Motherhood is a choice and nine other truths we should keep in mind

Tears streamed down my cheeks. The credits were rolling and I was fighting the urge to call my mother. I wanted to collapse into the folds of her sari and sob, like the many times before. But this time I knew Amma would be bemused. Why would a 33-year-old cry over a seemingly simple movie called English Vinglish? Though I don’t recall taunting my mother over her English, Sridevi, in the movie, personified everything that my mother is. The way she wore her sari, pleats tucked into her hip, her minute idiosyncrasies and most of all her courage of conviction. Like Sridevi, my mother fits the ‘perfect mother’ trope to the hilt- she is nurturing, she holds fort while we are all away, busy living our own lives. She is often our friend and guardian but mostly a parachute when we come crashing down. We take her for granted, we project our daily moods on her and like every mother she prioritises us before herself and like every Indian mother, if she had had the opportunity to work (and wasn't bogged down by the family and its extensions) I knew she would have excelled in that too.

30 years later came little Maya who gave birth to me, her mother.

I fell headlong into the failings and trappings of motherhood and till date struggle to meet the standards that my mother set. But I am a different mother.   I love my space as much as I love my daughter. I often complain of being stressed, a word my parents seldom used though they had more mouths to feed and many more issues to deal with. Sometimes when I look at Maya, I get sneaky little thoughts such as " what have I done?"

Trump is the president of America, same-sex marriages are becoming common, but the myths of motherhood have hardly ebbed. Parenting changes one for the better and worse, and while I am still learning on the job, here is my list of little nuggets about motherhood that will hopefully cause a minor dent in India's most loved and misunderstood motif.

1.Motherhood is a choice

 A growing number of youngsters, including many of my girl- friends, who are biologically fit and happy women, do not want to become a parent and that is ok. Either they don't feel motherly or think a little human being is too much responsibility to bear (fair point). Sometimes they simply don't feel it's right to contribute to the exploding population. Nothing is 'wrong' with them. It's a choice. Just as it was my choice to have a baby.

2. Mothers come in all shapes and sizes, there is in no one prototype

Society believes that mothers come with a manual. The ‘ideal mother’ is the one you see in breakfast cereal commercials. She cooks for her children, monitors their screen time, arranges play dates, hyperventilates about the nutritional value of the pizza they gulp down or the stain in their clothes and constantly strives (while comparing best practices with fellow moms) to improve their quality of life.  While there are several women who have dedicated their life to being the ‘ideal’ and are happy to do so, this is a stereotype and not a rule. Some mothers aren't ‘maternal’ in the traditional sense of the term and it doesn't come naturally to them. It doesn't mean that they don't love their child or that they have a faulty genetic mutation. It definitely doesn’t mean that they are a bad parent either. To each his own.

3. Post-partum depression is real. Did anyone tell you that as a new mother you can feel up to a hundred emotions the same day, sometimes swing from being upbeat to downcast to downright repulsed? Women are hardly ecstatic postpartum. When I looked at Maya for the first time, she looked like a little Tibetan monk to me, with slit like eyes and puffy cheeks. I wanted to say “Dalai Llama” to the next pesky relative who asked me whom she resembled. It was hard to digest that I had made a little human. While I was combating feelings of disbelief and gripping pain, the world was moving in super motion, with a steady stream of visitors trooping in unannounced and nurses barging in one after another and violently squeezing my breast to induce breast-feeding. In the background the family was busy laying claims on Maya’s nose, eyebrows and what not. Amidst all the pandemonium, I was sitting, alone, hit by waves of confusion. Isn’t this supposed to be the happiest day of my life? Then why am I sad? I was thrilled for sure. But I was not flooded with affection for the tiny screaming monk. Am I weird? I pondered, wiping away the gush of tears. Can I do this? I plodded around for weeks with almost no recollection of how I lived prior to the birth of the little miss. Everything was a hazy. Days blurred into nights and nights seemed longer than before. It did not take hours, not days, but weeks for this conundrum of mixed emotions to settle down.

