Bloody Show, finally!

After being 3 days past my due date, I was beginning to despair of labor ever starting for me. I hadn't had my mucus plug come out or any signs of contractions.

Yesterday afternoon, when I got up from a nap and went to the restroom, I saw some drops of blood - they were pink and brown. Since then, I've been seeing a few drops every time I go to the restroom. I was so happy to see the "Bloody Show" as this is called. This means that my cervix has not started to ripen and that some of the blood capillaries have broken. This means something is happening down there!! Yay!!

Also, since last night, I've been having light period-like cramps along with back pain but not regularly. This is still not very painful but mostly uncomfortable. Once in a while, there's a painful one but for the most part, not too bad. When I spoke to my sister today morning, she said that's how contractions are - period-like cramps with back pain. They get worse in intensity & more frequent and more painful as time goes on.

I'm excited that this is finally going to happen and hope it happens without being induced but am also nervous... :)

Vara MahaLakshmi Pooja

Yesterday, since the baby hasn't come out yet, we (mostly my mom) were able to perform Vara MahaLakshmi pooja at my home.

Varalakshmi pooja is performed by married Indian women to pray to the Goddess Lakshmi to bring health, wealth, prosperity and wisdom to their household. It's performed typically in the July-August timeframe.

You can read more about the pooja here and how to perform the pooja here. Each family generally perform it a little differently and that tradition is followed by all the women of that family. My mom does it by smearing a coconut with turmeric paste and making the features of the face with turmeric paste and sticking jewelry depicting eyes, eyebrows, nose-ring, earrings, etc onto the turmeric. Below is the picture of the pooja coconut depicting Goddess Lakshmi

It was the first time the pooja was performed in my house and hopefully, next  year, I will be able to perform it as well. It is generally said that the way to perform this pooja is not very important - even a simple prayer to Goddess Lakshmi on a smaller scale is good when performed. I may not do it on the same scale as my mom but on a smaller scale to begin with.

1 day to go...

It's hard to believe 40 weeks has flown by and now, I just have 1 day to go for my due date! My baby doesn't seem to have any interest in coming out though. I had my doctor's appointment yesterday and I'm not dialated at all - not an inch. She said the baby needs to drop down a little more too. I've not lost  my mucus plug yet either. :(

I'm so disappointed. I was hoping my baby would arrive soon - I'm so excited to meet her. I don't want to be induced and would like to go into labor naturally. However, I have other commitments and dates and it's going to be difficult to meet them if the baby doesn't come out soon. My doctor has said she will prefer to wait till 41 1/2 weeks to induce me if I don't go into labor by then - which is going to be around 5th of August, which is going to be very late for me.

I have an ultrasound and NST (Non Stress Test) scheduled for next Monday - the 30th and then the decision will be made about induction. I'm really hoping the baby decides to come out before then.

Questioning myself

I made a big mistake yesterday. I over-reacted and in doing so, caused a big misunderstanding. The fault was completely mine. I've done my best to fix it but the damage has been done. I'm now trying to deal with the guilt of what I did.

I'm trying to get past this - I don't want to stay upset about this and let that affect the baby. But I'm questioning myself - will I be a good mother? If I don't have the maturity to deal with issues and make mistakes like the one I made yesterday, do I have the maturity to be a good mother and teach her the right values and how to deal with life? If I can't be a good friend/wife/daughter/daughter-in-law, how can I teach her to be the same?

I will try to mend my relationships and repair the damage. I also hope that I learn from my mistakes and I will be able to be a good mother.

Lenovo CEO Gives Bonus to Employees Making Him Awesome

You rock, Mr. Yuanqing! I wish more CEOs were like you. 

Lenovo CEO Gives Bonus to Employees Making Him Awesome

Waiting....

Just 4 more days to go and I'm just waiting for when my daughter decides it's time to meet me.

The waiting is hard - I hope she's doing ok in there.

New CEO of Yahoo! pregnant and due in October!

One of the main topics buzzing around the web over the last few days is the news of Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer who was appointed and announced the same day that she was pregnant and due in October! It's great that Yahoo! is open to the idea of hiring a pregnant CEO and kudos to her for considering taking up such a challenging job at this time in her life. 

