Judge all you want, watch if I care!

Every parent thinks they’re the best parent on the planet (this includes yours truly!). I think that is a good thing in some ways – we triple check everything that we do for our children, and do it only once we’re satisfied that that is the best thing we can do for our child. This argument of course excludes the differences in the general reasoning ability of people, logic, world views, cultural differences, receptivity to external ideas and so on.

However, there are some who take this to heart too much. They believe that they’re absolutely the best parent on the planet, and they’ve always done everything right for their kids (who are actually pampered and spoilt). They don’t allow for differences between various parenting methods and refuse to accept that there can be different ways to bring up kids – all of which may be equally successful. If another parent does something that they didn’t or wouldn’t – they become a terrible parent.

The result? Judgement, lots of it. Needless to say, this is followed by a desperate need to voice out their judgement about the terrible parent to many others – in the hope that they will agree with, and validate the judgement of the judging parent (let’s call him/her A), which automatically means that they now think A is an amazing parent for being able to know what is right in terms of parenting and being able to spot other parents’ errors.

In my 10 months of parenting, the one thing I’ve absolutely abhorred about parenting is being judged endlessly and invariably made to feel like a terrible parent ALL the time!

You use diapers for your baby? – Judged!

You give him formula? – Judged!

You use a rocker/bouncer? – Judged!

There is a small rash on your baby’s face? – Judged!

You’re returning to work after having a baby? – JUDGED GUILTY! (Mother of all judgements, this)

Baby’s clothes are too light? – Judged.

Baby’s clothes are slightly stuffy? – Judged!

You’ve not kept black tikka on your baby’s forehead??? – WHAT! YOU MUST BE A TERRIBLE MOTHER!

The list is endless. If I tried to list out everything I’ve been judged about, it would take about 5 hours, perhaps more. It doesn’t just stop at the judging though – these judges (mostly moms, I honestly don’t know how much men discuss parenting) are very eager to go and tell others about the poor parenting they’ve seen someone do.

Sample this: A (The judging mom) says to her friend/relative – I don’t think new mom B has any milk at all; her daughter who is a couple of weeks old doesn’t seem to be passing much urine. Her diapers are so light!

A (a few months later): Her daughter is 1.5 years old, and she is still breastfeeding her! After the first year, a baby doesn’t get any nutrition from breastfeeding. Now it is very difficult to wean.

Note, it is not just the content, but also the tone that the judgement is pronounced in. How does it matter to you whether a new mother has milk or not, or how long she breastfeeds her baby?

Just to clarify: The WHO recommends that we breastfeed our children for a minimum of 2 years. The baby in question seems healthy and robust, and doesn’t appear as if she was overfed or underfed at any point!

Parenting is a field where there is a huge amount of information and a wide variety of choices available – right from what vaccinations you put to what brand of toys you buy, to knowing exactly what growth spurts are happening in your child’s body at this very moment. We’re mostly educated women of the 21st century with access to these information and choices.

As long as we’re resourceful and make informed choices and decisions for our children, I think they’ll grow up to be fine. I’m sorry; but I don’t think we gain much from the judging moms themselves, because what they say is based on their opinion, and I would rather base my decisions on fact and research. I have got ire from people for following the “internet”, but that deserves a whole post by itself.

The best parenting decision I took – is to not be perturbed by judgements. I used to feel bad every time someone hinted that I am not a good enough parent, but not anymore! I am not going to stop feeding my baby on his 1st birthday, and I’m not going to do so many other things for baby V in a certain way, because “someone said so”, and I could not have been more confident of any other decision I’ve taken in my life!

So all you judging moms, feel free to judge me. See if I care! And watch this space to see just how awesome baby V turns out as he grows up!

Toodles!

 

Just a little sleep please…

As I write this, my eyes are all watery from all the yawning I’ve been doing throughout the morning. However, I did promise that I’ll write a post about just how terrible a sleeper baby V is.. so here it is!

The last day I actually got a full night’s sleep was July 15 (no wait, that night my labour started), was actually July 14, 2016. I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch since (neither has the husband, Yay to him for believing that parenting is a joint effort, and living it every moment; no gender discrimination in our house). We are striving to set an example to baby V like that!

Baby V is an abysmal sleeper. The term “sleep like a baby” is now a running joke in our house! He takes ages to go to sleep, even though he gets tired at appropriate times like all normal kids. You have to keep him vertically upright (no thooli business here), with his head resting on your shoulder at a certain angle, and his tiny body being exactly so many inches from your face.. and you need to sing only a certain type of song (his all time favourite being Aayar padi maaligayil), and there should be absolutely NOTHING that might possibly distract him.. like say, a sliver of sunlight that escapes the carefully drawn curtain or any noise at all, like a pin softly plopping on the floor. If even one of these conditions are not carefully met, all hell breaks loose, and baby V will raise his head like a cobra and lose all interest in sleeping (but note that he is still tired, so very cranky!).