4. Love at first sight?  Childbirth is often romanticised. It’s a happy picture of the baby being handed to the new mother, who clasps the child to her bosom and cries happy tears. For me, the love for Maya was never instant. The floodgates didn’t open on cue.  Besides the fact that I don’t believe in love at first sight (except when it’s cake), the chronic lack of sleep, the waves of depression and the baby’s routine of crying, feeding and pooping on loop for the first three months didn’t help the cause either. It’s been 2 years now, and the more I get to know Maya, the more I get to know myself and the greater I love her.  With each passing day I get to see a little more of her personality unfurl in front of me, and it’s fascinating. Will she be stoic like the husband or bear my sentimentality? I wonder. But mostly I hope she is like herself. Unique.

Motherhood for me has not been a flooding of love, but more like a gentle fragrance that slowly wafts into a room and immerses one in it, silently, eventually.

5. Mothers are lonely creatures. Giving up a job, nursing a hungry baby behind closed doors, and skipping lunches with friends to run after an amok toddler can be exhausting and incredibly lonely.  During my first trimester I was diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum, which in simple terms refers to extreme vomiting, including losing the ability to drink water without throwing up. Kindred with the best intentions of-course showed me a news article that said that pregnant Kate Middleton was suffering from the same. Great. Yet Kate was standing outside the hospital, all glowing and her hair freshly blown. Years later the same Kate Middleton while speaking about mental health mentioned how as a mother she often felt lonely and isolated. I caught myself nodding then. She may be a princess, the Duchess of Cambridge, with hundreds of people milling around her, but she was fighting the demons, the same ones many of us do, everyday.

6.Every mother's constant companion is guilt.

 She is afraid of not fulfilling the million expectations that tug down her neck. She is scared of falling short. Not like a ‘Best Mother’ Trophy is waiting. Breastfeeding was my biggest of woes. Feeding the baby was extremely difficult. The milk was not coming in and when it did, the baby was not latching on. Dwindling supply, nipple shields, sore breasts, lazy baby, sleepy baby, dream feeds, and the whole paraphernalia.  Every relative who scorned at formula feed and every article with pictures of robust breast-fed babies acing their milestones added to my guilt and I was officially depressed. Overnight my identity changed from the confident teacher to failure mother. It finally took a kind-hearted lactation consultant, (never knew such a job profile existed!) to put an end to the tears; to tell me that some babies do not enjoy breastfeeding, that breastfeeding is not natural, but a learnt art.

7.There is no super-woman.

We must give up our obsession with the ‘super- woman’ trope. Celebrating the super-woman, the multi tasking, omnipresent goddess, who aces her job whilst building the perfect home is an unrealistic and unreasonable expectation. Such women are barely super, and only suffer from severe burn out. Hold the compliments. The ‘superwoman’ would prefer the division of chores or help in running errands instead.

8.The ideal mother stereotype hurts many

It hurts not only the mother, but the children too. Children whose mothers don’t fit the stereotype often feel remorseful, and cheated by life.

9.Mothers, take a break.

The journey of a mother is a journey of worry. It starts the day you hear the heart beat on the Doppler. From then it's a series of counting kicks, nit-picking on the food they eat, choosing the school, the friends they make, what they do behind closed doors and what they do when they walk out of those doors. I am 33 with a decent human as a husband and a healthy baby, but this ordeal of worry for my parents still hasn't ended. I am no Zen master, but maybe mothers can cut themselves some slack every now and then, or take the ‘chillpill’ as your child may suggest. Parenting is an endurance sport and is not worth squandering time over constantly beeping parent Whatsapp groups that are infested with tiger moms and ninja dads who love to feed off your rising blood pressure. No, the classrooms don't have to be air-conditioned, your kid will learn to read aloud too and it's ok if they don't have a play date this weekend. Maybe they can stare at a wall or draw on the floor. We never had all this and we managed fine.

10.Motherhood is fun and fulfilling but it doesn’t hurt to have a plan B.

