BEWARE! THIS WOMAN IS A FART MACHINE!

In my head, I had already decided and dreamt of going through pregnancy looking like Jessica Alba. My body, of course, had a mind of its own. To say that I was ballooning, was of course, coating it with sugar and honey!

I only have half-Sindhi genes, but they suddenly took over my body like there was no tomorrow. Hello, double chin and fat ankles!

It had only been 3 odd days since I had taken the pregnancy test and visited our BFF doctor, so I was only a month, give or take a few days, into the pregnancy.

Every morning, I was woken up to the smell of "ONE BOILED EGG", which I would literally stuff down my throat and follow with a litre of water to get over the damn smell.

People at my work place were giving me suspicious looks, one, because of the igloo padding I would wear; and two, because my lunch box suddenly took on epic proportions! Very diligently packed by mom, of course. And even more diligently chewed, licked and swallowed by idiotic forever-hungry male colleagues!! OOOOOH!!!! SPROUT SALAD! AND FRUITS! grrrr! :s

To make matters worst, I had turned into this friggin' giant BURP AND FART MACHINE! I mean, seriosuly, at one point, it was difficult to make out which end the Enfield-like noise came from! The husband was fed up of me, to say the least. This was, after all, male territory, and how dare I, a pregnant woman, burp and fart so damn loud, that even a sleeping dog would get scared shitless!

Luckily for me, I had a cabin to myself at work. This doesn't imply that I was printing money. It was just an admin decision to give me one, AND NO, IT WASN'T BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT MY FARTING CAPABILITIES!!!

But, Boy! Was the cabin useful?! I only went to work for 4-odd days during my entire pregnancy, but oh man! I made full use of the cabin for my extra-curricular activities ;)

I think it was around the 5th day or so, that I noticed an alarming sign. I was, of course, too worried itself, and the blood spots didn't help. I was lucky enough to have been given a chauffer-driven car by office folks, and was quickly driven down to  my gynaecologist.

It's the damn tiger aka polyp, I kept thinking all the way. My superstitious beliefs weren't far behind, needless to say. So, the ipod was quickly brought out and the playlist double fast-forwarded to some devotional songs. On a serious note, I was battling tears, and was talking to the bump by then, telling it that everything will be all right.

Some quick scans were done, and I was explained that I had an extremely low-lying placenta, the organ that provides nourishment, oxygen and blood to the foetus during pregnancy.

I was told to take it easy, be on bed rest and take leave from work. This wasn't going the way we thought it would and the next couple of months gave us extremely worrying news.

Goo Goo Dolls give way to Gita, Ganpati and Gyaan

So, there I was, pregnant, albeit along with the damn polyp taking a free ride inside my uterus and possibly squeezing the life out of our rapidly multiplying group of cells, whom we were fondly referring to as "baby".

We had no idea where we were headed. Sure, our strong-headed combination of Tamil (also lovingly referred to as Madrasi by our lovely North Indian citizens of this country) spermatozoa and psuedo-intellectual Bengali ovum had managed to scare the crap out of the darn tiger.  But, the fact remained, that the polyp was weighing heavy on our minds.

The lovely specialised doctors we had earlier met suggested the big A word, but this was our moment, and we weren't ready to let some money-making knife-yielding coat-wearing robot take that away from us.

Phone calls were made to some friends and family alike, and we were nudged in the direction of a doctor who was to become our BFF for the next 9 months.

This new doctor was the miracle we were looking for and her words were the answers to our stream of questions and worried looks. To say that she was God-send remains an understatement.

Any how, mush and sob stories aside! Pregnancy completely changed me, or rather my personality. At this point in time, only our parents knew and 1 colleague and my boss knew.

Gone was the cool, suave girl/woman that I knew myself to be. I took to superstition like a moth to a flame. I started believing in jinxes, started covering up my stomach because I was scared evil looks would harm me and our baby.

Shocker of all shockers, gone was my itunes play list too!! bye bye Hoobastank and Goo Goo Dolls. Hello, devotional songs and audio podcasts of religious texts!

What was happening to me?! This was me, guzzler of tequila shots combined with pints and pints of beer! Driver of a super cool, green-coloured Chevrolet Spark, who only knew the 5th gear!

Coolness quotient be damned! I wasn't barren, I was pregnant, my husband would be mine till the divorce papers are not signed! Who cares about my  newly improved playlist. This was me, Version 2.0!

I should smugly add here that right before this point in time, I had managed to LOSE WEIGHT! Yes, me, whale of all whales, thanks to my adipose tissue-loving half-Sindhi genes, had lost 15 (IN WORDS, LEST THE IMPORTANCE BE LOST, FIFTEEN) kilos! chumbawumba! I was thin, you could finally see that I too had a waist and size 28 jeans could finally be bought!!! MOTHER OF GOD, I AM GETTING GOOSEBUMPS WRITING THIS!

Of course, good things and weight loss don't last forever. The Sindhi genomes were back with a vengeance and my bottom ( I won't say a**, since I am all chic and refined now :p) and other unmentionable body parts were growing at breakneck speed.

Gone were my days of eating frugally. My dear mother had moved base to our city then, and of course, in true Bollywood style, came to the rescue of her pregnant daughter's health. Rates of eggs and carrots were rapidly climbing in our neighborhood, thanks to the speed at which mother dear was buying them.

The baby seemed to be growing fine. Nothing untoward happened. How could it? Considering that I was walking at snail's pace and covering myself up like I was living in a bloody igloo, even though it was sweating hot here.

But knowing my passion for weird luck, there was some pretty scary news in store for us...