Saas bahu oh no!

One of Sri's technological projects as of now, is getting Indian cable channels here in the US over the internet without paying the outrageous dollar prices they charge here for the packages. Since I have never been really into it so far, you'll have to head to his blog for the technical details :-p. But what basically it is, is a kind of modem that connects to the Tata Sky modem in India and relays the transmission over the internet. The best part is that it can be accessed from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection - on a laptop, desktop or even the iPhone, the limit being that it can be accessed only once (once the player is switched on on any device, it can't be accessed from any other). There are still kinks being ironed out but its been working great so far and I'm impressed :).

Anyways the whole thing started because my parents were heading here and believe me when I say mom loves having it :). But you know the equation when it comes to moms,

Mom + Indian TV = Saas-bahu serials.

I have completely stopped seeing any of them since the time I moved to the US (I can download the episodes off the net, but have never had the slightest inclination to :-p) and I guess my aversion has turned into something of a drastic nature. A couple of the serials mom is into have been bearable so far, but mom wanted to watch this new serial that started recently called "Sasural Simar ka". Well, one day I ended up watching half an hour of it and I'm pretty sure thats the reason half of my hair is gone (I must have torn them out of sheer frustration :-p). From the silly plot to the constant focusing on faces, from the over-dramatized dialogues to the over acting, man, was it pure torture! I wonder whether this can be classified under enhanced interrogation techniques and whether hard-core criminals can be subjected to it. I'm sure they'll give up all kinds of information in just under 5 minutes :-p. And I wonder who comes up with the ideas for such serials, such people should be subjected to non-stop marathons of their own idiotic serials!

Anyways, I have decided to turn and walk out of the room if I ever even see a glimpse of this serial again. Thats the only way for my poor remaining hair to survive :-D.

The pregnancy diaries mk II :-D.

Well, where there is the first version for the first child, there has to be a second one for the second right? Its only fair methinks :-D. Plus today is the day I complete 36 weeks, so the bun in the oven is officially full-term and ready to pop :-D. But I'm hoping it'll stay snug and tight in there for 3 more weeks atleast mainly because my dad and Darsh are heading over here in 2 weeks (I can't wait!! After a long time we'll all be together as a family for a solid 2.5 months!). But on the other side, there's the fact that I suffer from heartburn and swollen legs everyday without fail (my legs are swollen but my BP is completely normal, go figure!) and I'm literally tired of being so tired ;-). The doc asks me to sleep with my legs up to help with the swollen leg syndrome and asks me to raise my upper body for the heartburn. I don't know how I'm supposed to sleep with only my stomach lowered and upper and lower body raised :-p. I keep muttering to myself "just one more month to go", but am well aware of the reality that the only thing thats going to change is that one kind of trouble is going to be transformed into another kind ;-) :-p.

Anyways lets get on with what we are here for the pregnancy this time around :).

• The day I took my pregnancy test and it turned out to be positive. Even though it was for the second time, there was lot of happiness because we had been trying for sometime before striking the lottery :-D. Since I wanted to announce it to both families as soon as possible, I took a doctor's appointment immediately. When the doctors confirmed the news, there was excitement, maybe not as much as the first time, but lots nevertheless. The worry about how we are going to manage has not been as bad as I had last time, basically because we have been through so much with Snugli and are sure of our abilities. But there have been times when I have wondered whether 2 kids are going to be a bit too much to handle :).



• The day I had my first ultrasound. This time around the first ultrasound was done at about 7 weeks to make sure the baby was ok and its heart was beating properly. The experience was emotional, because after 3 years it felt good to be back seeing the baby in its earliest form. Yeah it wasn't as overwhelming as the first time (yeah yeah I know I'm comparing everything, but I wanted to record the changes in me ;-) :-D). In some ways it was different, but in others we were back to being first time parents - We could see just a finger-sized clump on the monitor with a heart beating, literally jumping out of the tiny body. Again we were relieved that there was only one ;-). Just 4 weeks later, when 3 nurses weren't able to find the heartbeat using the Doppler (which got me totally tense, as you can imagine), I had a second ultrasound, just to make sure the baby was doing fine. And it was :).