When all this effort became too much, I finally decided that our thooli is a mother’s best friend, and trained him to sleep in it. But then a fresh wave of pain started – he needs to be lying in the thooli at a certain angle, with his hand holding the thooli at a certain position, and we need to rock it in a certain way only. Otherwise he will keep tossing and turning and whining until we get it right. Tough taskmaster, this boy!

You think this is a long post? We’re not even halfway there yet! If you think putting him to sleep is the hard part, that is nothing compared to what he does once he falls asleep and we put him down.

Every time we somehow put him to sleep and then put him down on the bed, he wakes up screaming immediately, without fail! And then the process starts all over again.. put him to sleep, carry him in our arms for a while so that he gets at least some shut-eye, and then put him down on the bed. By the time we do this for the third time, his meagre nap is over and he is up and about, smiling at me, with his eyes twinkling 🙂

Just imagine our vacations and outings, where we don’t have all his infinite requirements for sleep in place – like “no light, no sound” for example. We used to take turns in holding him throughout his nap and struggle. Nights are worse! He wakes up every 40 minutes sharp (I have no idea how a baby who doesn’t actually know how to fall asleep on his own, knows how to follow a clock). What a disciplined fellow, I say!

This went on for ages until I finally discovered the beauty of babywearing. This is not an advertorial for babywearing or anything, but it has been a lifesaver countless times by lulling the “awful sleeper” baby V to peaceful sleep. Afterall, all my little one needed was the closeness with me, snuggling against my chest, a peck on his forehead and a comfortable position.

Some lessons that I have learned in the journey of “helping the little one sleep” are:

1. Don’t plan to get other work done when the baby is sleeping – it is just not going to happen, not with baby V at any rate!
2. Multi-task! The Kolkol (the baby carrier brand that I use) carries the baby, so I carry my Kindle.

Nowadays, warm sleepy afternoons on weekends find me with the bub snuggled up and peacefully sleeping in the kolkol, and me with a Kindle in my hand catching up on my books.

Well-meaning people have been telling me that babies generally sleep well after their first year. I sincerely hope so.. but somewhere in the corner of my heart, I know I will miss these days because cuddling baby V, snuggling him against my chest and watching him fall asleep peacefully are some of the most joyous moments in my life (even though if I say I was exhausted by then, I would be underrating myself).

I cannot even begin to explain the feeling I get when baby V feels extremely tired and sleepy and immediately reaches his hands out to me, because he trusts that I am the one who can put him sleep most quickly and easily. Love might be an understatement here.

Toodles!

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I had a baby…

I know this post comes just 9 months too late. I would have loved to introduce my little one to the world through this blog instead of facebook… but well, I didn’t quite have the energy to write paragraphs back then. So I now have a 9 month old energetic-but-fast-turning-naughty bub. Let’s call him baby V, okay? (V here is for Vedanth).

In my 9 months of parenting, the one thing I’ve realised is that life is an endless and vicious circle of “The grass is greener on the other side”. When baby V was a tiny newborn, I loved the break from a busy corporate life, loved the pampering and attention, and adored the sight of this cute squish snuggling against me.

As he slowly crossed the first two months, I became restless and wanted a break, if only small, every day. Just a few minutes for myself, to actually get dressed (even though I’m not going out anywhere), to meet people, to do things that I liked, for a change.

And then it was actually time to go back to work again, where I loved the 3 months of part-time working – it pretty much felt like the perfect balance between work and child. But then, alas, it was time to go back to being a full time corporate employee, and now I find myself at the opposite end of the spectrum – wishing that I was home with my baby.

Although I love working and am here because I want to.. I love the financial freedom that makes me confident that I can take care of baby V’s needs.. a part of me can’t help missing baby V every moment I work. This is a curious phase.. my heart and mind are in two different places, not doing enough in either place, never doing justice to all my roles, and on top of it being exhausted all the time and completely losing myself in the process.

Everyday I think I’ll be more organised going forward – I’ll drop fewer balls, I will not miss any of baby V’s needs, I’ll spend less time on social media, and so on. However, in my sleep deprived state (I’ll write a whole post about what a terrible sleeper baby V is later), I can barely wake up in the morning. Efficiency flies right out the window.

And then I reach home from work and see baby V’s rasagulla face, and I completely forget all these meandering thoughts, because all I want to do then is squish him and cuddle and play with him and make him laugh like there is no tomorrow.

