From feeling the pain of the cut during cesarean to skin tone turning dark during 7th month complications; Pankhuri Awasthy gets candid about her motherhood journey with twins

In the recent podcast with Rubina Dilaik, Pankhuri Awasthy who is also a mother of twins got candid about her pregnancy and postpartum experiences. The Yeh Rishta actress spoke about how she researched her twins' names, their meanings, her delivery experience and more. Take a look at what Pankhuri had to say:

Radhya is 45 seconds older, she is my daughter and Raditya is my son. We had shortlisted a lot of names, but we decided on the name when we had to do the Naamkaran. Just two days ago we finalised it, we even called the panditji to give different names. We searched a lot of names inspired from the gods but nothing worked. Then Gautam came up with Radhya and I came up with Raditya.

Radhya, we can understand, means worthy of being worshipped and even Krishna Bhagwan used to call Radha ji as Radhya when he worshipped her. Raditya is actually a couplet, it means Ravi + Aditya, which means sun. It is adapted from old Sanskrit, it is a Javanese Sundanese word. I had researched a lot on this word. So there are many Radityas in Indonesia. I had even asked Gautam's one acquaintance from Indonesia to share the meaning.

Before he could get back, I was so impatient that I texted Radityas on Instagram, the verified ones mostly in Indonesia. I wrote 'I am planning to name my son Raditya, could you please tell me what it means in your language.' All of them replied back and shared the meaning that it means sun, happy and all. They all sent blessings to my son.

We had fraternal twins and they were in different sacs as well. We are so happy that there is a chance that we will get a son and daughter. Everything is different in my twins, dichorionic diamniotic twins. Still, the doctor said there is a 1% chance that they would be identical.

Gautam was there in the operating theatre, I had told Gautam that I wanted to stay awake and see the time without fail when both were born. I also wanted a picture with me lying and both of them on my shoulders. I was given two epidural injections because I wasn't getting numb. The doctor then said that we couldn't wait and he cut me while I was conscious so I could feel that pain and I screamed. I could feel the pain, not that much but I could feel everything and then they gave anesthesia shot. I woke up when they were stitching me.

The first thing I asked was 'kya hua hai' almost 20 times and Gautam kept saying 'ladka ladki', I couldn't believe that we had a girl and a boy. In recovery, the doctor got the babies to meet and mentioned that our son was a little underweight so they had to keep him in the NICU for 4-5 days. I was super excited to be blessed with a son and daughter.

I love to act, but the urge to get back to work is huge as it has been a year and a half that I haven't been working. But I would like to go back to working soon. Gladly, my kids have never troubled me. They knew how to have the milk, but I had to learn how to latch. I still remember when I went to the NICU to see my son, the moment they made me do skin-to-skin for him, he clung to me. I was in tears when he did that.

Raditya's gas and burp would get stuck, he would cry and shout so loudly in that uneasy phase. Although he wasn't colicky, he used to feel so much pain. Till he wouldn't burp he would cry. It's a journey and all kids are different.

I had a very strange thing that happened to me during my 7th month of complications. The kid's respiratory system needs to develop before they come out. So there were a lot of steroid injections that I was given, so one side of my body started turning darker. I was blessed that I had no stretch marks but my skin tone turned really dark. It must be the injections or hormones that lead to this change. After the pregnancy, when you look at the body, nothing stays the same.