• The day I completed 3 months. As I have said in earlier posts, this time I had morning sickness every day in mornings and evenings. Thankfully I wasn't vomiting anything. So I was really looking forward to the completion of 3 months not only for the end of first trimester safety issue, but mainly because people generally say the 2nd trimester is the time when a pregnant woman feels her best. Sadly, that wasn't the case. The nausea continued and so did the tiredness. Despite these, I was subjected to the usual blood tests (taking out 3 test tubes of blood from me and checking it for everything from the Rh-factor to HIV) :-p. Everything was normal this time too :).



• The day of my third detailed ultrasound. This time the detailed ultrasound took place in my 19th week (it became the third one since I had the unexpected 2nd one). They checked whether the major organs/systems of the baby are developing/working properly and like the previous time, this was a major highlight of the pregnancy. The scan encompassed the brain and heart measurements (which we were able to make out), the spinal cord check and then the kidneys (which I wasn't able to recognize at all :-p). The best part was when the little rascal decided to yawn and opened its mouth wide - the technician even managed to snap a shot of the same :-D. Moreover the baby even put its thumb into the mouth and started sucking just like its elder sister :-D. We did find out the baby's gender this time too, but lets leave the story until after delivery ;-) :).



• The day I felt the baby's first big movement. It is said that after the first pregnancy, in any subsequent pregnancy, everything will be exaggerated. As in the woman will feel movements sooner, expand more and is basically sensitive to changes. So I was expecting the movements to be much much sooner, but that wasn't really the case. The first time I had felt the movements first time at around 22 weeks, whereas this time it was around the 20th week. It was as exciting as the first time. I feel that for women, the baby becomes real to us when the first big movement happens. Thats when it strikes us that oh wow, I really am carrying another human being inside me and the love for the baby starts there and then. Whereas for men, its usually only after the baby is born. Anyways, the major difference between the first time and now has been that this baby feels more active than Snugli. With Snugli, there were days when she used to be totally silent and I literally would be scared and these days, this little one moves so much that I literally feel like a washer/drier (the rumbles and tumbles in my stomach feel like that :-D).



• The day I had my gestational diabetes test and it turned out to be normal. As I said in my last post, the gestational diabetes test happened in the first week of March and thankfully it was normal this time too (I had a tiny nagging worry about it). But as I said unlike last time, this time the hemoglobin levels were a bit low and I was prescribed iron tablets. They checked it again after a month, the levels had raised a bit, but still low, so I was asked to continue the tablets. I am sick and tired of the damn things, since I'm supposed to take them on an empty stomach and not mix them with milk. Plus have the prenatal vitamins as usual :( and the iron tablets don't go with them either (have to take them with a gap). Hopefully the next time they check, the levels will be up and I'll be rid of those damn tablets :-p.

What else? Yeah I have had the leg spasms like last time where I get up crying and Sri ends up rubbing my calf muscles like crazy until the pain subsides. I have been feeling painless contractions (Braxton-Hicks) a lot earlier as well - have been feeling these for more than 2 months now and I have atleast one each day. Its not very painful, but damn uncomfortable. But one of the worse things has been the stretch of the stomach ligaments. This time I did expand more as the doctors had mentioned. By the end of 6th month I was feeling like I was in my 9th! I felt heavy and huggggggggge. But the stomach didn't show any signs of slowing down at all :-p. When I had the flu, it got worse, whenever I coughed, it was literally as if somebody was tearing out my stomach ligaments and the pain was horrible. But this pain has been popping in now and then other times too. Whenever I sit, stand, or do anything for that matter, my stomach stretches and the pain is literally like pulling the skin. Sometimes oil helps, other times calamine did and yet other times nothing does, but it has been a big experience this time.

Well, just one more month to go, just one more month to go, just one more month to go, take a deep breath and repeat 100 times :-D.

Spring sprung and is no more..

Things have been varyingly hectic (I mean, hectic due to different reasons) in my household. Have lots to write, but just don't seem to have the energy to sit in front of the computer and type these days. I can always use the pregnancy excuse, but somehow feel like its the easy way out. No matter what, I wish I had an assistant to type out whatever I wanted. Wait a minute! Sri............ :-D.

