Pregnancy : T’was the best of times but also…
Chapter 2 in the Times of Amma Story.
Honest Dispatches From The Trenches of Motherhood
Read the first Chapter here.
It was a tall orangey-pink glass of sugary sweetness and had the consistency of peanut butter. And this was the second time in 48 hours that I had been asked to drink it. I had been in the same clinical waiting room yesterday, surrounded by other pregnant women who were all there for their tests of varying kinds. Some with their significant others, some with their parents and friends. My husband had come with me the first time, but I’d trundled over alone this time. I was that sure that this test was unnecessary and that I would be sent home because this was all a mistake. But let’s rewind a bit.
I was pregnant. The lines had shown up bright and clear as I tried a pregnancy stick in a bathroom in my sister-in-law’s Chennai home. We were going to have a baby. It was surreal. I kept looking down at my stomach, wondering if the belly had popped. But apart from the food belly I had thanks to the Thalpakkati Biryani I had been shoving into my face, there was nothing there.
The first three months were mostly about bone-crushing fatigue. We were back in Manila after our India holiday, and I realized that I could not even walk for 10 minutes without feeling fatigued. The lovely gynaecologist that we had found assured me that this was normal. That I was normal, and the baby was fine. That my husband’s irrational cravings for Nasi Lemak, too, were normal. Though that bit I didn’t appreciate. As a pregnant woman who did not have cravings, though I’d expected to have them, driving around Manila looking for the perfect Nasi Lemak for my husband was not high on my list of things to do.
As soon as I started showing, I started documenting it. It was a social media pregnancy from the start, but keeping in mind this was in 2011, I had none of the fancy reels or Tik Toks of today. All I had was my venerable old Facebook albums and Instagram. We took photos of me with my belly making its presence felt, and captioned it with sentences like, “This is how you smuggle a watermelon out of the supermarket.” We’d see Pasta Sauces named Prego and pose with it. There was no budget for a splashy baby shoot, so we took off to the park and took random photos with our camera and tripod. I look at those photos and the goofballs we are in those photos, and it still makes me smile. And I know I don’t regret a single thing about being that corny and that cheesy.
I really enjoyed my pregnancy body too. There was something empowering about letting my belly and my flabs and curves show through. I wasn’t too happy about the stretch marks, but I made my peace with them.
24 blissful weeks with a bonus of great skin. I was almost at the end of the second trimester. We had found out what the gender of the baby was as soon as we could and were overjoyed to find out that we were having a daughter. The scans had been routine and I had no complaints. My husband and I had joined a birthing class — where we huffed and puffed like kindergarteners pretending to be the big bad wolf. We practised swaddling and cloth diapering. We burped plastic babies and perfected our birthing techniques. Armed with our own mantras to ride the waves of labour pangs, we thought we were ready.
Rookie mistake. We were about to learn that at no point should you expect things to go as planned as a parent.
My Doctor had ordered some routine blood tests and the usual lab tests that you do at this stage. With a history of Diabetes in the family, I had to do the gestational diabetes test too. I wasn’t worried. I was not the one who had the cravings in this family. My husband was the one who was really eating for two, and (much to my muted fury) actually losing weight despite it all. I’ve never been scared of needles. I had a largish tattoo on my upper right arm proving it. So the blood tests went without a hitch. As a recovering picky eater, though, having to drink a sugary pink semi-liquid drink was the hard part. But I knew that I would breeze through. I was healthy.
The numbers said otherwise. They were elevated even when I’d been fasting. “Let’s do it again,” my Doctor said casually, mentioning that it could have been something else that triggered the numbers. I felt a slight weight settle into the middle of my chest. I took several calming breaths, just like my birthing coach had taught me and nodded. And now, here I was, facing that disgusting sugary liquid again. This time on an empty stomach. I gulped it down and then set off on a walk through the hospital corridors, hoping that my exercise would offset the blood sugar numbers. My Mother, my aunt, my maternal grandparents — all diabetics and so, I knew some of the tips and tricks of the trade.
At predetermined intervals, the nurses apologetically took my blood. Right arm, Left. Right arm, Left. Feeling like an abused pin cushion, I finally made my way home waiting to hear from them. I was two weeks shy of my third trimester when they diagnosed me with Gestational Diabetes.
I was referred to an Endocrinologist. In stark contrast to my Doctor’s cheerful and welcoming office, this office was papered with posters from big Pharma. The ratio of people in her waiting room was two medical representatives to one patient. I remember how she read my chart, shaking her head. She then glanced up at my belly and said, ‘ You are big. Way too big.’
I was 63 kg with a height of 5 “4. She pushed a meal plan across the table. A tiny plate with small portions of rice, leafy vegetables and proteins of different kinds would be measured before they were plated. I had to eat within a 15-minute window and administer myself Insulin via syringe twice a day. After every meal, I had to prick my finger with a needle, test my blood sugar levels with a glucometer, write the results down in a tiny notebook, and bring it to her every week.
It felt like a punishment. Especially when I sent the results home to my family to ask them to check with Indian doctors, they kept saying that while the sugar levels were elevated, it was not Diabetes according to Indian Medical standards. All around me were pregnant women leading their best lives. I was rationing out the food I was eating, pricking myself with needles, and worrying if I had somehow unwittingly hurt my daughter before she was born.
The internet is a paradise telling you what sort of fruit your baby is each month and also the seventh circle of hell when you are pregnant. A simple search on gestational Diabetes brought me the kind of results that left me scarred for life. It was official. I was a terrible mother, and I had not even begun.
My Mother would have none of it. She preponed her travel and flew over to the Philippines from India. She took over the meal planning and prep and sat with me through it all. She bore my pregnancy hormones with the same grace as she handled my teenage hormones. She let me rant and vent and ugly cry. She came to a 3D movie with me with a big towel in her handbag to spread on the seat in case my water broke dramatically, like in the movies. Dear reader, it never did. My Mother drove me crazy at times, but she was the one who taught me that I could read all the parenting books I wanted and prepare for kingdom come and still have curveballs thrown at me.
Towards the end of my third trimester, my Doctor stepped in. Far from gaining weight, I had started losing pounds. Half-French, with hundreds of deliveries under her belt, she sniffed and said that the latest scans showed that my baby was fine and that I could just relax and enjoy the last days of my pregnacy without worrying about blood sugar levels. I thanked her and packed the needles and glucose meters away. But the seeds of what the Endocrinologist had said stuck, though. My relationship with food had subtly changed. And the anxiety I felt for my baby stayed on.
However, there was no time to dwell on it. The go-bag had to be packed. And my father was in town. And then, my in-laws were here. The baby clothes were ready. The diapers were set to be used.
She would be here soon. She was almost here.
But that’s a story for another time.
