Indre Stephanie Raghavan was born on January 25, 2008, at 4:59PM Pacific Time. She weighed in at 7lb 15 oz(3.6 kg) and measured 20" (50.8 cm) in length.


The name Indre is that of Rasa’s best friend and confidant, from school days in Lithuania. The name is also related to ‘Indira,’ which means ‘beauty’ in Sanskrit. (Vijay is the only one of his family who remembers Indira Gandhi with any fondness. His sister, Subha, says that the only noteworthy Indira, aka Lakshmi, was the wife of the Hindu god Vishnu.) Stephanie is the Americanization of the Rasa’s mother’s name, Stefanija.

It rained all day. Overnight, a light snow had settled on Mount Diablo; snow in January would be unremarkable in most places in America, but here in the Bay Area the white stuff is infrequent enough to deserve mention. On his way to school, Gaudrimas slipped from his bike when he got onto the dirt trail at the end of his 7 mile ride. He suffered a few minor cuts and bruises, something quite unremarkable for him, and, in fact, he casually washed his wounds
Rasa and Vijay, testing the water before the event
and aced his two-hour Algebra final exam en route to the nurse’s office. But the alarmist nurse who dressed his wounds immediately called home to report that he had suffered nasty cuts, and should be driven home rather than be allowed to bike back. Of course, this arrangement delighted Gaudrimas, since he had been hoping to be called out of his Arts class anyway.

Vijay took a break from his supporting role in labor to fetch Gaudrimas. As a result, a useful odd job man was found to help with everything from timing the contractions to photographing and filming the entire event. This experience should stand Gaudrimas in good stead in any career that requires steady nerves; his camera did not falter a bit when capturing his mother giving birth to his sister—if anything, the only aspect of his technique that might need improvement is the part about blending into the background; his eagerness to get a Kodak moment may have resulted in a couple of Heisenberg-like effects, such as when Rasa asked him to get the camera away from her face because it was disturbing her concentration. (For pretty much the same reason, she also asked Vijay to stop growling in imitation of her sounds—something she had asked him to do earlier—unless he could make his frequency lower. A natural tenor cannot become bass on demand, so Vijay excused himself from the sound effects.) Only at the very end, when Indre was starting to come out, did Gaudrimas’s calm desert him, and he momentarily forgot to film the birth; still, he got off half a dozen good shots on the camera. Ashvin, working the kinks out of the system

But the story is getting ahead of itself. When Rasa’s contractions started, it was early, around 2:00 AM. Ashvin behaved quite well, mainly by agreeing to stay away from the birth itself. He was still fast asleep, and being a good boy, he stayed in his bed at 3:00 AM, when Rasa decided that she wanted to go down to the big tub in the living room. (A big tub in the living room would be remarkable anywhere except here in the Bay Area.) Gaudrimas also helped by slipping out of his bedroom to snuggle up with Ashvin, when Rasa and Vijay snuck downstairs. The contractions were still irregular, coming about 20 minutes apart. Rasa got into the tub, Vijay brought her chamomile tea and water laced with Recharge, and she read a couple of books on homeschooling. Vijay snuck back upstairs to fetch his laptop—an important chess tournament was on in Wijk aan Zee, and he wanted to watch it on the internet, while waiting.
The warm water mellowed Rasa out, and at around 6:00 AM, she decided to go back up to the bedroom to take a nap. But she was back within an hour or so—being in bed had started the contractions again. Gaudrimas made himself breakfast and left for school, and Vijay continued to watch the chess. Ashvin woke up at around 8:30. Rasa’s contractions were coming about 5 minutes apart by then, but she did not get back into the tub in order to not distract Ashvin. He quite cheerfully allowed himself to be bathed and dressed by Vijay, not letting out the slightest whine, even when he was driven off; the only mild protest he registered was when Vijay did not let him take his pet bear to pre-school (the authorities had complained that the animal was too big), but he agreed quite amicably to take his two pet monkeys instead.

With the kids out of the way, the action then started heating up very quickly. Vijay dropped off Ashvin, got himself charged up with a cappuccino on the way back, and went straight upstairs for a nap. Rasa slipped back into the bathtub, and read some more on homeschooling.


