There are some words you read written in pithy little essays, and you think “Aww -this is for effect only”. “The author is exaggerating” or “What baloney” etc. Words like “ripping pain”. Words like “the most beautiful”. Word like “angelic”. But they really are true. When they describe labor pain – ripping pain – it really is that kind of pain. When they describe newborns, they really are like that – “the most beautiful”, “angelic”. Me, I’m no overly sentimental girl. I don’t gush over babies, even now. I don’t coochie-coo to random kids. I have no overt “motherly” instinct (who said it’s inborn ?). But when you see your kid, and I don’t mean see them when you’re exhausted from labor, and don’t have the strength to breathe, I mean when you really see them – it’s incredible, and that’s putting it mildly. When I saw my daugther, I thought my kid ! WHOOPEE ! The one I’ve been harboring in my tummy these past months, a little part of me, getting food though my body, every breath I took she breathed. Look at her ! The little fingers, the absolutely exquisite nails, the curve of her stubby nose, her chin – mine, the complete loveliness of her face !

I mean, you love your kid to bits, don’t ya ? If the kid needed my blood, you could plug a hose directly into my veins and drain me of all blood, couldn’t ya ? And would I whimper ? I think not. But, oh man ! The “good mother” guilt. It’s like with the IV they put into me at childbirth time, they also dosed me with a super large helping of guilt. It’s not enough that you be a Mom, you’d better me the best there ever is. And what is a good mother ? I present to you the holy commandments of Good Motherhood :

1. Thou shalt not use Huggies/Pampers/paper diapers.

2. Thy baby shall never know a pacifier.

3. Thou must breastfeed until the baby is ready to leave for college or has reached adulthood, whichever comes first (it’s like a car warranty).

4. Thou must hand-prepare all of baby’s food. Using pre-packaged food, is a SIN.

5. Thou must present an ever-smiling countenance, even when sleep-deprived and exhausted. To express even the slightest bit of discomfort is an EVEN BIGGER SIN.

These are the basic 5. Please feel free to add others.

Gimme a break, folks. When my mother landed in the USA, for my baby’s birth, she brought with her a dozen or more cloth triangles, in cute baby colors – pink, lemon yellow, blue. Ignorant me, I had no clue what they were. When I realized they were cloth diapers, we laughed over the cutesy colors. My Mom is a big proponent of Commandment #1. Needless to say, after the first few days, after cleaning up lots of black-looking poop, and washing innumerable cloth diapers, neither my husband nor I were quite as excited about them.

I have had a long-standing battle with pacifiers. For the uninitiated, these are devices which soothe a baby and are made possible by advancements in moulded plastic (or whatever – I don’t give a hoot, they are there, aren’t they ?). With my first kid, I wrung my hands and agonized over whether I should or should not – disapproving folk told me they would effect tooth development. To make a long story short, I caved. And bought pacifiers. Lots of them. Even now, with my kids beyond that stage, I routinely find pacifiers under sofa cushions and under beds.

Pacifiers however, have a technical design flaw. Babies can spit them out. And lose them. And then they’ll bawl their eyes out. With my second kid, greater wisdom and all, we got the kid a pacifier holder, which is a string thing with a clip at one end, and a pacifier at the other. The clip neatly attaches to baby’s clothing, so that once spit out, the pacifier can’t go very far. I mean, I love the internet and all, but then I loved these pacifier attachment thingies even more.

It’s not like I have a problem with the above commandments (except that they’re insane) – you want to breastfeed your kid until the kid is old enough to come tapping on your mammary glands in public, whenever they need nutrition (I’ve seen it happen) – go ahead. More power to you. But don’t expect me to do the same. And don’t tell me what’s good for my baby. I know.

Of course, if you violate any of the above Commandments, you get the Scarlet M – the dreaded BAD MOTHER tag. It looms large, it’s everywhere. It’s there when you mention that you went back to work really quick, and the kid’s went to a sitter. It’s there when you mention that the kid’s watch their movie when you watch yours. It’s there when you decide you want time to read a book, a little me-only time. It’s there when you admit (even to yourself) that you need more stimulation than just baby-talk all day. It’s there when you want to speak your mind, and tell them just how you feel. The Fear of Being Called a Bad Mother is at the #3 slot – you know, right after the fear of cancer and fear of public speaking .

When I became a Mom, I had no clue what to do. I was afraid of holding my daughter lest I injure her fragile neck, and the gap in the cranium freaked me out. Like what, they have a hole in the skull ? What if we nitwit parents can’t handle her properly ? Anyway, beyond those first few days, you begin to realise that poop does not smell like rose-petals (we each had mapped the day into diaper-changing turns). My Mom, when she noticed us wrinkling our noses at the smell, said it’d get worse as the baby ate more solid food. I thought, at the time, that that was quite an unnecessary piece of information, although she couldn’t stop laughing

Anyway, what it boils down to is that when the kids are not pooping, they generally like watching SpongeBob, give kisses unasked, and smell like GOODNESS. The very pure variety.

