Friday 21 November 2014

Weeks 33 to 38: Colour me yellow

Winter dawn

a butterfly wakes up

in my dream      

                          

                               Chenou Liu



The last weeks of pregnancy - do I even remember them now as well as I did nearly a year ago? Perhaps not.  I open the laptop with great excitement and trepidation. I have not written a word since last November. Do I even remember how to write? Do I remember how the qwerty kept pace with my thoughts? Well, we will soon know. 



I am sitting down today to write down a chapter that was both a beautiful end and a glorious beginning. Too many adjectives you say? But life has been a series of adjectives the past one year -- how else do you describe your state of being when a dream that you have seen often and in several forms through many years comes true spectacularly - in exactly the way you had imagined and more! It humbles you, it makes you grateful and yes, it makes you reach for hyperbole. 



But I am going ahead of myself. 

Back to December 5. It was one of the last scheduled scans before the big day and our goatu was unwilling to show its face in the 4d imprint - in a determined show of defiance it had closed its face with its fists - now I know a precursor of things to come! It had not turned yet but I was not too worried at that point. I assumed that eventually it will - I was all ready for a normal delivery. 

Ah well. It did'nt turn. Instead, it locked its hands in front of its face and perhaps to make doubly sure, locked its feet as well. Complete breech, the doc said. There is no way it could be a normal delivery - in fact it was to be an elective C-section - essentially I could choose my date and time. And I did. Weekend because it would make things easier for Sippa and a 'good' star alignment because somewhere I do believe in astrology, protests from the logical part of my brain notwithstanding. 
I wanted the pain before the pleasure - the screaming, gut-wrenching, god-cursing pain. But that was not to be.  Me, the real me, was glad enough that my baby would be with me in 2013 - my year, my magical year. So 28 December it was; 2 pm because it was the doc's half-day. This is how the universe conspires, I suppose. 

Strangely enough, now that we had decided the time and date, I spent the remaining two weeks hoping I would not suddenly break water. The mind is such a funny place - it now wanted the baby out only on the 28th, the desire for normal pop-out quite forgotten. 

And then one night, I saw a dream. Or a premonition. Or a prediction.  Call it whatever you will. I saw that I had had a girl - with big grey eyes - Sippa was holding her and exclaiming how beautiful she was - and we were calling her Alinah (the name I had liked the most in my list of names for girls). I woke up with a start and I knew then, though I never said anything aloud, I would have a girl. I knew it just like how that day in April I knew I was pregnant. It was eerie and yet, very real. Our goatu would be a girl. Just like the sunshine-yellow butterfly that fluttered out of its dark crusty shell attached to our front wall. I don't know why I connected that butterfly with my baby. It so happened that I saw it fly out -- happy, free and yellow. May be it was the yellow that did it - reminded me of the sun. 

I leave you with the tune that mesmerised me in my last weeks of pregnancy - it was one of those pieces that occupies every fibre. 









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