Week 18: Limbo

This week, R and I are annoyed. We have been in limbo for too long, and not the peaceful kind we hope our baby's floating in, either. No, we've remained at my in-laws' place, not knowing which city we'll live in, not knowing which hospital we'll go with, not having a doctor to consult, not having a scan which shows us all is well. 

And all this in the most sweltering heat, where the dirt overflowing from the dustbins seems to smell ten times more potent! We miss Toronto even more than usual this week. It's a pain fighting to get anything done in India. You have to bargain with the auto driver... glare suspiciously at his meter, which is invariably faulty... and remind him not to go at full speed over various speed breakers. R has been worried about one particularly violent jostle that we experienced, and keeps asking me to tell him if I've felt the baby moving since.

We have been tense and easy to snap, mercifully not at each other. The bright side of all this, of course, is that things always seem better when it's just the two of us, laughing at whatever it was that annoyed us so greatly. The lines at the diagnostic clinic, where an old man was shoved out of the way by the most odious couple. The fact that you can't find a decent restroom even at a cafe that charges over $3 for a cup of coffee (the completely unjustified inflation of prices in India without any corresponding improvement in service levels or quality!) The bloody customer care people at any office who always want to ask their supervisor, and in turn THEIR supervisor before committing to any answer.

India does not bring out the best in us, perhaps because we know it too well. Even when we went to a premier hospital in Hyderabad to check it out, I wondered suspiciously if they'd quoted us a rather incredible fee of 2,50,000 for just the delivery, just because we'd said we recently moved back to India from Canada. If there were any pregnancy symptoms this week, they were overridden by all the symptoms of just being back in India.

To add to the tension, my mum's been in the hospital this week. She dropped me off at the train station earlier this month, and apparently got stuck in the rain for five minutes before finding a cab. As a result, her specially-made diabetic shoes frayed, and cut into her leg, and caused a bacterial infection that antibiotics didn't cure. The upshot of it was that it took a 2.5 hour surgery to clear the wound, and she's going to be in the hospital for five days. Rain water. I repeat, bloody India. I don't feel very patriotic this week.

The worst part? I can't believe it's 18 weeks, 2 weeks since the baby should theoretically be able to hear me, and I haven't started reading to it, or even spoken to it, especially. It's hearing honks and swearing, and all kinds of other nonsense. My mum hasn't had a chance to send out the revised family tree I made to include the baby, my DIY nursery projects haven't started up... it's all just wrong, and not what I'd planned at all. As I've said before, I believe any other babies we'll have will be adopted, so I've a tendency to take this stuff a bit more seriously than most.

This morning, I caught myself thinking, "But this time is supposed to be about me! The universe is supposed to kowtow to me!" Fortunately before I could get too drawn into my little cocoon of self-pity, I remembered that they say that about your wedding day, and the day you deliver your baby, and all kinds of other days besides, so I should probably just stuff the hussy fit. And I did. Perspective, perspective. Just a couple of weeks more and we'll know what's what.

I'd suspect all my moodiness was just down to pregnancy hormones if R didn't seem equally put out. We desperately need a house of our own, and our new normal. Next week, R goes to Bangalore again - after thinking it over, I decided I really didn't feel up to the journey - and will hopefully have an answer on which city we settle down in by the end of the week.  

And meanwhile, when things seem particularly depressing, we've taken to sneaking in a pakoda or a paneer puff, or whatever else reminds us that India is a very special place, where the food, at least, always tastes like heaven.