The story so far.......Part I - India

My daughter was born on Jan 23rd 2006 at 6:26am in a private hospital in Bangalore. My hubby missed her delivery as he was in another country and had another delivery to take care of ............. the delivery or release as they call it of some part of a product to his client, thanks to his job in the software industry. She was so tiny and I felt looked just like her dad though there were mixed responses from others about her resemblance. Her dad came to India 4 days after her delivery on the 27th and was with her for three weeks, until she turned 28 days old on the 19th of Feb. He was more confident in carrying her than I was and used to give all his time and attention to her and me. He used to sit there on the bed watching her while she slept unaware of anything happening around her ;-) Three weeks passed so quickly ...........

Its one of our traditions to pierce the ears of the female baby on her 28th day and we had a celebration with a gathering of around 100 people. My daughter's ears were pierced with her lying on her dad's lap crying loudly and with me by her dad's side crying silently. The jeweller who had come over for the task of piercing her ears did his job well, piercing them faultlessly. Then my brother completed the custom of naming her by calling her name thrice in her ears, as the tradition calls for the baby to be named by its uncle. She was named Preksha. Me and my husband had earlier spent more than a month to choose her name browsing through thousands of names from a Baby Names Book and the internet. Finally we had come down to two names, Aakanksha and Preksha. We chose Preksha because we did not know anybody else by that name and also it included the letters from my name,Shubha and from my husband's name,Prashanth. Aakanksha lost out because it was a little long and there was somebody in our friends circle with the same name. There were some grunts of disapproval earlier, from both our families about the name.......but we held our stand. Now, we call her "Prekshu" as we could not shorten it any further ;-)

According to a popular theory about newborns I had heard from everybody around, babies who are born in the morning, have their day and night confused and so they cry throughout the night and sleep during the day making life miserable for their mothers. But Preksha prove the theory wrong. She slept well throughout the night hardly even waking up for her feeds and well...........she slept a lot during the day too. In fact, she was a baby who did not cry much during those months and when she did, it was more like a cat mewing. And when she got her first shot of BCG, she did not even meow. The only time she cried was during her bath time upsetting my mother, her grandmother. Ask my mother and she will tell you........ that the reason for her worry was me screaming rather than Preksha's cry. Oohhhh, these first time mothers........she says.

As its said, my time was adjusted by her schedule rather than by the clock. She used to wake up by 6am while I am in deep sleep thanks to the numerous times I wake up to feed her and change her nappy during the night. My mom and dad entertain her until 8am while I catch up on my lost sleep. By eight I put her to sleep before I wake up. She wakes up by 10am to feed again and then we spend a lot of time watching her and she watching us and the place around her, smiling to herself. I used to wonder what must be going on in her mind when she is looking at things so intently that she could bore a hole in it with her eyes. She used to lie on the bed and keep moving her hands and legs in the air, smiling to herself sometimes, and at other times expressions on her face changing like the colours in a kaleidoscope. After another short nap was the most hated bath time. My mom used to then feed her ragi porridge. Dressing her up was a task I loved to do............. there were new dresses to be worn almost every alternate day. Her dad had shopped for so many things for her while he was in Bangalore and also she had so many gifts from relatives and friends who came visiting to see the new addition to our family. After dressing up, we would entertain her for some time and then she would drift to sleep again. Rest of the day was similar, short naps, feeds in between, play for sometime, being carried and rocked for some time and sound sleep in the night. My sis used to carry her a lot and so did my dad and mom...........Prekshu loved it when dad carried her. My brother wanted to carry her too but never got it right most of the times and was worried she wouldnt be comfortable. There were a whole bunch of my cousins to carry her too.

We were at my parents' home until Prekshu turned 2 months and 1 week old. Then we went to my inlaws' home which was to be Prekshu's home when we were in Bangalore. Prekshu was growing day by day and I was enjoying motherhood. Everything seemed so different now. Her dad was missing all the fun of seeing Prekshu's day to day development. I used to record a lot of it, but it was nothing like being there to watch her. At my inlaws house the schedule was similar. Only the grandparents were different and there were fewer people to carry her, in fact only me and her grandparents. Preksha played a lot with my mother in law and loved it when my father in law carried her. The task of feeding her ragi porridge was mine now and giving her a bath was my mom in law's. We were to leave to Japan by the end of May and so most of the days me, Prekshu and my mother in law went shopping in our car. Prekshu hated it when the car stopped at the signal or at a traffic jam. Poor baby did not know that traffic jams in Bangalore were a part of people's lives as much as their morning coffee and newspaper. We used to do a lot of shopping for Prekshu. Shopping for myself had taken a back seat and I was busy gathering all shades of pinks and yellows, dresses in all patterns and colours from all the baby shops we knew of and some we dint know of too. My mother in law carried her around the shop in her rocker while I did the purchasing.

Prekshu had started absorbing the sights and sounds around her. Also she had started recognising people and that meant her stranger anxiety had started. She never let anybody other than the familiar people carry her. If any guest tried touching her, she screamed like she would blow the roof top which irritated me a lot, but there was nothing I could do about it other than not let the guests come near her ;-) I never even noticed when her meowing had transformed to roaring. During all this while, I had a tension going on in my mind, about our visa to Japan and also my inlaws' tourist visa as they were travelling with us.

We got our visas without much trouble and we travelled to Japan on 25th May. It was supposed to be Prekshu's first flight and she was just 4 months old. I could not help thinking that my first flight was after I got married and then I was 24 years old ;-) We were worried how Prekshu would take to her first flight and how hard it would be managing her in the flight. We had taken all medicines for basic illnesses from her pediatrician all the while praying that we should never have the need to use them during the flight. Our prayers were answered well because Prekshu started sleeping before the flight took off at 11pm from Bangalore to Bangkok. She woke up once or twice to feed and immediately drifted back to sleep in the bassinet provided in the flight. She was the ideal flyer, no trouble to co-flyers and no service required ;-) We had a long transit time of 18 hours at the Bangkok airport and hence had a hotel accomodation. Prekshu enjoyed herself and played a lot in the hotel room happy to be lying on a bed instead of being carried during the wait in the queues.When the flight took off from Bangkok towards Japan, she was in her bassinet sleeping soundly with a cute smile on her face. And me, the happy mom slept too.......feeling proud of my daughter and dreaming of my hubby!!