Part 3
The difference between knowing God’s miracle and feeling God’s miracle: We felt you for the first time
‘Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.’ Ephesians 3:20-21
Now we had crossed the biggest hurdle: our faith in God was tested and we stood strong and believed that our God is a God who is in control always; the time had come to enjoy our pregnancy. The second trimester of a pregnancy is considered to be the easiest three months of a pregnancy, and so it was for me with you.
I joined Cognizant back on April 18th. It was so easy to go back there because it felt like going back home or to your hometown. When I went back, I had Harsha aunty to help me at work. When I say, “Help me!”, she would accompany me to eat, watch over me in the lifts and crowded spaces (nobody could figure out that I was pregnant) and in general just make sure that I was careful and taking care of myself. She was such a great support for me then.
A few days after I joined back work, during the weekend, your appa decided to shave his beard off. Appa and I were sitting and discussing this when you kicked for the first time! It was almost like you were protesting/supporting appa shaving his beard off, we can’t really be sure which of the two it was. But that was the first day I felt God’s miracle – You in me; and it just blew me away. Wherever I read about this first movement, there was this stuff that said that sometimes that movement will be so similar to gas that you won’t be able to differentiate between the baby’s movements and gas (considering we tend to get so gassy during pregnancy, your amma surely was very very gassy while carrying you). But when I felt you move for the first time, I just knew it was you! Appa couldn’t feel the movement then, but he was so happy when I told him that I felt your movement.
At that point we were so sure, Thia, that you were going to be a boy so we would always address you as he. Appa said he had a dream that we were having a boy and I had to believe him because the first time I refused to believe him when he said that and it turned out that Moses was a boy. So I am telling you this so you’ll know that till the moment you were delivered we were so sure that we were having a boy (even though there were solid reasons to believe that you would be a girl, I will explain that to you soon).
The day was the 22nd of April 2018 and it was the most amazing day of our lives!
Watching you grow inside me
As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.
Ecclesiastes 11:5 NIV
Over the next few weeks, I started showing. By the mid of May, it was impossible to not know that I was pregnant (Yet some people didn’t realize I was pregnant even then)! Appa had a cousin who was getting married in Chennai, and we decided to go ahead and make a trip to Chennai to attend it. I had decided to wear paati’s sari and we made our trip as scheduled for the wedding. A lot of people noticed that amma was pregnant and wished us good luck. These are few memories of that day.
We spent two happy days with thaatha in Chennai as he was staying alone. We reached Bangalore to get back to work and to our usual routine. A week after we were back, on the 29th of May, we went for our regular scan and saw you for the first time so clearly, and you were so beautiful and so active. The doctor said, and I felt as well, your zillion moves inside me, and my heart was so filled with joy knowing that you were inside me growing under God’s guidance.
At this point, I was enjoying the attention of pregnancy at work! By May-end, Sneha Periamma got a job in Bangalore and decided to move here, and a few weeks after that, Lachi periamma and family too moved to Bangalore because Rahul anna got admission in Bangalore for college. It was such an exciting time, everyone that I wanted with me were moving to Bangalore and Bangalore started to feel more and more like home.
Once these guys moved, Sneha periamma and I discussed how it was time that even thaatha moved to Bangalore as there was no point of him being all alone in Chennai. We decided to convince him to rent out the apartment and to move in with us, and we were to look for a bigger place like a 3 bedroom apartment. We started our hunt for the perfect house around July.
God showed you to me in my dream
‘For God does speak—now one way, now another— though no one perceives it. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on people as they slumber in their beds, ‘ Job 33:14-15
On June 30th, I had a dream that told me that I will be having you. I dreamt that I’m in the hospital and I deliver a baby and I am asking the doctor, “Is it a boy?” and he says, “No, it’s a girl”; and in the dream, we named you. We named you with 2 very beautiful and powerful names, but the next day when I woke up I couldn’t remember the names. I told this to Vinu athai, here is my message to her on July 1st telling her this:
So basically when I delivered you at the hospital, and when you made your entrance into this world, the doctor came and showed you to me and because I wasn’t wearing my glasses, you were hazy and I asked/exclaimed to the doctor, “It’s a boy.” and he said, “No Subah, look closer!” That is when I realized you were a girl, and I almost screamed out, “It’s a girl! Santosh, it’s a girl!”. A few days before you were born, we were going through our list of shortlisted names for boys and girls (we just had the list of girl names for the sake of having it) and we finalized on Zidane being the middle name, I couldn’t agree to a first name as Zidane even though Zidane did mean abundance, which went with all the names we choose (most of which meant ‘gift of God’). After some deliberation, we finalized on Mateo Zidane Santosh if it is a boy and Thia Zidane Santosh if it is a girl. That is how your name was finalized. Now there is no way to be sure that I had used the same name in my dream but one thing was sure, God showed us that you would be a girl much much before I delivered you, but, fools that we are, refused to believe it.
We found the perfect house
‘The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:14
We started looking for houses for Thaatha to move to Bangalore in July, and we shortlisted a few 3 bedroom apartments. But thaatha was pretty insistent that he wanted us to take a 2 bedroom and he would take a 1 bedroom in the same building, to get his privacy and ensure that we get ours too. We looked through a lot of houses and were almost ready to confirm this spacious 3 bedroom apartment when we decided to look around one last time. There was this independent house that appa was trying to get me to see for quite some time but I was pretty against seeing it because most independent houses were almost always so badly done, with no cabinets at all in the kitchen (that was one thing I wouldn’t compromise on). On that day, appa convinced us to go see the apartment and I just agreed.
We called the owner and went and saw the place, and OMG it was gorgeous. It was a duplex; the ground floor being a one bedroom with its own hall and bathroom and there was a staircase that went to the first floor. The first floor was a two bedroom, with a spacious hall, a dining area, a master bedroom with attached bathroom and a guest bedroom with a separate bathroom, and a small service area. The house was gorgeous, spacious and so well done, with a complete modular kitchen and bedrooms with amazing cupboards and fittings. The moment we saw it, we knew this was the place. Over the course of the next two weeks, we finalized this house and thaatha moved in with us on August 1st. He emptied our home in Chennai and brought everything, renting out his flat! Thanks to all of thaatha and paati’s furnitures, our new home felt more like home than ever. God gave us the right place when we needed, proving over and over again that He is our provider and He always knows what’s best for us. We only need to trust him!