[nagi] 2 weeks early ?

thursday 30/12/04 7:50 am, i'm still sleeping ...

monica: nuggiie, looks like i have the "show"
me: oh yeah ? what colour is it ?
monica: bright red
me: oo .. let me see

[had a look] ..
me: not the way the NHS classes described it would look like ?
monica: yeah, it is not pink, not green, not clearless
me: call the hospital and describe the colour to them

[monica calls the hospital, they ask if we could come over. yes ofcourse, we say. we reach in 1 hour]

thursday 30/12/2004 9:00 am, fetal monitoring unit, rosie maternity hospital

a midwife, name withheld, greeted us nicely. she had colossal tits. she most probably uses cantaloupes for sizes when she tries out bras at her local mall. i was a bit dazed initially. i took a minute or two to locate my eyeballs as they had plunged into her cleavage. monica had the same predicament. well, ok, we settled soon after as we had an important issue in the queue. the midwife strapped 2 electrodes onto monica's tummy. one for monitoring the baby's heart beat and the other to measure the pressue on the tummy. baby's heart beat should be between 110 and 160 beats per minute she says, the stress on the tummy could be anything really. if the gauge shows more than 20 units, contractions will be starting soon. monica's scans were all over. it was at 17 most of the time. then every 10 minutes the pressure would mount upto 70 odd. the midwife said "oo, you just might be in labour".

the midwife proceeds with some internal examinations, which monica claims was a tad painful, and endorsed that it in fact was a "show". she said "you should be in established labour between 24 and 48 hours". she requested us to go home and come back when contractions are "regular" - every 5 mins and 1 min strong.

friday 31/12/04 04:00 am, sleeping some what ...

monica: nuggiiee
me: brr... Zzzzz
monica: nuggieee.
me: brr.. zzzZZzz.. yea, anything the matter ?
monica: yeah, i think you should not go to work today. the contractions have started and i can feel the pain a bit
me: no worries.

[i ask as to how regular they were. she says they are every 20 mins or so but not regular in anyway]

me: ok, i will go back to sleep. wake me up if you need anything.

well, i couldn't go to sleep after that. it is 11:20 am, local time on friday. monica's contractions now are about 15-20 minutes apart. at this rate, optimistically, we should have "agastya" born tomorrow. well, that is the name we will give to our baby. thanks for all your support.

[nagi] water, water everywhere & not a drop to drink

met chris baines for a pint on monday evening and by then, the death toll had crossed 3000 each in india and sri lanka, 1500 in indonesia and 200 in thailand. 24 hours later, all these counts have been reworked many times – and i am sure we do not have the final word. as of this morning, we have 70,000 dead in total and still counting. entire provinces in sumatra have been wiped out. andaman and nicobar islands, part of india, are home to 7 indigenous tribes and it is feared entire tribes have been dealt with by this tsunami. there are 500 odd islands in the andaman & nicobar archipelago – 250 if you count during high tide. before the Tsunami hits the coast, water recedes rapidly building up what is called the wall. when this wall hit maldives, the report says, they were on average 7 feet high. bear in mind the maldives are about 3000 kms away. imagine what it would have been when it hit the andaman islands just 500 kms away? luckily for malaysia, if you see an atlas map, sumatra is its natural shield as sumatra took the brunt of what would have expanded to the east.

only the poorest of the poor suffer, as luck would have it. i read this report on rediff.com about the UN teams having reached thailand, sri Lanka, indonesia and the maldives – but none to india as india has not sought any assistance. read the article [here]. this is fair enough. india these days are a "limited" aid donor though the country is still poor. we are mostly self-sufficient and are able to handle most of what can happen. india has sent a few shiploads of food and medicinal drugs to sri Lanka and the maldives. it is what a neighbour must do although we are a poor nation. please recall that india itself has suffered from this natural calamity. so, it is not that india is proud these days to accept aid, it is just that there are several others who need it more than india would at this point. a fair point made.

we see oodles of charity organisations, CAFOD, Oxfam, Red Cross, Unicef etc. etc. pleading with people to give generously. EU, japan and the USA, usual donors, and others like china, india, iran, and qatar apportioning generous amounts to victims all around.

in deep water, the tsunamis are no more than ½ a feet tall and no ship on its way would distinguish it. seismometers register the event and clever bits of software perform calculations based on depth of the ocean, temperature and the intensity of the quake. with these parameters, we can determine the speed of the tsunami and with the knowledge that a ripple expands equally in all directions in a circular format; we can sketch and ascertain who and what will be at risk. i will be donating some money to CAFOD this weekend. i received a lot of calls from my friends all around the world enquiring if our kith and kin in the affected areas are fine. i am very pleased really to hear their concerns and even more pleased to confirm that everyone close to monica & i are safe. in addition to this, fazal telephoned from maldives saying he & and his family are keeping well thus putting my concerns to rest.

happy new year for all our readers.

two more weeks before delivery. things are looking up. work is going good. i have frozen my first set of codes after module testing. still loads more work to do, but manageable really. i and monica have decided a name for the baby. we will, ofcourse, let you know in a couple of weeks :-)

All I do is dream...

