Motherhood hit me like a train. And it. is. freaking. awesome!
This is my last blog in the pregnancy/delivery series documenting my journey to becoming a mother. We’re now at the end of the 4th trimester, and I am very happy to report that being a mother is everything it is chalked up to be. I am experiencing a bliss that doesn’t need rationalising. It is a primitive, a primeal happiness. A bodily confidence , and a cerebral cleanse that comes from clear, unshifting priorities.
This blog has gone through multiple revisions as my schedule has allowed very little time, and the train has already moved on to the next station multiple times. So this time, I will focus this blog on our journey to parenthood so far. I will try to paint a picture of a day in the life of …. And as is the case with my previous blogs I promise to stay honest (and hopefully concise) about the good, the bad and the ugly.
Month 1
Physically, I can barely remember the first two days after delivery but I can distinctly remember the next 2 weeks. My entire life was turned upside down in the span of a day. And although that should’ve been obvious, the extent of it was unfathomable. I was bleeding, I was torn, I had stitches, my vision was blurry. Everything hurt.
But I had someone to take care of and I realized I didn’t matter even in my own head. And I have never been that person. But even as my nipples screamed murder, I opened my soothing cream, unhooked my bra and nursed my baby till she was full. Because I’d rather be a cow and a pacifier than watch her cry. Most nights, I was literally hunchbacked and shivering as I struggled to make the multiple midnight feeds.
Mentally, all I could think about was my baby. I was scared I’d break her or that she’d not flourish because I didn’t know what I was doing. Nobody, obviously, wanted to hear me ramble about my baby and these worries for too long, but my brain thought of nothing else. So just like that I became unrelatable overnight. And the photos of dad and baby looked so much better than mine because dad didn’t have pregnancy weight or delivery bags under his eyes.
I became unrelatable to my friends overnight
So that’s what I was fighting as I remembered that this is permanent. Welllllllll, it is not.
I took a deep breath. Motherhood is permanent, new-to-motherhood, not so much. This is not even motherhood, this was me recovering from a 9 month marathon and delivery. I did an unimaginable thing. I shouldn’t be rushing into things. Motherhood is also a skill that I will develop slowly.
1 Learning from Month 1:
Breastfeeding: Our moms made it sound like breastfeeding is this natural seamless process. But spoiler alert, even if it feels like milk production and feeding should just happen for a birthing mother, it sometimes does not. You and your baby are partners in this process. There is a steep learning curve with production, latching, holding, burping, cracking and, oh my god, pumping.
I will first and foremost advocate for a lactation consultant. Youtube videos are simply insufficient because everybody is so different. I took too long to go to one, because I thought it will just happen to us. We struggled with long feeding sessions (40 min) and gagging/coughing during letdowns. And now I think why did I wait a whole month? It was fantastic to have an expert actually watch and guide you to effective, sustainable breastfeeding techniques. She taught us holds that helped my baby be more in control of the feeds. She assured me about capacities and answered a whole host of random questions.
Second, do not marry a hold. Football hold, cross cradle, lying down, etc. Your baby is changing really rapidly so as she grows, becomes longer, taller, heavier you will notice that a hold that worked last week, doesn’t quite work anymore. Keep a host of holds in the backpocket and keep experimenting when things feel less efficient than before. And with breastfeeding, the feedback is immediate. If baby can’t latch you will see it or hear it. If baby is comfortable, she will fall asleep right after because she feels so comfortable and full
Invest in a handsfree pump. If you’re trying to build a store for when you’re at work or if you’re struggling to produce at capacity, you will be pumping a lot. Find the right phalange size (it is not the size of areolas at all!) and the setting that works for you. Again, invest in experiment different settings, it will be worth it when you have 2 hours+ of handsfree work/entertainment time while producing respectable quantities
Month 2-3
The focus of month 2 was trying to get to normalcy. And I say normalcy with a specific nuance. Normalcy is not the state of affairs pre-pregnancy. It is finding sustainability in the new world order. For example, I wanted to go back to work in month 2 so I could take the rest of my maternity leave later. This meant finding ways to multitask the activities that took up a lot of the day. I set up my pumping station in way that allowed me to work on documents, emails, etc while pumping. Sustainability also meant investing in comfort where we could. We didn’t worry about spending money early on for multiple rounds of washers/dryers or buying more wash cloths for baby if it meant we spent less time washing or arguing about them. We set up work schedules and negotiated with managers to help me return to office while still meeting my baby’s nutritional and emotional needs.
We started setting up for sustainability with baby
But more importantly, as my health improved and we spent more time with baby, we got better are parenting. We were tiptoing in month 1, tentative and hesitant about every decision, reaching for the doctor’s office at every little discrepancy. Month 2 we took some strides and trusted our baby more. We recognised more of her patterns. We were less scared of hurting her, everytime we touched her (this was one of my irrational concerns). And we started playing with her like giving her tummy time or taking her for walks.
Month 2 and 3 are very different for baby, since she is hitting very many milestones every week. But from a parental perspective I think we hit a lovely plateau by month 3. We, in fact, went so far as to travel with baby for weekend getaway celebrating month 3 of life. Proud to say things went very well!