You can sing all the rhymes to her now and she will gape at you in complete admiration. But there will come a day when she will tell you, quite nonchalantly that you sound terrible. That for the every nth time of putting her to sleep and the quiet tiptoe to freedom, there will be a time when the teenager will want to be left alone. The little green shoes with pink roses that she waddles around in so proudly will give way to the day when she scorns at the dress you buy her. They grow up too fast and times change too soon.

I know that, that day, Maya will teach me a valuable life lesson; the important difference between letting go and holding on. The nest will get empty. But when mine does, I am hoping the multi faceted avatar of mine with varied interests will not only know how to keep myself busy but enjoy it too.

-Originally published in thenewsminute.com on 14th May 2017

Lessons from a cartoon dog

It was my third unsuccessful attempt in the day to shut the clothes drawer. A woolen top was now wedged between two draws and was testing my patience. While I tugged at the cloth with one arm, the other tops were spilling out on the floor. “I am sick of this draw,” I announced. “ High time we stop buying clothes.”

My little niece who was up until then doodling with her crayons quietly, looked up bewildered, on why I was spewing poison at her clothes. With pretty strawberries and caricatures of ‘Hello Kitties’ and Mini Mouse the clothes were in fact cute.

“ Are you irritated Aunty?” she asked.  “ Look at this mess,” I yelled in affirmation.  “If you are irritated, just stop. Breathe. And then think,“ she commented rather nonchalantly.  I was stumped. Say hello to my four-year-old niece Dia. She went back to colouring the ladybird. “What does that mean, Dia?” I quizzed her secretly hoping that it was just something she heard it in passing and was not aware of the gravity of what she was saying. “It means you stop cleaning the drawer. You take a few deep breaths and then think about it. “ It couldn’t have been more succinct. The draw was now fully open with most of its contents tumbled down.  But I had more important things to attend to than a draw to deal with. My LKG going niece who still sits perched on her mother’s lap to drink milk form a sippy cup was giving me life lessons.

“That’s good advice, I will follow it,” I retorted. “But will you do the same the next time you get angry with Amma or Appa?” I asked. I was pushing the envelope. Dia’s tantrums were getting commonplace and she was aware of it herself. “Sure, “she said confidently. “Make a note of it on your cell phone and tell me the next time I get angry,” she quipped gesticulating at my indispensable smart phone.

Later that evening when I slowly cajoled her she revealed to me that she heard this on TV, from a show called ‘Blue’s clues ‘ on Nickelodeon where a big dog called blue with the help of his master Steve finds solutions for everyday problems. The other day she used the word ‘humongous’ to describe the pile of books lying astray on my table and the day before pointed at ‘Cummulo Nimbus’ clouds while peeping out of the car window. Pepe the pig had told her.

 It is true that the adorable Tom and Jerry has a lot of violent content and the infamous ‘Chotta Bheem’ perpetrates gender stereotypes. But sometimes children do seem to pick the ‘right’ portions from their seemingly superficial cartoon shows. Here was a vital piece of philosophy that Dia had not only picked up and absorbed but also learnt to apply at the opportune moment. I am sure I would have failed miserably had I been asked to use Zen to correct her shenanigans! The current fixation for many girls like Dia, in her cohort is Elsa, the snow queen from Disney’s biggest blockbuster ‘Frozen’. Frozen, apart from giving the hit song ‘Let it go’ has also given many young girls a perfect role model. Elsa is the stereotypical princess with a shimmering and enviable blue dress, long hair and pretty face but she is also fiercely independent, with a mind of her own. Instead of flitting around for the euphoria over first love and the perfect kiss from a prince charming, she finds that true love exists outside romance, that for her, it resides in her baby sister. Perhaps it’s sometimes good for health to look at media with a positive psychology spin.  Why go after yogic gurus when we can sit back in our lazy boys and learn how to stop. Think. And Breathe.