Cult of Bad Mama – Part 1, here.

I’m laughing out loud reading this post, because it’s what I’ve always thought reading and hearing these tales of the sacrificing mother. What perfect rant material ! I mean, let’s face it – I’m no Nirupa Roy. Anyone remember her ? The white-sari clad, ever suffering, bent over a choolah, self-sacrificing mom there ever was (in Bollywood). Think of the most motherly mother you know, and Nirupa Roy could motherly mother her by a ton ! I mean, I’m not dissing her or anything. She’s got her choolah, I have my microwave – and what can one do about advancing technology ?

I’m not an earth mother types either. But the earth mother variety bothers me the least What worries is the abundance and the growth in the numbers of the “Superwoman and Mother” – the kind who’s driving hard negotiations with an important customer in Germany on the phone, wiping screaming baby’s bottom with one hand, and cooking a 7 course meal with the other. And smiling. And seriously this phenomenon wouldn’t bother me in the least if these women were located geographically halfway across he world. No, they happen to be neighbors, friends, close associates who come and extol their accomplishments before yours truly and in the same breath manage to praise their mothers-in-law and worry about the little time hubby dearest gets to devote to cricket watching. You can imagine my angst.

I’m not a SuperMom – I’m a plain old Mom, and as cheesy as it sounds, I am the 100% unadulterated love-incarnate types. As you are. And you. And you too. Aren’t all moms ? Let’s not sell ourselves short. I don’t have to blog about milk and poo-poo and pee-pee worries (am I glad my kids are potty trained now, whew !) but that doesn’t mean I didn’t worry about it. You would too, if you were the one doing the washing-up.

And while we are fessing up, let’s break a few myths. Cliched but true – Motherhood is hard (fatherhood is too). There are no easy routes to it – and that’s from me, who’s barely started her journey. I mean, labor is hard. If you listen to desi women (women like my Mom, mom-in-law, sister-in-laws, friends) who almost all delivered without epidurals, labor is labor – it’s painful but it’s pain you gotta take. I haven’t actually received any reasonable replies about why it makes sense to avoid pain if you can. Apparently in India nobody ever thinks of an epidural (What woman – can’t take a day or two of pain that’ll totally rip you apart ? You wimp !) whereas in the US it’s the norm – they will routinely ask whether you want an epidural, and no aspersions cast on your wimpishness.

I mean, you’re going to have a baby – you’ve gone through 9 months of carrying around baby in your tummy, probably endured morning-bloody-sickness (how well put, Ammani !), gone through various tests which involve sticking a sundry number of needles in your arms and god knows where else, you’ve gotten into the dreaded OBGYN’s stirrups about a hazaar times, and now you’re lying on the triage table with your legs way up and about half the ward peering up your vagina. Plus you face the prospect of painful labor, complications at birth, and if all that goes well, a scrawny little infant (trust me they all look scrawny at the time – all except mine) who’ll be bawling for milk every hour regardless of night or day, and silvery stretch marks on your body which won’t go way no matter what they say on TV, and a body which looks like it’s still pregnant and won’t fit into those pre-pregnancy clothes. You can’t be a wimp now, can you ?

That’s why it amazes me when I meet a woman who wants to go un-medicated during labor. There can be many reasons, the woman wishes to go “organic” (prospective earth-mother ?), or the reason which nauseates me – that the husband or mom-in-law wish her to remain without a pain-saving device. Then there is martyrdom – are there less painful ways to be a martyr -I‘ll take them. It would make sense to me, if my writhing in pain would make the baby more beautiful/handsome, ensure a high IQ, or even make the baby potty-trained at birth. It won’t. And believe me, by the time you reach labor’s crescendo, and the contractions are way up there, how you’ll wish that you had taken something to shut out the pain. After my first experience, I made sure I got the epidural the second time around. It’s actually quite miraculous, one moment you see and feel, and scream out the contraction – there was a little graphing device attached to the bed, which mapped out the intensity of the contraction – it’s like the top-half of a sine curve, and quite interesting to see if you aren’t otherwise engaged – and the next you still see the contraction on the graph, but you don’t feel a thing. I’m like – WOW ! Then, I was ready to write paeans and odes in praise of the epidural. (Disclaimer – this doesn’t mean an epidural is right for you – consult with your doctor, etc.)

The two days I spent in the hospital post-labor, was made better by the fact that the baby looked and slept like an angel, the hospital food included delicious pizza (catered from a nearby, extremely well-known hotel), I was finally able to go back to caffeinated drinks like Diet Coke, and could actually sleep on my tummy.

Cult of Bad Mama – Part 2, here.