Maya Margaret Shukla

She's here! Born Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 9:11 p.m.

7 lb. 8 oz. and 19 1/4 inches

and a ton of hair.

I'll post more later--too tired to do much more for now! Maya is perfect. Labor was tough... I had a full labor, three hours of pushing, then went to c section because she was just stuck and wasn't going to make her way out. So I kind of had two labors. We were in the hospital until Thursday after that, and everyone at Beth Israel was beyond wonderful in helping us from labor through postpartum recovery. We're figuring things out at home as we go. More soon... when I'm more functional. She's been more than worth the wait.

Still waiting...

Just in case you were wondering.

39 weeks!

... and counting down. My due date is this Saturday, so here is me, last weekend, at 39 weeks.

I'm pretty much living in these Juicy Couture maternity pants. They're low-rise and apparently incredibly stretchy, because they've somehow fit me snugly from start to almost finish of pregnancy. Now that the baby's dropped so low, these are the only kinds of pants I want to wear, super low on my belly.

Anil said today, "It feels like we're in college again," in his case because we're sleeping late and watching too much TV. I , however, do not feel like I'm in college.

I'm trying to stave off feelings of impatience, though, and enjoy the time off. At some point (I think when she dropped so seemingly early, a month ago), I got some feeling of entitlement that I'd go into labor before my due date, so it's made me antsy and impatient. It seems obvious that I should be enjoying this quiet time, for a number of reasons, but when I've been pregnant this long and as the whole unknown of first-time labor and its aftermath looms over me, it can be hard to keep my head on straight. Anil said it's like the days before running a marathon, and that seems right to me. I want to keep my attitude positive but realistic. I've "trained" all I can and will see what my body does with the challenge. There are so many "what ifs," but it's not productive or helpful to think about them (doesn't necessarily mean it's easy to ignore them). I know that sometime soon, I'll have a healthy baby and I won't be pregnant anymore, and that will be a whole new crazy adventure. There are a handful of things that can happen in between, a number of turns that labor can take to get me there, and the recovery varies as well; all of that is pretty nerveracking. But we're close to a "strong finish" no matter what. (That's a shout out to my dad, a phrase we've used since high school... good start, steady in the middle, and a strong finish). I guess that sequence works for labor too, no matter how it goes.

I'm next, right?

For anyone who's keeping track, even Lily the pregnant hibernating bear in Minnesota that's been being filmed and viewed online has had her baby.

a cupcake for the cupcake

We thought a giant cupcake might sugar shock me into labor, and a final cupcake offering to our little cupcake seemed appropriate. This was at Sweet, a cupcake cafe on Mass Ave, and the cupcake pictured here is actually a miniature chocolate one. Anil and I also shared normal sized coconut and apple cider cupcakes, and now I think I'm in cupcake labor. I'm leaning back here, so my belly looks really huge!

Waiting...

As I wait for this baby to decide it's time to arrive, I'm remembering how I'm really not very good at waiting. I'm good at momentum. I'm good at deciding that I want something to happen, then making it happen, or working towards it happening; I get energy from that. Waiting around for something to happen when it's something I don't have control over? I'm not so good at that. It's the reason I embarrassed myself a lot in high school with boys that I liked--if only they'd made He's Just Not That Into You circa 1997.

My friend Katie and I always laugh at how the day before I found out I was pregnant, we were doing this giant walk around the Charles River (followed by the last beer of my pre-pregnant life!), and I was griping about how I hated not knowing if I was pregnant or not--that it was fine if I wasn't, but it was the waiting and not knowing that was driving me crazy. I don't think I wrote about this at the start of my blog, but I'd been using this ovulation monitor in hopes of getting pregnant on some semblance of a schedule because, at the time, I was still planning on being in graduate school this year--I hadn't quite yet made my decision to stop the madness of commuting. This ovulation monitor was recommended to me by a fellow academic who shared my situation of living life on a schedule of semesters; she and her colleagues had used it in graduate school to try to have babies on a summer or semester plan. I figured if I was going to have a baby and take a semester off (the plan was to be off this current spring semester to avoid commuting from Boston to New Hampshire in another winter--for you folks in Virginia, winter lasts till April here, so it's almost the whole semester!), then I may as well try to maximize the time I would have with the actual baby if I was taking that whole semester anyway.

I feel the need to explain all of that because otherwise I wouldn't have been so set on trying to "plan" the whole pregnancy process--it's not really my style (because I know that making "plans" for something that can't be planned just leaves me stressed out, see above). There was another reason too though. Anil doesn't get any paternity leave from residency. He could get it legally, we assume, but it's not built into his program. Basically if one resident takes off two weeks for paternity leave or for any other reason, other residents would have to scramble and cover for him (and to our knowledge there's never been a pregnant female resident), so it just isn't done. He does get four weeks of vacation, but we had to schedule that vacation before we knew whether we were pregnant.

