Puja has had one of the most terrible weeks. She took the week off to help her back rest a bit but after about 9 days of rest she is more or less where she was. There isn't any major relief. It is a very strange. No doctor would do anything, not even give her painkillers and all we can do is see her suffer. Incredibly unfair given all the progress of medical science. I guess no one wants to risk the baby's health in the first trimester. I feel so helpless. I don't know what to do. All I seem to do is get irritated -- mostly due to my utter helplessness that makes me agitated and uncomfortable.

Last week was terrible for Puja. Her back ache has grown to be the worst she has experienced so far. We are, of course, blaming it on the baby. The change in her hormones and her body seems to be putting undue pressure on the back. She is also not allowed to take any real pain medication and Tylenols aren't cutting it anymore.

She took the week off from work trying to feel better and it did seem like she was a bit better yesterday than I have seen her in weeks but still a long way to go.

Ate an eggplant sandwich the other day. Quite awful. It got me thinking that if my mother ever got to know that I had an eggplant sandwich, she would probably want every second she spent in her life to prepare special meals for me -- different from everybody else's. She would want all the time she spent going out of her way to make for me something that would really really love to eat. It is a minor tragedy. I don't know if I appreciated her then and I am not sure I do now. In fact, I always blame her for not feeding me 'health foods' and heeding more to me than to her own instincts of good and bad. I know all she wanted to do was make me happy and everything she did made her happy as well but I have moved so far away from that. After eggplant sandwiches, cauliflower almond soups and butternut squash soups and other exotic yet utterly tasteless concoctions, I feel I have betrayed her in some grave manner. I was supposed to always stand for good food (defined as what I really would like to eat) and not make a compromise. Now it seems like I have done nothing but make compromises.

Of course, this makes me think how I want to react to my future child who is only about 10 weeks old at this point. How do I treat it? What is my basic responsibility apart from its safety? Do I feed it food that I think are healthy or do I feed it food that make it happy?

Puja's back pain has worsened and we are blaming the baby. She has been doing OK for months and now she gets shooting pain. We both had to come early from work yesterday to support her.

Today was probably our last trip to RMA. We are generally very pleased with their service. It has been a rewarding experience in general. They seem to have a pretty decent system and manage their patients with respect and professionalism likes of which we haven't seen in the medical profession in this country.

The baby is about 8 weeks and 3 days old, an inch long and has a massive 180 heart beats per minute. The dude is working hard. Today we actually saw some involuntary movement as well. In an enlarged view the foetus almost looks like a human now and not, as Dr. Drew put it, like a peanut or a cashew. He went on to say that the foetus is becoming like a person but a very small one. He is a funny guy, Dr. Drew.

We took some sonogram pictures and drive back rather pleased.

This is also the last visit to RMA. That means no more weekly sonograms. That means we wouldn't know now on a weekly basis how the child is growing. I guess you got to buy your own sonography machine to do that. That's what Tom Cruise seems to have done. The nut will supposedly donate that to some charity once he is done. In any case, the next time we see the child it will be an external sonogram and it will be quite big.

Last Thursday we got another chance to hear the baby's heartbeat. A whopping 158 beats per minute. Sounds crazy. The dude is just going. It is about 12 mm now in 7-1/2 weeks. Cool.

Puja has been feeling good so far. A little lethargic and tired but not too much. She is handling herself well. Goes to the gym once in a while and generally eats well. The morning sickness hasn't quite hit her and they say it hits hardest in the first trimester. However, they also say that the healthiest babies are born to mothers who had the hardest first trimester. All this drives one crazy. The more you read and hear the scarier it is.

I had lunch the other day with Ashish who just had a son a few weeks ago and he said the same thing. If you take some of the classes they offer, you feel like this is going to be the most scary thing in the history of humanity. While certainly it is going to be the most dramatic thing that ever happens to you, I am not sure it is the most dramatic thing in the history of humanity. I mean one baby is born in the US every few seconds or so and many more over the globe.

So the most amazing experience happened to us at the Doctor's yesterday morning. As usual, we dragged ourselves out of the bends around 6am and got to the clinic around 7.20 - almost too late. Anyway, during the sonogram, we could hear the baby's heartbeat. Big massive -- like mine on a treadmill. It was impossible to believe how fast and loud it was. About 120 beats per minutes. Now that's a lot of hearbeats. The bably is around 6 weeks and 3 days. It is about 6 mm long. 6 mm! That just sounds crazy.

Puja is on support at work this week so she is busy working practically all nights. She chose this week hoping it will be a quiet week. Far from it -- she was awake all of last night. I am concerned she is getting overly stressed and it is not good. We have another visit to the doctor tomorrow morning. Hopefully everything goes well then. We are supposed to hear the heartbeat tomorrow. That is exciting. A tiny thing weighing less than a gram has a heartbeat. Crazy stuff.

Spent about 3 years yesterday at Barnes and Noble going through several books trying to decipher the mystery of pregnancy. The more we read the more scared we got. The books were trying very hard to propagate a sense of joy however there was no denying that there wasn't that much pleasant for the next few months for us. The bodily changes, the mood swings and all sorts of other generally depressing issues to deal with. However, they are promising a bright light at the end of the tunnel. We are so counting on it.