Anyways as I said, various things have happened to me over the past month (yup it has been a month since my last post in case you didn't notice :-p). After I wrote the last post, the very next check-up I went to was the Gestational diabetes + Anemia check milestone one. My gestational diabetes was fine, err I mean it doesn't exist :-D, but hemoglobin wasn't. It was low by a couple of points and so I was suggested iron tablets to bring it up. Well, now we know the reason for my tiredness. I also found out that the antacids I have been guLuming for my heartburn aren't very helpful when it comes to iron absorption - it seems they coat the stomach wall and don't let the iron be absorbed easily :-p.

Just when I was getting used to the iron tablets (just a week later), one day I woke up with a sore throat. It turned into a cold and cough next day and that very night I woke up with chills. Next morning checked my temperature and found it to be a 101.7. Now I had to get to the doctor, right? Took an appointment and after several tests found out that it was the dreaded flu - flu is supposedly very bad for pregnant women. Immediately was prescribed an anti-flu medication and thankfully the symptoms were gone in 2 days (otherwise my gynec had threatened to have me hospitalized :-p). But for 2 days, the household was literally in shambles as I couldn't even get up for the minutest chores. Thank God I have Sri, he took over everything! Even cooking (to my horror :-D).

After some sad few weeks, April 2nd week was one of the happiest with my mom heading here on April 11th. She was a bit ill the previous week and was travelling alone again, but this time I was pretty calm about the whole thing since she has travelled here already and I was confident in her abilities. Until the day she left India. I had told her I'd call her after her check-in formalities and every time I called, she still was in one of the lines with the plane leaving in an hour or so! So the headache was back in full measure :-D. Later I did find out that she climbed aboard the plane which was a relief. Then the whole 24 hours wait began - the first flight was from Bangalore to London, 2nd from London to Chicago, then the immigration and customs in Chicago and a 3rd flight from Chicago to Cincinnati. We picked her up at almost midnight in Cincinnati. She had a bad headache in the first flight and was okay in the 2nd. But the Chicago immigration line was really crazy with about a 300 people and though she had 3 hours layover, it was 2 hours by the time she got through immigration and customs. Well, she safely reached Lexington and that was a major relief. I had packed a couple of paratas for her just in case she was hungry and guess what Snugli's first dialogue to her ammamma was? "Ammamma, mammu tandiddivi nimge." ("Ammamma, we have brought you food") :-D. From then on she has been her ammamma's shadow, making even me jealous some days, hehehe :-D.

Phew, after mom came here, we have been eating all the goodies she bought us and they are all almost gone ;-). Dad and Darsh will be here next month, now thats going to be lots of fun :). Meanwhile, we have been enjoying walks around with mom enjoying the remaining flowers of spring. But before she came here, I did take some photos of spring flowers in and around my neighbourhood. They are all up on my photography page on Facebook - Through Deepthi's Eyes photography. The below picture reminded me of a thoraNa and click on it to see the Spring glory :-D.

I did not know that about songs..

One of the things that I constantly accept these days is that most of the Hindi film songs that I fall in love with are usually blatantly plagiarized from some unknown foreign country band. I mean, I can't believe that some of the Indian music composers are so dumb that they think the people wouldn't have listened to the original in these much much global internet times ;-). For example "Kya Mujhe pyar hai" from the film "Woh Lamhe" - I really loved the song when I first heard it, but felt a little bit letdown after finding out that its a copy of the song "Tak Bisakah" by an Indonesian band called Peterpan. I still love the song, but yeah it has lost its charm ;-). Another song is "Kaho na kaho" from the movie Murder which is the note-to-note copy of an Arabic song called "Tamally Maak" by Amr Diab. I prefer the Arabic one not only because of the voice, but because of the unmentionable actors in the Hindi version ;-) :-D.

Hence recent songs, unless by some exceptional music directors, can be written off as a copy from some corner of the world or another :-p. So its not a very big deal (more examples are "Dil mera churaya kyu" from "Akele Hum akele tum" which is a copy of "Last Christmas" by George Michael, "Nazare mili" from "Raja" which is a copy of "Come September" and so on). But now when it comes to olden melodies, we still respect many of the directors and composers as true masters and all of their songs are held to the utmost devotion. Yes, there were many songs there too "inspired" by western compositions, one major example (atleast for me its a major one because I love the song so much :-D), is "Itna na mujhse tu pyar bada" from the movie Chhaya which is very much inspired by Mozart's much admired "Symphony No. 40". Another inspired song I came to know about as I was writing this post was "Babuji Dheere chalna" from the movie Aar Paar, inspired by a spanish song "quizás, quizás, quizás", though it has only about 2 notes in common :-p. I'm sure there are many other olden goldies whose notes were influenced from the then famous music from around the world.

