The Night Before, The Morning After

On the night of 5th February 2006, a Sunday, we packed our bags and left for the hospital. They were to induce labour the next morning and Sonia, my doctor, had asked me to check in the night before. It was a quiet enough departure. We had spent the day hanging out at home. Watching some telly. Catching a film, I think. No fanfare.

We drew up at Sitaram Bhartia in silence. The cold January wind had eased and it was a pleasant night. Sitaram Bhartia was unusually quiet, wearing ample parking space and a deserted look. The guard at the entry wanted to know why we were there. We both looked at my nine month belly and back at him. Why indeed!

The reception was empty. When we finally found someone to initiate proceedings, a flurry of activity broke into the room. Another woman in her ninth month was coming to check in and had come with her whole extended family. A funny sight - the two of us with our bags, occupying very little space on one side and The Big Family on the other - mother, mother in law, brothers in laws, sisters, aunts, uncles...!

And so it began... The bureaucracy of birthing. Filling forms, signing papers, making advance payments, hospital gowns, IV drips, doctors-in-resident in Hawai chappals, nurses from Kerala with shy smiles, heart beat monitors that hummed loudly, ticker tapes, glucose ... S barely getting any sleep in the night and me lying prostrate surrounded by gadgets wondering wondering wondering...

To cut a long story short: labour began early in the morning and continued through the day. This is the part I DO remember quite a bit of! Parents from both sides arrived by 8 and visited in instalments and were duly advised to WAIT downstairs and fret about, but out of sight!
S and I laboured away in the Delivery Room. By 2 pm there was no progress even though the contractions were coming FAST and FURIOUS (for those of you who want to know - it hurts. it does.) S and Sonia took the call, and by 3 I was in line for a C-section.

As I was lumped from bed to stretcher to operating table like a bag of potatoes by men in green scrubs, my contractions continued. The anasthetist was Bengali and insisted on polite conversation. The last thing I remember before he put the needle into my spine was him asking me what my PhD thesis was on. I am not sure I replied.

I was awake through the operation, numb only from waist down. It was pretty much like watching from the wings. The team of doctors chatted while they went about their routine - about the weather, the rush, the rising price of onions, the bad traffic, everything in general and nothing in particular. One garrulous fellow guffawed: "Three more C-sections to go today! If only we could put carbon paper between them and just do the one on top!" Hmm.

They let out a sharp cry suddenly - all together. I had a vision of a stream of blood gushing out in a fountain from the cut they had made and flooding the room with the monitors beeping loudly in alarm. In the next heartbeat I heard a deep-throated guttural cry of indignation. A dark face in a surgeon's mask (later identified as our lovely paediatrician Sangita) with smiling eyes and a little black bindi above the eyes appeared in front of my face and held up the baby next to my cheek. A damp scraggly naked baby in a steady wail kicking its legs and giving me side glances, hair in damp disarray, looking seemingly irritated at being disturbed... I could have sworn it was my mother's face looking at me. "Congratulations! Here, meet your beautiful daughter." the masked face said.

Our little rock star daughter had been born!