The tussle between suggestions and following them- Part 2

Suggestion 2 (this one I have heard from at least 15 people who vouch for its success)

If you are desperately trying to conceive, put your feet up after intercourse, using the wall next to your bed to support them 

Real Life

What if the bed is right in the middle of the room touching none of its walls! 

Jokes aside - A friend of mine and his wife were trying to conceive a second child 7 years after having their first baby. They had some really practical problems in following this very good suggestion. They had to come back from office early during his wife's fertile time of the month to match with their daughter's evening playtime because at night the daughter liked to sleep surrounded by parental love right in between them!! That one hour in the evening was their only time alone - to do it!!

So, one of these days, my friend's daughter came in the house after playing with her friends and sauntered into their bedroom - and asked her father 'what is Ma doing?'....Her father looked at his wife who had her feet up in the air allowing the force of gravity to aid his seed/s to reach their correct destination!!! He thought for a moment and told his daughter that her mother had become very health conscious and she was exercising!!

The next evening....there was a line of girls exercising with their feet propped up the wall of the play area downstairs and my friend's daughter proudly telling every passer by that this is the exercise that her mom did every evening, in fact would be doing it right this moment while she was playing outside!!!  I was one of the passers-by.

The tussle between suggestions and following them- Part 1

This post is first among others that will follow hence, Part 1. These posts will attempt to show some realistic differences between what is suggested by people/ websites etc and what actually takes place in real life. All these are real experiences of real people and not fiction. I am just an informed narrator!!!
Every suggestion is followed by the real life situation: 


Suggestion 1 (similar references are used by about 80% of websites on pregnancy)
'If you are about 18 weeks pregnant, your baby is now about the size of a grapefruit'


Real life
My friend who was reading this on the net was exactly in her 18th week at that time. She immediately called me up all flustered and bothered as she was concerned how her baby that was supposed to be the size of a 'tomato' in the 16th week could go back to the size of a grape in the 18th!!!

grapefruit

grapes

As you can observe in the pictures that grapes and grapefruit are as different as ants and elephants (though both have ants/ grape in them)!! That reference to a foreign fruit on that website made my friend assume that her baby had suddenly reduced in size to a mere grape (a fruit commonly available in India and one she is very familiar with)!! 
Even more confusing are references to potatoes...If some website says 'now your baby is about the size of a medium sized potato' and like me you go and check out the potatoes in your kitchen basket - you'll be spending quite some time pondering over which one could be labelled 'medium sized'...I literally lined up all the potatoes on the table in increasing order of size to ascertain 'medium sized'...but soon came back to my senses.... as some other kitchen basket may have another assortment of sizes...my own kitchen basket on another day would have different sized potatoes.....what about all the potatoes in the supermarket then- or all the potatoes of the world?? So, very unlike me, I quit the quest for the medium sized potato midway.


Thus, it is my sincere request that this 'tomato'; 'potato', 'mango' kind of references to help pregnant women visualize their babies' sizes must be replaced by something more logical...


And, having genetically modified extra large fruits and vegetables in the market doesn't help at all!!!!!!!

when my niece was born

My younger sister had one of those breeze-through pregnancies that make 40 weeks look like a blink. Her younger age and patient attitude helped lubricate this 'breeze through' effect...


Generally she is not such a 'wonderful' type...on the contrary, she has quite a cute devilish quality about her...  and I presume that this 'patient and good girl' phase was just one of those effects of being pregnant. They say that the attitude/behaviour of the child depends a lot on what the general mood of the mother was during pregnancy ....this was proved in my sister's case - my niece is the closest thing to an angel... and her Ma and Pa the farthest...


but we'll come to that in a later post... let us first resume the original objective of this post....


When my niece was born, it seemed as if she was just waiting for me to welcome her into this world...Her Ma had been huffing and puffing and pushing for over 3-4 hours but within two minutes of my huffing and puffing into the nursing home my niece popped out and gave a joyful shriek 'UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA'..


The night before my niece was born, I got a call from my sister saying that the pains had just started and that the baby could be born any time... I immediately jumped on the next train and spent the whole night dreaming in repeat sequence ..of babies being born. In one night, I produced more than 100 babies  in my dreams...and as I looked at each of these babies, I wished it wasn't my niece because I wanted to be there to hold her as soon as she arrived....the good part was that beyond the dream world, I could still feel the reassuring vibrations of the train under my body...that confirmed the imaginary aspect of the 100 babies.


So, you can imagine how important it must have been for me to be there on time...I was literally running inside the car that took me directly from the railway station to the nursing home...as if that would help speed up things..I am sure that car driver still tells my story to his buddies and they have a laugh or two at my expense. But that morning...I would have taken out my hands from the windows and flapped them like wings for more velocity, if the situation had so demanded.. (thanks to cell phones I was being constantly informed that the baby was yet to be born)


Finally I reached the destination...and there I was panting for air....leaning against my sister's husband for support...waiting for the good news...We waited in pregnant silence for about two minutes that the 'UWAAAAAAAAAA' sound emerged from the insides of the labour room...and to accompany the sound in perfect unison, tears started flowing from our eyes...We hugged each other and said this and that...all of which I now forget....For the first time I understood what is really meant by the word 'overwhelmed'!!!


Then we again said some more of this and that to each other...nodded happily at the grandparents sitting in the waiting area...and kept standing in front of the labour room entrance for some news about the mother and  baby... kept waiting.....kept waiting...nobody appeared....


Within two minutes of waiting that seemed like a century...our conversation evolved from a babble to incoherent babble...we started contemplating whether our tears had accompanied the right 'UWAAAAA' sound or some other baby had been born inside...Then we asked a nurse-passing-by who had no idea how many moms-to-be were inside the labour room...so we also discussed within those two minutes about lack of efficient nurses in our country...Then we deliberated upon the sex of the child based on the pitch and tenor of the 'UWAAAAAA' sound....but immediately came back to the fact that we had no idea or proof whether the 'UWAAAA' under discussion was the actual 'UWAAAA' we had been waiting for...


Then somebody said that there was only one mom-to-be in the labour room that morning so we gladly accepted that the 'UWAAAAA' we had been discussing had emanated from the right baby.


Finally, the conversation tended to take a mature turn and my brother-in-law sighed and said that he felt he had become a father (I smiled understandingly)....................to a door (my eyes bulged from their sockets) 'What!!!', I expressed some genuine concern.....He said  (poor thing tired of waiting for over four minutes now (more like two centuries)). 'I think I have become a father to a door as the audio is of a baby crying and the video is of this door in front of me'...his being a filmmaker did not contribute much to improve the situation...I fully sympathized with his condition but I did not want to feel like being a mausi to a labour room door even for a second!!!!


But, this is how millions of fathers in India must be feeling when they have to wait outside for the news of their wives and babies while they are trying to decipher expressions on the faces of the nurses and recognize every baby cry that is heard !!! After being witness to my brother-in-law's pathetic condition for five seconds, I told him that we must start a crusade and hospitals/ nursing homes etc must allow husbands inside the labour rooms and this and that...and we had discussed this for about ten seconds that my mother (the gynaecologist in this story) brought out my niece wrapped in a white towel....all red and splotchy and wrinkled and the most beautiful little girl I would ever lay eyes on...


So that was that and we forgot all about the crusade for the rights of fathers-to-be and we also forgot about that green door... but it forms such an important part of so mannnnnnnnnnnny stories like ours....Through it, so many people must have seen their little angels emerge for the first time...wrapped in white towels... so many people must have peeked through it and waved or blown a kiss at the exhausted mother inside!!!