Baby Names

We started looking at baby names, so that we would be able to name our kids immediately after delivery, thus appearing nicely organized to our friends and family. We flung a whole bunch of names at each other and did some searching at sites such as www.indiaparenting.com and www.sulekha.com, to eventually settle down with Maya and Mann. In case they turned out to be two girls or two boys, we would then think of companion names. We kept these names to ourselves, planning to surprise everyone once they were born; as it happened we were the ones who were in for a surprise.
 

Uneventful Second Trimester

The second trimester went by fast. WFM was not allowed to work, but she was allowed limited mobility. She used this freedom to make short trips for shopping or to meet friends, to go for walks to the nearby gardens and to go for movies in nearby theatres such as Aurora and Plaza. At home, she spent time on the computer, on the net, watching television, reading books and coordinating things at work. On the net, WFM checked out a lot of twins' and parenting sites, including some Usenet groups such as alt.parenting, but eventually got fed-up of the surfeit of contradictory information available.

Planning for the future, we employed a cook. Once we had a cook, we took the opportunity to call most of our friends over for dinner. Friends who we hadn't met in a long time, friends to whose homes we had gone in the previous years, but had not been able to return the invitation and friends who we just felt like calling over. This also kept WFM occupied, planning the menu, coordinating invitations and supervising the cook.
 

Biscotti and Gallops

Sarita (see Whispering Sessions) and Bijal were constantly in touch. We are about five couples that regularly meet and realizing that this was the only time we would get to meet in a long time, we got together twice; once at Gallops, and the other at Biscotti. Sarita and Bijal were both big by now and needed help in getting up and sitting down as well as adequate space around the chairs. It was an amazing sight; seeing both of them together, huge and bloated, but glowing and looking every bit the proud expecting mothers that they were. 
 

Elective C-Section

The delivery was to be in a big city hospital. Though the gynecologist gave us a choice of normal delivery, seeing WFM's size (5ft 1"), we knew that the only option we had was a C-section. We planned a date around the middle of February.
 

Planning

Accordingly we had other things to take care of. We live in a 2 BHK apartment with my parents and we decided to redo our bedroom to make it somehow appear larger. We decided to get rid of a whole lot of storage cupboards, so as to free-up space for the kids to move once they started crawling. We also decided to convert our attached balcony into a study so that I would be able to work there peacefully at night if the need arose. The work was to start after the delivery.

After delivery, WFM would go to her mother's place in Sion, a ten-minute walk away from our home. Her parents, in anticipation renovated their house during this time. The living room was made more spacious and the bedroom remodeled to be more user-friendly for WFM and the two infants; one of the bathrooms was brought into the bedroom, to provide easy access.

The infants were already getting to be an expensive proposition.
 

Maids

Intense efforts were also made to get a maid, in local lingo, a "pori". Someone young and nice and able to handle kids. Thus started a string of interviews with young Maharastrian girls in the age-range of 15-20. This was traumatic. Some wanted a lot of money, some were willing to hold, but not clean, some had no experience, some were willing to do days, but not nights, some wanted to stay 24 hours, some didn't want to, some looked clean and some were dirty. One girl that WFM liked took up a job somewhere else, because we took two days to decide. Another actually joined us but was then hijacked by a lady across the road for an extra 50 rupees. Just as we were getting tired of this whole exercise, we found Sunita, a young, sweet girl, who had worked at other houses, but not really with kids. WFM thought she would learn and we employed her right away. 

In a kind of reverse-dowry situation, her retinue to her mother's place would include a cook, a maid and me.
 

Confinement

At the end of 28 weeks, WFM went onto complete bed rest to avoid any untoward complications related to premature delivery. The period between 28 and 35 weeks is crucial, because if a delivery occurs during this time, though the babies can survive with superior neonatal intensive care, the emotional and physical trauma is not worth it. Bed rest helps in reducing the incidence of early delivery.

During this period, I had promised WFM that I would spend all my free time with her, to share this emotionally and physically labile period with her. Unfortunately pressure of work forced me to take a 10-day trip to Europe around the 30th week. 

I went with a shopping list.

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