zealand and the rest of me like Russia, inflated and all over the place! My hands and feet were a splotchy purplish-red color by now and twice their size. All footwear I once had was already languishing in the shoe rack, now I was running out of space in the functional flip-flops I’d bought. I could get in them with some difficulty, see my feet flesh up on both sides of the straps, my toes like fat sausages complaining of their inability to live with their neighbors as they ran out of space on my feet. One of my fears is that one day I’d look down (while seated of course, I can no longer see my feet while standing) and see a couple of toes stacked on top of each other, sheepishly telling me they had no other way to go!
Just last week the Tyke gave us a new scare altogether, it had gotten into the right head-down position, but in doing so and dancing around and exploring in the cramped space it has, it got a knot in it cord and sported it proudly, like a medal round its neck. Of course it sounds not that bad now, but when the doctor told me of it, I felt all blood drain out of me seeing her make a knot out of my dupatta to demonstrate what the situation was. I didn’t help that I’d gone for my visit alone for the first time in all those months and the time I’d wanted Z most by my side he was not there. I was put on CTG and everything recorded fine on it. The Tyke was up to its usual dancing and prodding antics. I was to be monitored more closely then on. I remember returning home in a cab totally spaced out and crying, worrying, searching on the internet for the ominous words and then not reading any further as none of it was any heartening or even sympathizing read for a mom-to-be. Z returned from work and it was a silent evening, we did not talk about it. The doctor had already told me that instead of waiting for my EDD at the end of the month or the show to begin on its own, she’d not risk and induce me as the Tyke was full -term (37 weeks) weighed respectable enough…and that I should be ready for a c-section if God Forbid its heartbeat dropped. I was worrying that I did not want any epidurals and here was a new scare…that I was to be knocked out flat for the grand ‘arrival’. Z went with me for the second CTG and learnt for himself of the situation, so far a part of me was wishing that I’d heard wrong, how can there be a knotted cord around the neck, either one of the things on its own was worry enough for there to be a double dose of it. The prognosis was the same. Another CTG scheduled for Monday, March 17 and then the doctor said, let’s not wait anymore, we’ll induce you on Tuesday. So the bags are packed and ready, Ma’s being flown over on short notice, Ma-in-Law is packing her bags. The house is clean, all things dusted and properly placed, the wardrobe neatly stacked with freshly laundered, sweet smelling soft new clothes (I wasted one weekend evening sorting through Z’s clothes and dumping more than half of them above and away from sight and reach to make space for Tyke’s things, it already has my side of the cupboard taken over with small hangers). All set and the wait…we’re just waiting for Monday and what the doctor says of the Tyke’s arrival then. So back to Z’s question, why did the stork retire?
