I am no longer the youngest!

This is how my elder sister declared I would be beginning my latest post. She was right on target because that is exactly what I had thought when I saw our little one. On the night of 19 January I was gifted with a niece and was simultaneously overthrown from my position of being the youngest in the family.

It was just like the movies. Daddy and I arrived at the hospital just minutes before my sister was to be taken to the OT. I managed to wish her best of luck. I refrained from holding her hands because mine were so cold out of nervousness. As she was taken inside the OT we all waited with bated breath. Some 30-40 minutes later my brother-in-law (BIL) was sent by the doctors to buy some medicines. While he was away Daddy and I heard cries of a baby and we exclaimed that this must surely be our baby. Then the doctor called Daddy and informed him that the baby was a girl and both she and the mother were doing fine. What a relief it was to hear those words!

After this we shifted base to a room in the private ward. Sometime later Ulka was brought in on a stretcher. I noticed a chaadar kept untidily besides her. I was about to put it aside when suddenly the nurse picked it up carefully. Wrapped in it was to my utter surprise my niece!! As I set my eyes up on her for the first time I was filled with an immense joy. I had never seen anything so sweet. She looked so tiny and fragile that I instinctively felt like protecting her. At the same time I was too afraid of picking her up. In fact it was only on the sixth day that I got the courage of holding her in my lap.

The next few days were such a delight just watching the baby. All she did was sleep and feed. Once in a while she would open her eyes, look around and then as if bored with the scenery would doze of again. What efforts once we (my sister, BIL and I) made to wake her up as it was feeding time. We tickled her, moved her hands, cycled her legs, talked to her first sweetly and then sternly but to no avail. Finally we left her aside ignoring her and thats when the baby woke up crying loudly. Then another day baby decided to wake on her own. Moments before that she stretched herself completely which now according to the latest update has become her characteristic. While sleeping she loves to take her hands out of the blanket she is bundled in. There is this very cute photograph of hers in which she is asleep with her hand right below her chin. And another in which the blanket is thrown on one side, her legs are crossed on another side and hands are stretched up... what bliss!

The two questions that were raised since the baby arrived were who does she look like and what name will she be given. As far as the first question is concerned the baby seems to have taken after her father. But people say that her features may change as she will grow up. My sister and BIL took some days to finally decide on a consensus name for the baby. We were told that they were going to call her Mandavi, after the river that flows in Goa. We are pretty sure that the baby will be able to carry this name which one day will probably get shortened to the more stylish Mandy by her friends.

Lots of Daddy's relatives and colleagues told him that his perspective to life will change on becoming a grandfather. But its really me who is feeling somewhat different. Not surprising because I had never seen that small a baby at such close quarters before. Its unbelievable the emotions that I never knew existed were stirred inside me thanks to the small wonder. I suddenly want to do everything good and right otherwise what will Mandavi think of me. I have to behave as a "responsible maushi" from now on.

:)