After all this time? Always...

Well, this post is dedicated to Severus Snape (Alan Rickman, to be precise). The moment I started watching Harry Potter, I liked Alan Rickman immediately. Somehow I knew that he wasn’t the antagonist after all (but not to the extent of knowing that he loves Lily till the end of time and actually cared for Harry potter. Nobody is sane enough to have predicted that). There is something about his charisma that I like. It saddened me to have learned of his demise recently. I was secretly hoping that he could be continuously portrayed as Snape in future Harry Potter movies. 

But, now that he is gone, it can never happen. Just like this day, today will never happen again.

11 months old

Today marks the 11th month since the birth of my gunden. All these time I could say that my son XX months old. But after next month he will be 1 year old.

Well, just saying…

It seems like only yesterday he kicked me in my belly, looked at me in the eyes, and smiled at me for the first time. He is growing and moving towards independence. Sooner, he may not cling on me to sleep, he may not bite my chin, he may not want to be carried. But he may want to still hold my hand when walking, he may want to hug me tightly every morning. He may kiss me in the forehead every now and then. He may realize how much his mother loves him and how we would do anything for him. How time flies…

Every transplant mother's fear

Every successful organ transplantation is a miracle. Being able to return to normal life after transplantation is a miracle. Even so having a child after a transplantation is phenomenal. I maybe the lucky few to have encountered that miraculous experience. My son is my miracle, and I bore him with a grafted kidney. Last week, I had a terrible knee pain. It got worse, when I carried gunden and brought him outdoors to make him feel better after his bitter daycare experience. The pain was so intense that I was unable to move and the throbbing pain did not stop regardless how I rest my leg. During these challenging period, it occurred to me if my original disease had returned with a vengeance.  Thus, provoking every transplant mother’s fear; that I may not live long to see my son growing into adulthood.

What has knee pain got to do with my lifespan? My original disease has yet to be diagnosed, but it was related to autoimmune disease which led to the detrimental of my kidneys. One of the signs and symptoms of the varied autoimmune diseases is joint pain and I have experienced several excruciating joint pains prior to the damaged kidneys. The current pain did not occur after a fall or injury to the knee. It just happened, maybe after a strenuous day. So fearing for the worst, I had an appointment with my nephrologist to check the condition of my kidney. The blood test returned normal but with high inflammation (high CRP and white blood count). Doctor assured me not to worry yet and to further diagnose the condition. I also met an orthopedic whom also checked my blood for signs for arthritis/rheumatoid arthritis (autoimmune related). The blood test result indicated that the rheumatoid factor was within normal range but one of the proteins for arthritis factor was high. The physician suspected that this could be acute arthritis and asked me not to exert the knee and they will check again after 1 month.

Well, the fear for my original disease may have subsided for now. But the knee pain was a reminder that I am a transplant patient and I may not indeed live long to see my son grow up. I am not being pessimistic, I never am. I have been and doing all I can to maintain a good health and the health of my kidney. Also I live my life to the fullest especially after the arrival of my gunden and I cherish every moment I have with him. Having him in my life is one of my happiest encounters.

Having said that, the saddest moment was not when I learned that my kidneys failed and it is irreversible. The saddest moment was indeed when I first realized that my baby didn’t have a heartbeat… And in contrast, the happiest day was when I knew that I was pregnant despite being a kidney transplant patient.

Daycare drawbacks

Well, you want a child more than anything. You work really hard for it. Once you have delivered your child, you love him, pamper him and shower him with lots of affections and he means the world to you. You devote your life for him. You tend to him with utmost care and you keep him mostly to yourself. But then, you have to work…

Getting admissions into daycare in Japan had been very difficult for us as the applications goes through the city administration that we reside in. We have been trying to enroll him into a decent daycare since he was 3 months old, but was of no avail. So we dedicated our time by working half time and the rest of the time, we took turns to care for him. But the system did not work much as I missed lots of research work and stayed longer at home to tend to him (to ensure that eats, sleeps and drinks well). But then, on the bright side, he had gained good healthy weight, was healthy, cheerful, confident, rarely gets sick and most importantly happy to be with us. But the downside was, he developed stranger anxiety and prefers to be only with us. He is most comfortable at our home and even when my parents visited, he took a long time to adapt to them (even with us around).

Now, I have only one semester left to complete my PhD. I have been procrastinating my research work for some time. I have already have one paper published, but my main project work is yet to be published and they are a lot more work to be done. Therefore, I need to write a thesis, a paper, get it published in a reputable journal, defend my thesis and graduate all in 5 months! Since, I could not procrastinate any longer, we finally got an admission into the university daycare (the admission to the public daycare through the city hall failed L).

There were lots of procedure and protocols and when the day came to actually leave him, he cried. He cried so much. That was the first time I separated from him. He has always been with me, always….

There was my confident boy, confused and looked at me with teary eye. How would a 10 month old understand that amma is leaving him to be cared by a professional caretaker so that she could work? How would I explain or even console him that it is OK to be left with a complete stranger (a person who does not speak his language and whom he has never met before). It was heartbreaking to see him wail and it breaks my heart as we were not allowed to stay longer to console him. On the first day that we left him (we left him for only 1 hour on April 1st), the teacher told us that he cried all hour. When we returned home, he crawled and slept right next to me all evening L

After 1 week, he got sick, a disastrous viral infection that made him weak. He vomited after every meal, declined to drink milk due to his stuffy nose and ended up losing so much weight. This is the boy that I cared attentively and made him healthy with selective super foods with tender, love and care. I am not saying that I am perfect nor criticizing the daycare system. I am just pouring my heart out about how helpless I am being unable to make my son feel better.

Today as I brought him to the daycare, I noticed him getting upset. He was clinging onto me and when I finally passed him to his caretaker, he wailed. It broke me…

If only I could stop whatever I am doing now and care for him. If only I could make him happy again? Will this traumatic experience scar him? Will this separation change his fearless, confident character to become timid and apprehensive? There are so many unanswered questions in this post to which I can only hope to get positive answers and happy endings.

Bitey boy

What is new with our little boy. He is funny, and now that he is teething (yeap! almost 11 months and not a single tooth visible), he likes to bite everything, especially our fingers, arm, shirt, hair, chin and so on. One of our favorite games is hide and seek. We will hide at certain places and he will come looking for us. But recently, he hid behind wall and poked his head every now and then, mimicking exactly what I did. So it s exciting to see him applying whatever we thought him. It was absurdly funny to see him exposing half of his body and face and pretending to hide behind the wall and poking his head every few seconds!
Also now he is able to point our noses when asked and whenever we applaud him for his effort with the chant that goes like this, 'good boy, good boy, goody goody good boy!', he gets super excited and happy and says yay with his arms up in the air (our self-praising boy). He certainly brightens our life! I hope he will be as happy and confident and grow up to be a happy and healthy boy!