One thing which bothered me though is that she has announced that she will be taking a very short maternity leave and will most likely be working through most of it. I don't want to judge but as somebody who's 9 months pregnant and looking at getting back to work after 12 weeks of maternity leave, it's hard not to judge whether she's doing the right thing or not. Sure, it might be easier for her - she's rich and she can hire a bunch of people to take care of her baby. Her working is going to come at the expense of missing time with her baby and she's probably ok with that. Something's always gotta give - it's either going to be her job or time with her baby. That trade-off is something very personal and something every mother is going to have to make.

The thing that bothers me is also that she's going to set the expectation that other women in tech are going to be expected to do the same. It's already a tough environment out there for women in tech and this is going to make it even tougher for women in tech to have families and not let it affect their career.

Press Release: Graco Commits to Banning Toxic Flame Retardants from Children’s Products | Healthy Child Healthy World

Press Release: Graco Commits to Banning Toxic Flame Retardants from Children’s Products | Healthy Child Healthy World

This is great news! Hopefully other companies will also follow Graco on this.

Just 10 days more..

I can't believe time has flown by so fast and it's only 10 days away from my due date. I still haven't had any contractions yet and am feeling ok for the most part.

I have feeling concerned though - the last 2 days the baby has not been moving much; my feet have swollen a  lot and I've been having some nausea. I have my 39th week doctor appointment tomorrow and am nervous about it. My mucus plug hasn't fallen out yet.

I just found out that one of my friends had a baby boy on July 13th - 5 days after her due date. I wonder if that's going to happen to me as well.

There's a lot of stuff happening right now. We just found out last week that my father-in-law needs to have open heart surgery immediately. He will be getting the surgery next week in India. Unfortunately, because I'm due around the same time, my husband won't be able to go and help out. We're hopeful everything should go well and he will be fine but it's a lot of stress around this time.

Home Warranty

Last year, when we had owned our house for more than a year and the builder's obligation for 1 year warranty ended, we decided to look into getting some kind of home warranty. We got a basic program which covered most of the main appliances, plumbing, central heating, etc. It wasn't too expensive and we decided the peace of mind was worth it.

Now, it's been 2 years since we bought our house and our home warranty is up for renewal. Considering I'm also expecting my baby in a few days, I'm still inclined to go ahead and get the home warranty this year.

Financially, I know it's not the smartest move. Our house is still new and all the appliances are around 2 years old and I'm not going to be working for a few months when on maternity leave/unpaid leave. Could that money be saved? Yes. But with a new baby in the house and all of the corresponding work involved, if something were to go wrong, would I have the energy/time to deal with that?

I think about this and go back and forth on this. I still haven't decided. What do you think?

Baby blanket disaster

For the past several months, I've been trying to knit a simple baby blanket for my baby. I was hoping to finish it before the baby comes. But yday, after all my family left, I went to knit again and saw that somehow in the all the confusion, some of the stitches had come loose and unravelled and it didn't look like an easy fix.

I'm so disappointed - I had such high hopes that I would make a baby blanket for my baby. My husband told me that it's ok - we had already received a beautiful handmade baby blanket for the baby. And I admit, it's much more beautiful than what mine would have been. But I wanted to create one for the baby - he didn't understand.

Perhaps I should just give up on the blanket and go ahead and make something else for the baby but I have no idea what. Any suggestions?

Baby Shower

I had my baby shower on June 23rd and it was so much fun. It was a co-ed baby shower. My husband and I did most of the organizing and my sister helped with the final preparations for decorating & shower games.

We ordered baby shower invitation cards from Vistaprint and mailed them out. We had a tough time finding a good place to host the baby shower but eventually managed to find a place which wasn't too expensive but still nice. We catered the food from the same place and ordered centerpieces and baby shower take-home gifts online. We bought the decorations, balloons and some of the baby shower games from iParty. We ordered a beautiful cake from Jacques Pastries in NH - the cake was delicious and so beautiful.

Two of the baby shower games - Baby Charades and Baby Items Memory Game - we organized that ourselves. We printed some baby related things on paper and couples had to participate - one had to act out and other had to guess. It was a lot of fun and everybody participated in it. For the memory game, we bought a bunch of baby items and organized on a big tray - everybody was given a minute to remember everything on the tray and then write it down. That was a fun game too.

Overall, it was a fun day and went very well. The food was good and everybody had fun. We got a lot of great gifts from people who came - I had put my registry on Amazon; so most people had just mailed the gifts home. A few people bought the gifts over when they came too. I appreciated all the gifts but one of the best gifts for me was a beautiful baby blanket from one of my friends which she had crotchet'd. It was lavender and white with small hints of pink. It's so thick and beautiful that I'm sure my baby will love it.