Lately, my nights are full of dreams. I've been a "dreamy" girl since I can remember - meaning I do dream in the night, not nightmares, just dream in general. But lately it has been intensified. To illustrate, I wake up around 6-7 times during the nights to go to the toilet. Usually, the dream stops when you wake up. But no, I go back to sleep, and the dream continues. What's strange is, lately my emotions involved in the dreams too. Like last night, I woke up crying. This is the second time it had happened during the pregnancy. I remember in my dream I was full of anger, disappointment, feeling down and I cried in the dream. I can't remember what had happened in the dream, but I'm sure it was something trivial. Then I suddenly woke up, and my face and nose was all wet with tears, and I found myself still sobbing! Is this really common during pregnancy, I wonder?

I think people now notice that I'm pregnant. Or just a skinny girl with a bloated stomach? You know how you walk in the street and usually people look at your face and then look at your body? The order of looking is different now. Now, they look at my stomach first, and then my face, and back to my stomach. Sometimes they don't even bother looking at my face, they just look straight at my stomach :D I'm sure it's my stomach and not my boobs... heh heh.. :p

Also, is it just me or the world around me is broody? When I go walking, doesn't have to be in the city, just in the neighbourhood (to give myself some kind of exercise to help during labour), I always see either a woman with a stroller (with young baby in it), or another pregnant lady, and they're never the same people. Maybe I notice nothing but babies? That goes in conversations too. Some women probably get bored talking about pregnancy and babies, but I like discussing this and that and all about babies. I like hearing about other people's experiences with pregnancies and their babies, and share my own too. I still enjoy other topics of conversations, but they don't excite me as much as conversations on babies. People who read my blog probably notice that too. Since the start of my pregnancy, I've been talking more about pregnancy than anything else. Have I really become that boring?

[nagi] home away from home

my first post at chillicrab !! would you believe it ? just 5 more weeks to go - no, not talking about christmas but, yes, this is also a story about a baby boy being born. We have been to a total of 7 parental classes already – 2 more to go and after that we are on our own. that would be to say it is up to monica and i to put things into practice and into perspective. we had the national health service [NHS] provide 2 classes and the others by an organisation called birthlight. well, i cannot say all of them were useful in the sense not every class taught us something new. most of the classes from birthlight were, to us, revision materials. well, there are exceptions. this one class purposely titled workshop was of paramount importance to monica – and to all the other lovely, expectant souls out there.

this lady who runs this class, a brit, seems to have strong tantric & yogic ideologies. her words were full of encouragement and at 40, a mother of 4, she looks a perfect 10 and more active than [let me say] most of the girls & ladies I have known. breathing, converging the mind – all meditative doctrines - seem to be the trick. it is true, when we are sad, ill-tempered, in pain – what ever – take a few deep breaths and your outlook changes, almost instantly.

our midwife was supposed to give us a house visit yesterday at 09:00 am [tuesday] and by 02:00 in the afternoon she had not. monica called her on the mobile and got a strange message that she is on compassionate leave for 1 week. i thought something must have happened to someone in her family. monica went to the milton surgery to see another midwife and there she found out that our regular midwife's father had passed away. our commiserations.

so, what do they teach us on the parental classes ? some of the couples who attend the classes are downright nut cases. attitude is everything: if you think right, do your home work properly, then the baby will have a pleasant genesis and the mother an easy, relatively painless, delivery. no need to veil yourself ever on this. know what is coming and be equipped. some of the insensitive arseholes talk nothing about what we can do to make things better but rather about how some utterly disparate incident might bring about the end of the world. we have people who pretend to be statisticians – giving in percentages the rate of still birth in the UK. we have morons criticise midwives and doctors – and these noble souls never had anything to do with these wretched humans !! i & monica, we are very pleased with our midwife. she is never in a hurry. always explains the questions we ask. never assumes anything about us – and does ALL of this with a wide smile. i would like to think all midwives are like her.

we learnt about the phases of labour. i think i comprehend most of what was talked about and most importantly i think i cannot overlook anything that was mentioned. if i hear the word blood i would faint, i am usually that sort. not that i have changed much – but i am better prepared to stay by monica's side while she delivers. of course, yovita would be a good help. between stage 1 and stage 2, there is something called transition. end of stage 1 is what they define as full dilation of the cervix to 9 or 10 cms. this is when the woman has the urge to push – but MUST not. this they say, is the hardest and the painful part of the labour.

docile women, women who never swore in their life, women who spoke nothing harsh ever – this is what men are supposed to watch out for. you shall hear expletives and will be abused with intent [you got me pregnant, you bastard !!!]. the law provides full immunity to the woman for what ever she may do at this stage. wear a guard around your testicles and may be a chest armour. most importantly, if you are passionate about your own life, DO NOT ask the woman are you doing ok honey ? thankfully, this lasts no more than a few minutes. if you push, you will tear your perineum. alternatively you can ask for an episiotomy. no, i will NOT clarify what these are. go and find out from the internet yourself. when the midwife explained what those terms were, i almost collapsed. i swear to God, my head went fluffy.

the best bit was the class on feeding babies. it was given to us as if it is a recipe for some cooking class. anyway, here is what they told us

Ingredients required:-
1 – Baby
1 – Mother
1 – Pair of breasts

please note: may NOT substitute husbands or partners in place of babies – no matter how convincing those bastards happen to be. even if they say “one breast for me, one for the baby”, you shall not.