But what led me to this post was the song "Kaun hai jo sapno me aaya" from the movie "Jhuk gaya aasmaan" sung by Rafi.

As I have said a couple of times before, Rafi is my most favourite Hindi singer and this song has been one of my favourites for a long time. Well, you don't have to imagine my shock when I learnt the song was a copy of "Marguerita" by another of my all time favourite singers Elvis Presley!




I love Elvis's voice and I have a couple of songs by him I absolutely adore ("Love me tender", "Can't help falling in love with you", "Its now or never" etc :-D), but I hadn't heard of this one until I read about the plagiarism part :-p. The initial part is obviously a copy, but even the stanzas seem a lot similar :-p. Well the shock did wear off after a couple of days and now I have 2 similar songs that I love basically because of the singers - I cannot let go of either Rafi or Elvis ;-).

Do let me know if you know of more such "inspired songs" :-D.

A blogger's best friend..

Thats what my blog has become in 6 years to me. Thats right, today is exactly 6 years since I started writing my blog. That certainly means that there have been atleast 6 posts including this one, talking about how much my blog has come to mean to me. Good excuse to write a post at the least :-D.

Seriously though, I cannot believe that I'm still writing. I mean, ideally I did think and do think that I will be writing all my life, but the situations in life don't really give you that kind of a comfort level or that kind of a time. I've seen blogs and the associated bloggers disappear without a word suddenly because of life pressures and I don't really blame them. When I had Snugli, there were many points in time when I did wonder whether I was 'neglecting' her by dedicating a bit of time to my activities (especially blogging). But there's my duties as a mother to her, as a wife to my husband, as a daughter to my parents and then there is a duty to myself. To do the things I love to do :).

And I do love to write. The posts have been slow for the past couple of months, due to the little one that I'm carrying. Call it fatigue or maybe laziness, but to be honest, I don't mean to give up on the blog yet. Have no idea how tough it'll be after the delivery, but right now, I plan to make some time somehow :). So hopefully there will be a post next year celebrating the 7th birthday of the blog if it goes as well as it is going right now. And to add, I don't really have that many commentators pestering me to write, so that must prove that this is purely for myself and few of my family/friends who are regular visitors :).

Another hindrance to blogging is the evolution of day-to-day social networks like twitter and facebook. I'm still not on twitter, thank God (cannot afford to update yet another one), but I am on facebook and I have to admit that its easier to put up daily thoughts there, than create a post for it on the blog. Obviously there is no detail-oriented stuff as it is here in this blog, but its good for a quick quote or a quick link pointing to a news I thought was interesting. Yet for me personally, that can never take the place of this blog - even though for some people apparently it does. I have seen people update 10-20 status messages per day, upload irritating photos of what they cook daily or see daily or do every second of every minute of every hour of every day and people updating the damn thing when they are attending weddings (right now while attending someone else's wedding, but I'm sure the day will come when they'll be updating during their own as well :-p), or watching cricket or doing anything. And everytime I see this I feel like shouting at them to stop and to enjoy what's happening in actuality rather than striving to keep strangers "updated" (sadly some even consider strangers as very good friends :-p). But oh well, its their life, their choices.

Anyways, a very happy 6th birthday to my beloved blog. Hope you continue to exist as long as I do :).

Craving and caving in..

I figured that I owe you all a pregnancy post after that abrupt update :). First of all, thanks to all who bothered to leave a comment and wish me, and to all who thought of leaving a comment but were too busy to do so (:-p). No thanks if you said "Meh" and walked off :-p.

The decision to have a second baby was for us, a combination of many reasons. For one thing, we both have siblings ourselves and we, especially I, wanted Snugli to have that experience, that particular companionship. Secondly we felt it kinda was the right time. We didn't want it too early (needed time to recover from the first one :-p, :-D) and didn't want it to be too late, when a second one will be more of an intrusion than a welcome. Thirdly, we had started to go through this terrible nostalgia about Snugli, hehehe. I mean the first year was full of frustrations, but it has been our lives' highlight to watch Snugli grow up (I think its any parent's life's highlight :-D) and we did want a repeat of that. Yeah, nostalgia, half the time ends up helping you make the craziest decisions :-p.

