May be later I will do a complete week by week or at least month by month progress details, but now I am too tired for that. So I will just attempt a summary of what happened from August 2011 to Feb 2012.
My morning and day sickness more or less stopped after the first trimester. In the 7th week, 20th July 2011, we had an ultrasound, to determine the babies' heartbeats. It was somewhere between 150 and 170 per minute, for all three. I had read somewhere that baby girl's heartbeat count would be more, though it was unproven. So I just assumed that I had one baby girl and two baby boys. Still I thought about finding three names each for both genders. I easily got three nice girl names. During the initial months of our marriage, me and Ramesh had decided on a baby boy's name. So that was also there, but I just could not come up with two other boy names. So I left it at that. Some time during the 11th week, we had a scan in which we SAW the fetuses. It was three tiny rounds, size of grapes. One was very small. Doc said they were 4.2 cm, 3.9 cm and 3.7 cm long, and that this was normal growth. I remember vividly those images, of beating fetuses and the fast rate at which the hearts were beating.
As days passed, my hormones started taking a toll, and I had bitter mood swings. I would become depressed suddenly, cry a lot, and this made my parents worry. May be it wasn't just my own emotions, but the emotions of the babies as well, merged with that of my own. It is a very complex situation- you have three complete, but unknown and unconscious selves within yourself, apart from your own known, conscious self. And those minds and hearts act through you, something like a multiple personality. And then suddenly one day those selves liberate themselves and come out. You no longer feel emotions that are not really your own..Complex indeed.
Our doctor had suggested hospital stay many times, but I was unwilling. I preferred home, and besides hospital stay would be expensive. Only Ramesh was working at the time, that too in a very erratic work schedule. We had some reserve money, but that was all we had in cash. I did not want to spend it all unnecessarily. But my mood swings and the cramps I sometimes felt, and just general nervousness, together worried my family, and made us think of shifting to the hospital, getting admitted. Still I thought it would be better to move sometime during November. By 15th week, DrTC handed my case over to DrSri, the Gynecology specialist, and said she would be in charge from then on. She is a very sweet person, though much more reserved than DrTC. She gave a small briefing on what to expect, and said it was now too late to think of selective reduction, if we were planning one. We were not. During these visits and later hospital stay, one thing I really disliked was being referred to as 'patient' by all doctors, nurses and hospital staff. I was not a patient, and being and remaining pregnant only emphasized the fact that I was healthy, not a patient. But that was the system in the hospital.
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| 13-10-2011 (20 weeks) |
I had a Triple Screening test on 30th September, during my 17th week. This was a blood test supposed to find out if the baby/ies has any neurological disorder like Down Syndrome. The quantity of blood taken for the test was more than the usual blood tests, but by then I was quite used to needle sticking on my body. I coolly let them take the blood, and in the process got some admiring glances from other ladies waiting their turn at the lab, They were scared, and were not used to as many needle sticking. I never got the result of the test in my hand, but later learned from the doc that the test was negative, meaning there was nothing to seriously worry about. She said there was another test called amniocentesis, an invasive procedure, which was done if there was a possibility of risks during Triple test. She said it was not necessary in my case, even a bit dangerous, since it was an invasive procedure, still if wanted to do it, they would do it. I said no, and was relieved. Those days I had this habit of going online for every single thing, every word, every symptom, every medicine, every test. Everything seemed fine, yet I found something new to worry about.
21 weeks
Finally, towards the end of October, one night I had a terrible stomach pain. We rushed to the hospital, waited endless minutes in front of the casualty before someone attended to us. I was writhing in pain eighty percent and fear twenty percent. My mother was with me while Ramesh went to fetch a doctor, and she got very worried. At long last I was taken to the ICU, given medication and finally the pain settled. Much later I was told that the pain came because one of the fetuses shifted position in an unusual way. This made us all get real panicky and finally we decided to move in to the hospital- on November 4th, 2011.
NEXT..24 weeks to 29 weeks
NEXT..24 weeks to 29 weeks