Gaudrimas, relaxing after hard photoshoot
Things proceeded at this breakneck pace for a while. The midwife, Mason, came to the house to check on the situation. She examined Rasa, and found her about 4 cm dilated; the baby was ready, in good vertex position, less than an inch in, meaning the biggest part of the baby’s head had already worked itself past the smalest part of the pelvic structure. Mason thought that Rasa should not spend too much time in the tub if she wanted to keep up the intensity of the contractions. The nurse from school called, Vijay left and came back with Gaudrimas. Mason left, and Rasa promptly got back in the tub. Eventually, the three lunched on stir-fried vegetables and rice that Vijay and Gaudrimas cooked.
By 2:00 PM, the contractions were coming on quite frequently and with much higher intensity. Rasa was having difficulty walking around, so she and Vijay practiced their version of tango for turtles, set to Julio Iglesias’s music. Gaudrimas snapped off a few pictures half-heartedly. Around this time, he absent-mindedly formatted the memory card in the camera, and so the pictures he had taken till then will now forever be sheltered from posterity. He resolved to be more attentive, and indeed he was quite brilliant, all the way to the end, only briefly dragging himself away to read a hundred pages or so of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Rasa was quite relaxed all the time, even when leaning heavily on Vijay to walk. She had to be escorted to the bathroom frequently, but it was difficult for her to follow up on the urge to pee—by then, the baby was so far down its head was like a cork keeping the fluids bottled in. Mason came back around 3:00 PM, and soon thereafter, Liesl, who is an apprentice to Mason, also came to help. Periodically, they checked the baby’s heart rate. They used an ultrasound monitor, whose probe could be placed underwater on Rasa’s underbelly, close to the baby’s heart. (Midwifes use the latest in technology too, when it suits them.) The heart rate, relayed through a handheld speaker, has to be listened to, not read out from a digital display. The baby almost always held steady at about 130 beats per minute, which sounds like a fast canter of a team of horses, and only rarely, right in the middle of a contraction, did the horses practice galloping to 160. Mason and Liesl set up station in one corner of the living room; they had warm coddling blankets to use on the baby when it came out, a small oxygen cylinder, just in case, and the usual assorted instruments of torture such as clamps, scissors, forceps, etc.

At 4:00 PM, Rasa made her last bid to pee freely and forcefully. She was not successful, and this helped make up her mind that the only path to relief was to get the baby out. Mason made another quick check and estimated that Rasa had only four or five contractions to go. Rasa got back into the tub and stayed there till the end. The contractions were now strong and steady. With every one of them, Rasa pushed off of Vijay, who was kneeling outside the tub with his hands in the water, grabbing her around the chest and bracing himself to lift her. Mason and Liesl sat nearby, checking on the baby, murmuring words of encouragement. Gaudrimas started photographing and filming in earnest, until the aforementioned moment when Rasa told him to back off.

The last few contractions were incredibly beautiful. As they built momentum, Rasa would moan and raise her legs in the water, spreading them and staying almost horizontal for nearly a whole minute; the baby’s head would break out through the vagina and show itself during the peak of the contraction before being hauled back in when things began to ebb. Mason would reach forward with a gloved hand, clearing the mucus and wisps of membranes from around the baby’s head. At some point, the bag of waters had broken, but it was not a discrete, dramatic moment; rather, the bag seemed to just melt away, naturally and continuously. Rasa was quite heroic during this phase when the contractions came rapidly together, without let up. She was also quite determined to get the baby out. With one hefty heave, the baby’s entire head came through; to everyone’s surprise, it was in the posterior vertex position, i.e., ‘sunny side up’, and from their vantage point, Rasa and Vijay could see the serene face—eyes closed, mouth slightly open. The hands were held up, close to the face, in little fists, and the cord was wrapped around the body and the neck, but not too tightly. Mason thinks the baby was in the anterior position when it worked its way down, but then corkscrewed around when it came out. (Time will tell if the cork metaphor will stick as a nickname.) The head stayed in that position for a heartbeat. Rasa says virtually all the pressure had been released quite a bit by then; with another heave, she pushed the rest of the baby out.

Mason quickly grabbed the baby, which was slightly blue, wiped it off, and handed it to Rasa; Liesl checked the heart rate again. The cord had already stopped pulsing, and so Mason put clamps on it quickly and handed Vijay scissors to cut it. The baby was squeaking and gurgling, trying to work fluid out of its lungs. Mason took the baby from Rasa, put it on a coddling blanket and gave it a few toots of oxygen; very soon, it became pink.

Rasa got out of the water and onto a mattress that had been spread out on the floor, with a tarp and warm sheets covering it. She squatted and quickly and without fuss delivered the placenta into a salad bowl that had been made ready to catch it. Gaudrimas seemed quite intrigued by the placenta since he took many pictures of it, from different angles.


All in all, the whole process was remarkably (or does one mean unremarkably?) normal. Rasa bled very little, had no tears worth suturing. She did not take any pain medication, before, during, or after the birth. She stayed alert, and in good humor throughout. In fact, once the baby was delivered, she got up and walked around under her own steam. Soon, she even got what she really craved—a good pee. The baby’s vital signs also appeared completely normal—heart rate of 130, and respiration rate of 54—but her body temperature, between 97.7 and 98.0, was on the low side of normal (this may be a natural consequence of water births).

The birth of the baby and the placenta were quite well timed. The show was over by 5:30 PM, leaving enough time for Vijay to jump in the car and get Ashvin out of pre-school before 6:00 PM, when the authorities start auctioning off the kids. Ashvin had been bragging about his baby sister to his teachers for a whole week, and they were never quite sure if she had already been born or not. When Vijay announced that she had actually been born just a little while ago, everyone broke out into smiles and congratulated and high-fived … Ashvin!