So we guessed and crossed our fingers. We estimated when we might start trying to get pregnant based on a hypothetical due date at the end of January, since that would put us past the holidays and into that spring semester, but it would maximize the time I had off with the baby and the time we had in Boston before we expected to move. Anil scheduled two weeks of vacation when we thought a "first try" due date would be, then we spaced out electives, which are low-stress work weeks, throughout the next month in case this mythical due date would be in February instead.

I then got this way overpriced ovulation monitor because I figured, if it helps us match up this pregnancy with Anil's vacation time, it's worth it, and if it doesn't work this time, then at least I'm not annoyed at myself for not trying it. It's been, well, nine months now, but from what I remember, you're supposed to pee on this stick that the monitor then reads every morning, and it tells you when you're at peak ovulation levels so you can maximize, um, productivity. I followed all the instructions, but I remained at "high ovulation" without "peak fertility" for like three weeks. There was supposed to be a three day peak, and I didn't see it until way later than expected. So I Googled "late ovulation" and got my first taste of "Thou Shalt Not Google During Pregnancy." There was all this chatter in message boards about late ovulation and how it makes it harder to get pregnant, or something along those lines. And I was afraid, based on peeing on this plastic device and stupid Google, that this was my fate, and we couldn't make any of it work, and I'd have to figure out this late ovulation business because, well, that big egg wasn't flashing on the screen! There could be no other explanation! I envisioned us being holed up in our apartment in late January, too cold to go out around town and too pregnant to take a real vacation, and in that space of waiting I began psyching myself out.

This was what I was griping about as Katie and I walked along the Charles. I was in that "waiting" period (um, no pun intended), between getting a physical clue that I might be pregnant and being far enough along to take a pregnancy test. I clearly remember saying, "It's not that I'm concerned about it not working this first time, it's just that it's the only way we can have this scheduled vacation time..."

And now, here I am, saying, "It's not that I'm worried about her not being born, it's just that we have this scheduled vacation time!" I mean, our timing ended up working out perfectly. I have absolutely nothing to complain about. Anil has had a great schedule for the past couple of weeks, we've been having so much fun together, we're as ready as we can be to bring a baby into our apartment and our lives, and baby and babymomma are as healthy as can be. But I hate waiting! I'm ready! I want to go with this momentum, this energy, so that I don't start to stress out.

This is about how I'm feeling right now.

I'm referring to the photo, but it's interesting to read the situational parallels too. Just yesterday my OB said that if I wanted to be induced next week on the 28th, she'd be fine with that (she called it a "social induction" since it's not medically necessary, but it's so close to my due date that if I'm just that tired of being pregnant and want to go for it, I can). That's the only day she'd be on call to deliver me, so it's enticing to think about for the comfort factor of having a doctor I've been with these past nine months, but I'm still hoping to let the cupcake come out of the oven on her own time, even if it's after the 28th. Even if it's after my due date of the 30th. Here's to hoping it's before though!!

On Tuesday I rubbed my belly with my friend's 9 week old baby, hoping that might send a message. She pushed her butt against him; I'm not sure how to interpret that but hopefully it means, "See you soon!"

Some thick ice

Anil had this great idea on Saturday that we go to the Museum of Fine Arts because I wanted to do some walking, and it's been a bit cold and frozen up here for the usual sidewalk strolls. He had the weekend off from work, and we were itching to do something that we might not get to do again for the foreseeable future. Granted, we won't get to lay around all night watching movies, but we'd done that all week and needed to get out of the house. But since we didn't get out of bed until 11 a.m. (another indulgence that isn't long for this lifestyle of ours), and realized that the museum closes at 4:45 p.m. on the weekends, we had to scratch that idea for the time being. Instead though, we went downtown to walk in the Public Gardens and Beacon Hill since it was above freezing outside (that's balmy for mid-winter Bostonians), the culmination of which was having a beer/Diet Coke in this little Beacon Hill bar called The Sevens. It's a routine we do with visitors and with friends in nicer weather, and it was a fun way for us to reconnect and reaffirm that we're still the same people we always are even when we're about to have a baby (and when I don't fit as gracefully onto a barstool... if I was ever graceful in that position, that is).

Here's my favorite part: the swan boat pond in the Gardens is completely frozen over, so much so that people are walking all over it, even up onto the little island from Make Way for Ducklings. I've never seen it like that; probably it happens every year but I don't usually stroll through the Common or Gardens in the tundra winter months. It's frozen enough to hold 8 1/2 months of pregnant Sara!