What I'm saying is that the second time pregnancy hasn't been as smooth for me as the first one was. Yup, the comparison begins now with the second baby still inside my womb :-p. While carrying Snugli, I literally had no pregnancy symptoms except for heartburn in the last couple of months. But this time around, man, has it been a wild ride! I have seen it all. First trimester (the first 3 months), I had morning sickness the entire day, every day. So well, "morning sickness" definition wasn't really suitable to what I had :-p. Thankfully I wasn't vomiting at all, but would feel queasy the entire day. Plus I used to feel tired. The tiredness was so bad that I would drop off to sleep in the evenings while sitting on the sofa! I was waiting for the 2nd trimester relief, but there wasn't any. The queasiness continued and so did the tiredness. No break. As of now I'm in my 7th month and I still have the morning sickness (it is thankfully limited to the mornings these days) and the tiredness - yeah you'll still find me nodding off in front of the TV some evenings :-D.

Plus heartburn made its appearance in the 2nd trimester end - so guess this little one will be born with a head-full of hair like Snugli did ;-). Thats not an old wives tale btw - John Hopkins actually did a research on that and proved that excess of estrogen causes heartburn in mothers and more hair in babies :-D. Jokes apart, the heartburn seems worse this time, sometimes I start feeling it even when I taste something while I cook! So yeah queasiness+tiredness+heartburn implies this baby is a troublesome one already :-p. My gynec says that the tiredness is basically due to the fact that I have a toddler to run behind and she insists that even the littlest things I do for Snugli contribute towards the strain. But honestly speaking, Sri has taken over most of the chores and it feels like all I do is laze around :-p. And did I mention how glad I am to have him as my partner? ;-) :-D.

And then there were the cravings. This is the good part, believe me ;-). I never had a single craving when I carried Snugli. My mom always would talk about the cravings she had when she was pregnant with me - it seems she ate a whole box of jalebis once and so on :-p. My parents weren't that well off then, so I would tease her that cravings were just excuses to eat whatever she wanted during that time, hehehe :-D. Well, this time, I found out how wrong I was. My cravings started with a simple McDonalds icecream cone (the 49 cents one which is like a version of our Bangalore Softy) and I think it was sometime in November. If you haven't tried it, believe me when I say, its not all that good. Its okay, a bit different from any icecream that you get. But craving a softy in winter was a surprise ;-).

But I didn't really know how worse it'd get until I started craving the Garlic bread from Pizza hut. Now, I regularly have frozen Texas toast garlic bread in my freezer (you just have to heat it up in the conventional oven for sometime and its ready to eat), but I didn't want that. I wanted the salty Pizza hut one and nothing else. After thinking (and drooling :-p) about it for about 3 days, I finally asked Sri to get that and a pizza from Pizza hut one night. There is a hitch in the Pizza hut garlic bread, the thing is that all locations don't serve them, a couple have them and a couple don't. The one that Sri went to didn't and the guy coolly calls me up and says that they don't have it and hence he is getting bread sticks. To excuse the poor guy, this has happened a couple of times earlier and I've always been quite okay with it. But nah, not this time. I literally burst into tears over the phone, shouted at him, slammed the phone and hung up on him. God!! I have never behaved that atrociously in my life ever. The poor guy went all the way to another Pizza hut location to get his crazy pregnant wife the garlic bread she wanted :-D. Moreover we always get 4 pieces, this time he got 8 and I ate 5 of them!

Phew, that particular craving was done after I had garlic bread a couple of more times. Today, if you ask me, I don't even feel like looking at the damn things :-p. After that there was gobhi bajji (cauliflower fritters) which I literally kept dreaming about for 2 consecutive nights! Then finally the third day I made them myself and ate to my heart's content :-D. After that, there have been jalebis (available in Indian stores here, but not very good ones), pakodas (made them myself twice) and little things like that. I keep teasing Sri that he should be thankful that I have been craving only inexpensive foods, otherwise he'd have been a goner ;-). I think he is more thankful that the raging maniac he encountered hasn't made a reappearance, hehehee :))).

So thats it, the journey so far. I have to be thankful that things have been pretty normal and it has been a low risk pregnancy. More will be up whenever my brain keeps recovering from the shutdowns it has been facing on and off, then and again ;-).