Method:-
[1] Hold baby as shown in diagram [A], diagram not attached.
[2] latch baby on to nipple
[3] feed baby for a minimum of 2 hours
[4] repeat [3] every 4 hours.

WHAT !! 2 hours ?

monica faints.

Hospital bag

Week 35, and I've got everything ready for the hospital bag. I just need to put them all in a suitcase so that when I deliver (whenever that might be), I don't have to worry about packing and just worry about the contractions. I'm not saying that worrying about the contractions is a good thing, but at least not worrying about packing on top of that would definitely help. The things I've bought recently to pack into my hospital bag are newborn size nappies, nursing bras, breast pads, wheat bags (hot watter bottle replacement), energy bars, honey, energy drink (lucozade), maternity pads, baby clothes. On top of that, I need to pack some CDs, clothes for labour, towel, and washbag containing soap, shampoo, toothbrush & toothpaste. Let me know if any of you think I have missed something essential for this trip to hospital. Oh, and we've also bought shower curtains just in case my water breaks before the labour starts.. heh heh..

QJoen and Cen visit us on Saturday. The main attraction was QJoen cooking us dinner. I was close to feeling disappointed when he called at 4pm saying there's a huge traffic jam and the Blackwall tunnel had been closed. I thought he won't be able to make it. Nevertheless, 2 hours later they arrived at my house.

The dinner was yummy. I finally get to taste the "Gajahmada Noodle soup a-la QJoen" he'd been promising for ages. My God that was very nice. I reckon he should open his own restaurant. He also cooked a special dish for Nagi because he's vegetarian, and that looked yummy too. Actually Nagi's dish looked like a fine-dining type of meal. QJoen, you're welcome anytime you want to cook at my house :D

The next day, Sunday, we were invited to Sumeeta and Roby's house for lunch. Before that we went to Ely Cathedral and had some afternoon tea with scones and clotted cream and extra clotted cream portion. hihihihi... Anything with clotted cream is good. The lunch at their house was also good, and we've got some more labour experience information. I can't get enough of that :D

I'm going to Antenatal Yoga every Monday evening, Childbirth preparation class (with Nagi) every Thursday evening (for another 2 weeks), and Aquanatal (water-aerobic class for expectant mothers) on Friday afternoon. I find the yoga class very relaxing and exciting because I get to hear and chat with other mums-to-be. I don't really talk much on the Aquanatal class because they don't give us time to do that, plus it's pretty embarassing to chat on your swimsuit :P I usually just go to the class, concentrate on the water-aerobic bit led by the midwife, and when the class finishes, I have a round of swim (with the float, because I found myself unable to swim properly after being pregnant!) and then just wash myself and leave. Some of the women chat while taking a shower, but I just take a shower at home. I don't think I'd like to chat while taking a shower anyway.

Me and Nagi went to this Childbirth preparation workshop last Saturday afternoon as part of the Childbirth preparation class. That was very useful and informative. More useful than the class. If you've been to one of those NHS class like we did (2 free-sessions provided by the NHS), this Childbirth preparation class is quite a repetation from what we knew from those NHS classes. I don't think repetation is bad, besides, it's always good to meet other people. The workshop was useful because it concentrated more on the breathing techniques and the positions during different stages of labour.

A not so good news: I just realised that because the baby is not going to be Indonesian, the baby would need a visa to go to Indonesia. Actually I knew that part, but I thought I can just get one of these visa on arrivals for the baby. Turns out that visa on arrival is only valid for 30 days and not extendable! Hence I have to apply for a social visit visa, which valid only 60 days! They'd need a letter from Immigration office in Indonesia to approve any visit longer than 60 days. All this I need to do in a less than a month, after I get the baby's passport. Nagi reckoned the passport for the baby will take approximately 1 week. I don't think I'll have time to get the letter from the Immigration office in Indonesia and then apply for the visa. Besides, the person who has to appeal for the letter from the Immigration office has to reside in Indonesia, which means my mom and dad, naturally, but they'll be here in UK on 20th Jan for a month, and I'm going back to Indonesia with them! I think I'll just forget about the letter and just get the 60 days social visit visa instead. That means reducing my time in Indonesia by 2 weeks. I don't think 2 weeks would matter much. I'll just contact the travel agent after the baby is born and change my itenary. Anyone have better idea?

Blog update: Me and Nagi will now both blog in this chillicrab blog. Hmm.. does that sentence make sense? You'll see different author in each blog post, so I hope it won't be confusing.