Weeks 9 to 16: All things seem possible in May (and June)

Butterflies flit, in a field

of sunlight, that is all

                        - Matsuo Basho

And suddenly the rains stopped, the clouds became fluffy white and the sun was out. No not really. Not so easily in these parts in late May. But that is how my insides felt. Without any outside affirmation of any sort (the doctor's visit was another week away and I was still feeling like wrung-out jeans on a clothes line), I felt OK. Totally there. All there. From somewhere there rushed a warm gush of confidence and contentment. I somehow knew all my fears and anxieties will be just that; the nuchal scan will be completely fine. Aren't there moments in life, too fleeting to comprehend and yet brimming with magic, when you simply know. I had one of those. 

After which, my body seemed to naturally respond to this state of mental well-being. Miraculously, the gagging stopped one fine day. My appetite returned in full force, so much so that some afternoons, I spent circumambulating the refrigerator. If I looked long enough, I could even spot a tiny tummy (er...the pregnancy-related tiny...I had a substantial tummy even before...so yes, the difference could be only made out by dreamy eyes like mine). 

The day of the scan finally arrived and just as predicted, the little thing in there was happy playing truant with the radiologist -- somersaulting just when she wanted to see its nasal bone and making me drink gallons of water and showing up in the right position just when I felt like an about-to-be-pricked water balloon. 

It is rather disconcerting to have that stone cold gel applied just above your pubic bone while an emotionless monitor displays new life inside and husband watching everything, rather shyly. Or was that the beginning of reluctance? But then, who said pregnancy will not be disconcerting. 

And so, I could finally burst out with the news to the one friend I really wanted to say it to. For she was the only one in this whole wide world, who knew it from the time this baby was conceived in a shining corner of my little brain nearly two years ago. Needless to say, she was suitably excited. 

But I confess, the thing that gets me most excited, sometimes I suspect, more than actually being pregnant, is watching the husband pacing up and down, planning for the baby, teasing, laughing, cuddling baby thoughts and smiling that guileless smile when I spell out my random dreams. Is this the same man who frowned at the mere mention of a child?

The world indeed is "mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful". Touchwood.

I leave you with a classic varnam in the most joyful raaga of them all - Mohana and a jing-jang version of Mohana raaga, which was serendipitous. But first the original. 

Weeks 2 to 8: May fever

the planets aligning
       I rearrange
my night

                     Francine Banwarth

Suddenly, it seemed like I had to do everything at once; feel everything at once. Now that the many pregnancy home tests all seemed to be in the pink, some more and some less, the brain began to believe the crystal glass of my two-month old dream encasing all the beautiful flowers of this planet was broken. The heart knew only to thump. It never ever thumped like this; not even during orgasm. The monstrous thumps sounded in my ears, eyes and the ribcage. And it would soon be followed by my much-wished for puking session. Nothing seems to be staying inside and every meal was followed by this terrible anxiety...as if I was caught in a whorl that was choking me. It came closer and closer and got darker and darker till light broke through in the form of my vomit. Very poetic I know. 

It sounds fake when recounted but in the first half of the month of May, it was as if all my intuitions, my instincts, all the miraculous unknowns that make up our mind and soul seemed to have caught fire. I could predict my own pains seconds before they occurred. I knew which kind of heartbeat increase meant I would puke badly and which simply meant I was suffering from extreme anxiety. I knew when my hip would start protesting and when the tailbone told me it was time to go back home from office...simply abandon and sleep NOW! I simply knew what was inside me at this point was very very delicate and I shouldn't be on a bike or go anywhere.  (This apparently was true enough, for I was advised 'rest rest and more rest' when I eventually visited the doctor). 

I had been taken over. Gladly. 

There were a million things to do of course. The hospital had to be decided even if the hands were clammy about was it too soon to do so; advice had to be asked from a distant cousin despite all misgivings because there was no one else to ask and I wasn't ready to tell anybody. Eventually, I did both and a positive blood report stilled the thumping somewhat. The already superstitious soul had turned madder. Every visit to the loo (that meant every half an hour) involved peeping into the panty with trepidation. Was it clean? Whew, it was. Every song chosen randomly on the phone or the ipod had a 'message' for me. Every crow that flew in a pair brought a smile just as a lone crow made me restless. Everything HAD to be right. I should do nothing wrong. The pressure to ensure so was unbearable if not for the intrinsic joy behind it -- that simply paled everything else. 

And then the dreams began. Grandparents visiting me in our old house, the ghosts of my and my husband's ancestors weaving a protective web made of gauze around me, the horrible night when I felt somebody who wanted to steal my baby was walking outside our room and deliberately wearing anklets to let us know she was there and the recurring dream of light breaking through, slowly, surely and deliberately in a dark, dark cave full of icicles. 

I was always a sucker for symbolism and my raging hormones were dunking me in them. 

'Deep Blue' by Bhaskar Chandravarkar from the album 'Sound of the seas'

Week 1: Drummer's war cry

too soon to tell . . . 

the slight swelling 

of a flower bud   

                          Susan Constable

I did the perfunctory barn dance but I haven't allowed myself to rejoice yet. Today is the 65th day of my pregnancy and it is only now that I have gathered up enough courage to write about it -- something I have always wanted to do. I know if I delay writing any further, poof! it will all be gone and I will not be able to capture even a whiff of what I have felt in the past two months. I have been wanting this experience from so long and have dreamed about it so deeply and so often that when I got the first inkling that it might be happening for real, I was scared to my bones. My deepest wishes have come true before and they have always unnerved me. My utterly naive, childlike and yet unshakable belief in the Universe and God wrestles with that little cynical imp who is never too far away and whose laughter is always sniggering. He doesn't achieve much though, except giving me terrible anxiety attacks and converting my inner monologue into a tired, trained parrot. "Is this happening? I hope this is for real. Oh God, let it be for real. (The tempo increases)  Please God, make it real!" Ah there it is. The demand, the supplication. The pleading. That too is hard to keep away from. However much your faith (which is really MY deeply private, completely mish-mashed, totally logic-free faith that confirms neither to religion nor to anything else) tells you to receive without demanding. And so it goes. Rinse, repeat.

On April 28, when my lower abdomen (or was that the pelvic bone) started throbbing in what felt like a drummer's war cry before the big battle, I wanted to desperately believe that it indeed was the heralding. I began devouring pregnancy symptoms websites on the net; ate it morning, noon and night. Every twinge, every snick, every turn felt like a pregnancy symptom and added to my heart beat. The inner parrot was unceasing, unwavering, unstoppable. I gave up on myself and spent that week in a haze of anxiety, fear, scaredy-joy with my inner life, itself sweltering with need and anticipation, simply taking over all my other lives. Oh! the tottering imbalance of an 'almost there'.

How I wanted to experience all the symptoms! I wanted to feel the pain... I would get more anxious if the back and the hip pain and the pelvic bone stopped conversing in the feverish way they were.  I was in a hurry to start puking -- the one universal symptom that all websites spoke confidently of. Please God, let me puke. Let this be for real....rinse, repeat. And then I discovered that little device -- the home pregnancy test. In a span of 5 days, I must have done at least 7 tests -- all bought from different medical shops in my area. Medical shop assistants/owners, poor things, are a decent lot; they desperately try to hide their curiosity but mostly you can make out the eye twitch.  Of the 7-odd tests, only the last two were kind to me and revealed faint to decently pinkish lines. 

The drummer was being serious. 

Note: Every blog post will begin with a relevant haiku and a piece of music that corresponds to the emotions and feelings the post will describe. So there's the haiku in the beginning and here is the music -- 'Reunion' by Ravi Shankar. So long!