1 learning from month 2-3:
Travelling: Travelling with a baby is all about flexibility and a general expectation that both of you aren’t going to be eating or spectating at the same time.
Whether you’re travelling by train, plane or car, take the time to research car seats, strollers/baby carriers. Travelling can be half the fun if your baby is comfortable and you’re not concerned about her spine. As long as you have that, food, pacifier and diapers in your bag, you should be set from a baby perspective. Babies tend to fall asleep a lot when travelling.
We went to Tahoe, which is a 4 hour drive in general. We stopped often about every hour and a half to straighten baby’s back or to burp her. She seemed comfortable feeding in the carseat. But when we stopped to eat. One of us popped open the trunk of the SUV to lay her down and feed her properly or to entertain her so the other parent can eat.
I don’t remember much of what I saw in the trip. But I had the best time travelling with my first baby, on her first trip, in her first snow. I made unneccessary purchases the whole time, warm clothes, cap, matching shirts. She might not remember this, but it was good practice for us to keep travelling with baby and not lose this lifestyle.
Month 4
Ah! Our first month without grandparents! We took an active decision to have a month between grandparents to also ramp up on parenthood by ourselves. A trial run so to speak. And our baby decided to really help us on that goal, by one, giving up day time napping entirely and two, rolling over! So as you can predict, it was a complete roller coaster.
We barely slept 4 hours at a time in the first few days. We juggled meetings with burping and entertaining the baby. I struggled immensely with being at work in the office as all my attention was back home with the baby. I worried that baby wasn’t getting enough attention with no grandparents and both parents working. I felt guilt in its truest sense for the first time. We pruned our activities to only those needed for baby and survival. We took shortcuts wherever we could. For example, we cooked plain dal rice or khichdi whenever we could. Or we skimmed some off the effort at work.
I’m excited to say that by day 10 we were delivering! It was one of the most exhilerating month of my adult life. Like being back at Uni doing 15 million things in a day, but never quite getting tired. My day started at 5am. Once baby was up, it was feeding time. Then passing baby to dad and heading to pump. Pumping was accompanied by getting some emails sorted/work done. Post pumping was the race to make boil eggs, eat nuts and make lunch for Arka before baby wakes up again for second breakfast. I got somewhere 60-70% on that activity before baby woke and I handed over the kitchen to Arka and fed baby. Then off to work by 8.30am with a back to back meeting schedule until 12.30, lunch at work and rush back before baby’s second lunch! Some days our heater broke down, some days our appointments got cancelled and some days our refund didn’t process. We prioritized what mattered and what our schedule needed to look like every day.
This is what I always imagined adulthood would look like.
What an adventure every day was! When I think about it – up until the day of the delivery, I was still a child transitioning. I became an adult the day I became mom.
But also equally true for me about this month, was that this schedule was unsustainable. We made sure she was always fed when hungry, but I didn’t create a digestive system. I created a human, I wanted to see her held, entertained, played with and get love everytime she wanted it. Every waking second. So I worried constantly and skimmed too much off work. I prayed desperately for grandparents to arrive soon!
1 learning from Month 4:
Partnership: Month 1 and 2 marked a couple of instances where we drove each other up the wall with arguments. We quickly realised that we were both working at 100% capacity here. Absolute edge of our abilities and, therefore, patience. Part of it was also lack of physical intimacy with the delivery and the baby.
We needed a change. We needed a well oiled machine to do this parenting thing, especially when it was just the two of us without grandparents’ support. There was no time, nor energy for arguments when raising a baby. I observed a natural change in both of our approach to each other and to life in general as we started to stabilize. We got really good at extending a hand. Not a single time did we say, it is your turn. We both loved our daughter enough to always want to be with her, especially when the other one is busy. My husband encouraged me to go to work and enabled it by owning up to the task of caring for baby during those hours. I set up breastfeeding or pumping schedules so he could play video games and we could watch him. That way it became a happy family activity instead of a source of consternation.
Our house quickly filled with calls of, I got it, you go meet friends. or I got it, you take a nap. We kissed often, we fist bumped more and stayed angry for fewer minutes. When one of us was upset, we addressed it, quickly instead of letting it fester. We silently filled each other’s cups, literally and figuratively. Even, at midnight feeds, nothing needed saying, we silently took our turns to give each other rest while we took the baby to another room if she needed some playing around. We mapped each other out pretty well when it came down to it.
And I was strongly reminded why I proposed to this man. It is great to be married to someone who soft sings and cuddles the baby while being a total boss at work, yet, still finds time for you. Just <chef’s kiss> of a human being.
Closing this blog out quickly by saying. If you’re sure you want a baby and are mentally prepared to have your whole lifestyle surround her, this is going to be a thrilling adventure and I highly recommend it. But if even one of you is unsure, it is worth waiting a bit longer to figure this one out. Oh and call the grandparents!! Indispensible support and love personified. Just can’t say this enough times!
Thoughts on the edge 