-  Originally published in the column 'Pop Pourri', The New Indian Express, Bangalore- 19th Aug 2015

100 Days of Maya

The Summer of 2015- now

Every summer I have a habit. It’s that time of the year, my birthday month when I sit by the swing and do some mental spring-cleaning, i.e. I take a mental stock of things. And given my obsession with making lists, I chalk up an exhaustive one. I make a list of the things I did in the last one year, segregate them from what I did new and the lessons I learnt. The good the bad and the ugly. And then after a good measure of over thinking and over analyzing I firm up my plans for the coming year. That year’s bucket list would comprise of anything, from personal character development goals to outlandish ones like visiting Greece. I then take a resolve to achieve them without cribbing away the rest of the 364 days about how I am getting old.

But not this April 2015. I am now a parent, an official custodian of a tiny little human who is counting on me to make her see that life is beautiful.

This summer has been about nothing else but getting ready to become a parent. I did not do anything. But yet feels like I did so much.

The Prelude

It was my turn. Lying in the stretcher with a nine and half month belly partially obstructing the face of my husband, I held his hand and whispered, “ I think it’s a girl”. 

“I think so too,” he smiled. Almost like a scene straight out of a movie, I was wheeled into the operation theatre just as he was escorted out.

After many months of gravity- defying- record vomiting sessions, (aptly named ‘hyperemesis gravidarum’) that pushed me into the depths of depression and occasional suicidal thoughts, I had reached the day that I was counting down for. The birth of my first child. The little baby who ate nothing but idly in utero during the three months of relentless vomiting. The baby who had made me smile, wiggling her tiny little fingers in the third month scan, just as I was losing hope.

 Pregnancy was never fun. They weren’t my days of glory. No pampering and no days of glowing. It was instead punctuated with “will I -wont I” anticipation of vomiting, excruciating gas trouble that poked at the ribs and adding cherry on the cake was a surgery to remove an ovarian torsion. She was a precious baby. A brave one who slept inside her mother’s tummy oblivious (or maybe she knew) of the surgeons slowly maneuvering a probe beside where she lay to remove a hemorrhaging ovary. She probably heard me whimper "Please don't die on me," just as I was losing consciousness.The nine months had been a life changing experience. The toughest that I had ever gone through, that no amount of pouring over pregnancy books, instant googling, or listening to worldly advice from every other person with or without uterus had prepared me for.

But it was getting over. They said I would forget everything when I see my baby’s face.

25^th Dec 2014, at 8:45 she was out. Our little ‘Christmas Miracle’. Bundled in a red fleece wrap, a squishy little pink face hidden under a white woolen cap, she was there. Our gift from Santa.

Maya. Magic. Illusion. My reality.

During the second half of my pregnancy, in those rare moments when I made a feeble attempt to enjoy it, we whiled away our time debating over the sex of the child. In fact it seemed like a national past time, with every other person who had   up until then doled out advice on vomiting, now had a theory backing their choice of gender. But for some strange reason, a reason foggy to me, I was convinced that I was carrying a boy. Perhaps it was a dream, of a green-eyed husband lookalike baby who gurgled in my sleep. The husband opined, “Raising a boy was easy work.” He would grow up on his own he said. With recent stories of child abuse and rape, to which largely girls were prey to, bringing up a girl will be a nightmare he believed. “I will have to invest in a gun,” he announced, rather dramatically. Maybe a tad sexist but definitely realistic.

 “But having a girl will build character. It will be a good learning experience for u,” I chided my husband who had grown up amidst boys and whose only experience living with a girl came after marriage.

But on the eve of the surgery, as I lay on the hospital bed staring at the fetal monitor that was blinking at 155 beats per minute, I caught my Doctor father hiding a smile, a wry smile that seemed to suggest that he knew the big secret.

 “ A 100 illustrated stories,” a fat cream book in faux leather that I had bought for my unborn child, in a rather crazy whim, flashed past my mind. “ To Maya “ I had scribbled in pencil, and stuffed it in my bookcase. It had been collecting dust for two years now. That was the moment of truth. Its Maya I said to myself.