Eventually I figured out that I keep feeling lost because I’m looking for the wrong thing. There is no normal like before; instead, there is a new normal where there is no “me” anymore, but a we – that is, baby V and me. So now instead of trying to find scraps of “me time”, I simply let go and enjoy whatever time possible with the bub.

Yes, I let myself go sometimes; I am not exactly on top of everything I need to do, I am not doing great accomplishments at the moment. But that is okay, because baby V will never be this age or this way any other day! And today, all that matters to me is every single second we spend together.

Toodles!

 

 

Aloha.. after a long time!

It is easy to say the “I’m busy; I have a baby” line. Having a baby gives you a convenient excuse to not write; it almost justifies your laziness. Every free moment is spent scrolling through whatsapp and Facebook, and I’ve newly joined the Instagram bandwagon to boot.

So taking the effort to blog or read a book seems like a really tough job! Nowadays, I am so “busy” (read aimless time-wasting, apart from the baby of course), that I have to mark my passions like reading and writing as to-do activities in my To-do list.

But then I came across a new mom who had blogged barely 15 days after the little one’s arrival. It was then that I realised just how much I had missed – I had missed writing through some of the most precious moments of my life; pregnancy and the little one’s birth. I have photographs of course. But for me, they will never invoke beautiful memories the way writing does.

So now that I’ve written enough about not writing, and iterated the importance of writing in my life, I am going to start blogging regularly without further ado. You’re going to be hearing a lot about the bub (henceforth referred to as Baby V), and a lot of other seemingly pointless things that fill my head.

Toodles, and see you very soon! 🙂

A spring clean-up

It is time to clean up my life – I’m going on a severe decluttering spree – right from my journals at work, to the dusty shelves at home that have accumulated with many bits of infinitely useless things over the years. It is the time to clean it all up, in anticipation of a big arrival in a few months, which will require, and haughtily occupy all this space and more!

There is nothing I like better than spring cleaning! It gives that breath of fresh air to your whole life, and parallelly evokes a freshness in your thought, and a new perspective on things. Of course, I did feel terrible giving away bags and bags of books, but well – I need the space, and the library needs them more than I do.

I felt terrible having to give away perfectly good clothes too – but one ought to be rational! When we’ve consistently been putting on 9 kilograms over 3 months, we ought to realise that some clothes are simply never going to fit us again. And the iron akka’s daughter was going on vacation to her native village, to spend the summer there. She had a look of pure joy in her face when I gave her the clothes, that is unparalleled by anything else I’ve seen so far.

There is a lot more cleaning to do – I’ve only just started. The very thought puts a spring in my step! 🙂

Toodles,

Writer on the rocks

New beginnings!

It has been 5 months since I last wrote here, and my life has turned topsy-turvy in the meantime. Topsy-turvy in a good way, rest assured! Sometimes… well, most times, when life hands you something that you weren’t exactly planning or expecting at that point, it takes you a while to regain your balance, to come back to normal.

Well, there is no coming back to normal; in retrospect, you just find a new sense of balance – a new normal. And it has taken me all this while to find my new normal; what’s more, I know that in a few very short months, I’ll be going through this exact phase all over again! (hint: expect a hiatus from the blog then too). However, post that hiatus, you can expect a ton of posts here, as I will have a ton of new experiences to write about! 🙂

The one thing I did learn in such times, is to never lose yourself amidst the chaos. This realisation has dawned on me, upon suddenly realising that I have read exactly one book since the beginning of the year, and blogged zero posts.  Amidst my progressively busy life,  with new experiences almost every day,  I have also taken a resolution to steadfastly stick to the old! Always try your best to be and do what is closest to your heart, and you will survive practically anything. 🙂

Toodles,

Writer on the rocks

 

It is that time again…

That time when  I am suddenly seized with a bout of reflection on how pathetically I am living my life. Bouts that come when I suddenly get enough time to actually reflect on my life. Bouts that come when I suddenly come across shared quotes on Facebook that talk about how you should live life to the fullest, and do what makes you happy.

Bouts that make me realise that I am not doing exactly that!

Yes, I am lazy like that.I somehow miraculously have time to check the Facebook newsfeed every day (and nowadays, I even manage to scroll through, and endlessly “heart” posts on Twitter), but I whine and whine inanely about not having time to blog, or pursue my passion for writing, like this mundane post.

Ah! I feel much better already; venting out in a public space is sometimes all you need. Okay, so I am going to stop now, and start doing something worthwhile, like revamping my life!

Toodles,

Writer on the rocks