His birth story

We were eagerly awaiting Atchuthan's arrival in November but he decided that he liked it too much inside mommy's tummy. He was due on November 12, 2006 but didn't make it that day. The doctor even set an induction date for the 23rd in case he didn't make it out before then. On the 19th, Srini and I were just lounging around watching Roger Federer beat the pants off someone when I suddenly felt a pain in my tummy around 2 pm and I knew right away that it was Ats knocking on the door. He wanted out in a big way. Take a look at his father's attempt at timing the contractions.

We arrived at the hospital around 4 pm and were admitted right away. I was already 4cm dilated and the labor went pretty fast after that despite a few hiccups like the anesthesiologist messing up my epidural a few times. Atchuthan engaged pretty fast and I was ready to push him out by 10 pm. However, this is when things got complicated. His head refused to move past my pelvic bone despite 2.5 hrs of pushing and so the doctors decided that I needed a C-section. We were disappointed but were happy that we would be holding him in our arms soon. So, finally, at 1.38 am Atchuthan arrived into this world. He was 7lbs 15oz at birth and 21" long. Take a look at his weigh-in. I was pretty much asleep during the whole procedure and don't recall much of it.





Our hospital stay was pretty good except for the fact that Ats had to spend a couple days at the NICU since he had ingested meconium and had fluid in his lungs. He was an otherwise healthy little baby. We had quite a few visitors as well. Latha periamma and Jaga periappa came to visit him with Dhakka, Vichi and DJ. They couldn't hold Ats though since he was in the NICU. Sukanya and Mukund also visited us with Tichi. Sho and Sridhar helped us get home from the hospital on Thanksgiving Day. Here he is in his car seat for the first time, and his first time home.