Her

When I looked at her for the first time, groggy, eyes, shutting involuntarily under the effect of anesthesia, she looked like a little monk to me. A Tibetan monk with slit like eyes and puffy cheeks. I wanted to say “Dalai Llama” to the next pesky relative who asked me whom she resembled. This little human had come out of me. It was hard to digest. Combating my feelings of disbelief, and worn out by a gripping pain, my head was reeling.  The world seemed to be moving in super motion, with a steady stream of visitors trooping in unannounced and nurses barging in one after another and violently squeezing my breast to induce breast-feeding. All this while a family was busy laying claims on Maya’s nose, eyebrows and what not. I was sitting there feeling alone; amidst all the pandemonium with waves of confusion that were hitting unaware. Why am I sad when this is supposed to be the happiest day of my life? I questioned myself.  I am thrilled. Definitely. But why am I not flooded with affection for this little screaming monk? Am I weird? I pondered, wiping away the gush of tears. It seemed like a faucet was opened.  Can I do this? I still need my mother when I am sick, how can I be a mother now?

During the early days of marriage, I found it very hard to call the husband the husband. I even referred to him as my friend while booking a table at a restaurant.  (He is a friend also isn’t he?)  Friend ok. Boyfriend perfect. Husband? It felt odd and old. I looked at Maya and the same feeling tugged at my mind. Do I have to call her my daughter?  It felt strange. Do I have really have a daughter?  Of my own? Did god really trust me with that?  It was perhaps too late to philosophize or conduct post mortem.

If pregnancy was life altering, post delivery seemed like after-life. I plodded around with almost no recollection of how I lived prior to the birth of little miss. Everything was a blur. Of course the unsolicited advice that I had grown accustomed to, now quadrupled, but fortunately there was hardly any time to get irritated. Days blurred into nights and nights seemed longer than before. It did not take hours, not days, but weeks for this conundrum of mixed emotions to settle down, as I sat dealing with the excitement and more importantly the chronic lack of sleep. Meanwhile our poor unsuspecting Maya fed, pooped and slept on loop.

Mother

It’s been 100 days now. The more I get to know Maya, the more I get to know myself. I have forgotten what sleep is, I don’t remember the last time I savoured a meal in silence and my body aches to go to the spa everyday. However I seem possessed by a strength that I never knew existed and despite all the laboring for love, there is so much to look forward to. Maya’s swollen and slit like eyes have fanned out wide. Dense wisps of black hair have mushroomed on her forehead and she now breaks into a toothless, silvery smile. The feeling is ineffable.  Every time I get accustomed to her antics, she grows up a wee bit more, adds a new skill to her kitty and breaks into a smile again. The adventure begins all over.

In the process, I have also discovered a newfound appreciation for mothers. Mine. Yours. Every mother. The cynical daughter, who dismissed Mother’s Day as commercial and hypocritical, now feels good about being mother and overwhelmed on having an entire day dedicated to her. It dawns on me that one of the nights when I sat rocking little Maya, I have magically transformed into my own mother. I hold Maya the way she does, I sing the same lullaby. I am her. If I could muster up even a measly 10 % of the mother she is to me Maya would be lucky.

Life since Christmas has been a series of firsts. The first time she rolled over. The first time she responded to her name. The first time she flung her arms towards me, and first time I felt like a person who can brave the world and take care of this little person.  Beyond the button nose that curls like mine or the eyes that slant like the husband lies a beautiful little person with her own tiny personality. Her whims. Her fancies. She is exploring the world quietly. With each passing day I get to see a little more of her personality unfurl in front of me. Will she be stoic like the husband or bear my sentimentality? It waits to be seen. But mostly I hope she is like herself. Unique.

Motherhood for me has not been a flooding of love, but like a gentle fragrance that slowly wafts into the room and immerses one it, silently, peacefully.

The Future

As I stand in the balcony holding Maya, helping her soak in all the myriad sounds, sights and smells of the world that she has fallen headlong into, that would soon dissolve her into its wonders and predicaments I realize one thing. No amount of information (including this post) can ever prepare one completely for being a parent. You can never be totally ready. For good and bad, life changes forever. And strangely it has just begun.