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.