It was on October 11, 2004 when K M G Prinsika gave birth to her third child. A wide-eyed baby girl she and her husband named Pushmi Moonesha.
The happy parents told the gynecologist that they had enough children and it was time for Prinsika to be sterilised.
On December 26, 2004 when the killer waves hit Sri Lanka it engulfed Pushmi Moonesha and their seven-year-old son, Panitha. The couple's 11-year-old daughter, Pujitha, survived.
Now, Prinsika, 31, is joining many other Sri Lankan mothers in seeking solace in surgery -- A reversal of her tubal ligation to allow her to have more babies.
"I want my other children back," said Prinsika, sitting on a plastic chair in the family's two-room apartment in Matara on Sri Lanka's southern coast. But she knows her children will never come back.
Prinsika has consulted her gynecologist and is awaiting word from the hospital on what tests need to be done to determine if she could undergo the surgery.
"The moment she entered my chamber she started crying and told me what the tsunami did to her family," said her doctor, Dr P M Liyanage of Colombo's Nawaloka Hospital.
The waves killed over 31,000 people on this tropical island. Forty percent of them were children.
The Sri Lankan government says it will help families pay for the surgeries. Some private hospitals, including Nawaloka, say they will perform them at reduced or no cost.
While there are no available statistics on how many women want to have the reversal surgery, doctors and officials say the number has grown since the tsunami.
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The heat is on
