Sep 22, 2006

Ria's tryst with Roentgen

It was a regular Bangalore afternoon. Ria was doing what she did best. She was turning over and turning back again. She had learnt to do this just the previous week and already she was an ace at it. The maid was beside, watching her. She then picked her to get her ready for her bath. She cradled her in her arms. Suddenly she started wailing. The maid was taken aback. She changed her position and then she became silent. She then realised it had to do something with the hand. Further experimentation revealed that she was in pain near the left collar bone. It started paining so much that any attempt to even lift her left hand a little resulted in a bed me blood chilling cry. Tara started imagining crazy things. She called up saying that she suspected the pain to be either due to the vigorous massage the maid had been giving or because she had been turning too fast. Though there was no swelling, a fracture could not be ruled out. Its best not to delay taking babies to the doctor when in doubt. We took her to the doc in the evening. He too echoed our thoughts. Said it could be a fracture !! Both of us were taken aback now. He asked us to take a x-ray just to be sure. We went to a nearby hospital and out the little thing under the x-ray machine. She never knew what struck her but in 15 minutes we were heading back to the doc with the x-ray in hand. He casually glanced at it and said what we desperately wanted to hear. No fracture ! He said that there was nothing to worry now and she should be back to normal in a couple of days. He said it could have been due to the massage the maid gave and asked us to ask her to tone down the massage. Looks like it all probabality it was due to a sprain that she got while turning about. That evening our neighbour got some oil and we lightly dabbed it on her shoulders. We did that a couple of times the next day too. The maid gave a massage too (albeit a lighter one) and a good hot water bath got her back to normal. For a change it was a big relief for us to see her sucking her left thumb with great vigour.

She is now 4.5 months old and weighs in at 6.25 kgs. We started giving her mousambi juice with some honey with she likes a lot and lactogen which she abhors ! Planning to start some solid food (mashed bananna, potato, nestum) in the next week. It is essential that she starts getting used to all of this as Tara would be getting back to work next month.

Sep 11, 2006

Onam Ashamsakal

Last week (5th Sept) Ria celebrated her first Onam with us. We had a hearty Onam Sadya at our aunts (her name is also Tara Thomas) place. The elaborate spread is shown below.


It was also special as she turned 4 months the same day. She has been learning new things every week. She has learnt to turn over and then turn right back. Her best friend is no longer her mama/papa but her thumb. She loves it dearly and clings to it like a magnet. She likes songs a lot and joins in when we sing. However, last week she was also down with a bad cold and cough. That took its toll on her and her mama and her papa too ! Well..Its another issue that papa was to blame for the entire episode. He came down with a bad cough the earlier week. How is a father supposed to stop kissing his cute little daughter all of a sudden !!! And you know how the common cold works. Its like the mallus affinity towards the Gulf. One family member lands in Muscat and in a year, the entire family is there ! Finally took her to the doc. Prescribed a few cough drops to be given. She has been improving ever since. However, it has also robbed some of her alacrity away. As babies, they really do not know how to spit it out and we feel helpless. That explains why I recovered in 3 days and its already a week and she still is not completely ok. Having said that I believe its normal for a baby to have atleast 4-5 bouts of cold in the first year. We hope she recovers soon, in time to celebrate her appachas/ammachis birthday this week.