Only A’s food (as the “patient”) would be free, we’d have to pay for our food, we realized…and we didn’t know what the food would taste like, so we packed our lunches yesterday….KM and I, being good TamBrams, each took along a 6 inch Sub.. and our white American son-in-law…packed curds and rice and mango pickle, and beans sabji!

In the event, the food in the cafeteria is pretty good…I liked the salad and the soup, and KM had a chicken sandwich and salad, too.

**

My room no. when I had A was 315; A’s room no. when she’s had her daughter (it’s most probably going to be Lalitha, but there’s still a little doubt) is…351.

**

There’s wifi in the hospital, so naturally, it doesn’t work in the room, and I am sitting outside in the corridor typing this and getting the nurses to do something about the fact that we can’t get the internet on the other side of the door!

**

Hundreds of messages are pouring in, sharing our joy; at least on LJ…each of you, do take this as my personal thank you….we are all exhausted, and getting to write individual thanks is, I think, going to be impossible.

**

ALL newborns usually look like Wrinkled Prune Martians. So I am still surprised to see that TLO (The Little One) or GD is quite a chubby creature, and ACTUALLY looks like a baby! 3.5 kg is quite a birth weight.

She does NOT have a teeny-weeny little voice, either. She yells! There is NO doubt about when she is not happy! She has existed in the outside world for about 6 hours now, and my goodness, there is NOTHING wrong with her lungs. She’s already tried hard to fasten her goldfishy mouth on various parts of my jacket arm….until she went to her mother.

**

I call her “eli”…or “mouse” in Tamizh, as A wanted to call her Ellora (meaning,cloud) and at that time, the baby-in-the-tum WAS the size of a mouse, too!

And what an appropriate nickname for a baby born in the time of the Internet! She’s been Eli to me for quite a while now, so the nickname comes naturally to my lips as I talk to her and croon at her.

**

Because the birthing room had internet access, and because of Skype, D’s parents (in Maine) and N (in Chennai) were able to see Eli immediately…I cannot stop marvelling at the wonders of technology.

D has downloaded the pictures we took, and will be sending them when he can…but WHEN we get internet inside!

Off now to go inside…let’s hope they get someone to sort out the internet problem….

She’s got a nice cap of dark..perhaps black…hair. LARGE eyes. The right number of everything outside, and inside, I hope.

I want her to read this one day….