Saturday, December 7, 2013

Masters in Motherhood - I

I'm writing after ages. So this post has ended up being longer than i planned. Don't complain later. Also, don't run away. All 5 of you readers of this blog are important for my self esteem. 

Whoever said that being a mother comes naturally to women has to be a man. 

I've been a mother for six months and let me tell you, i've had to learn how to get the job done. And learn quickly. The only thing that came naturally were the labour pains. And those were far from quick. *shudder* No, not going to talk about those because i'm trying to keep this post expletive free. Let's just say those were the ten worst hours of my life so far and no, you don't forget the pain as soon as you see the baby. 

In fact when they gave me the my baby, a tiny thing bundled up in a cloud of blanket, my first reaction was "what am i supposed to do with him?" and the nurse told me "nothing". And so i lay there, trying not to crush this tiny, crumpled human that was my responsibility now, and it comes to me that the Fellow hadn't seen him yet (what with him pacing outside the maternity ward). So, since they'd given me my phone by this time i took photos of my 30 min old baby, dropped the phone twice on his head (thankfully babies are too shell-shocked right in the beginning to take note of this obvious piece of bad parenting) and generally tried to not fall off the delivery table in my attempt to get a good angle.  

Then there was the part where I had to learn how to nurse the baby, which, contrary to popular belief and mother-baby magazines, is not the most natural thing in the world. Didn't help that all i wanted to do was sleep for a month straight. Instead, i was up all night, struggling to hold a mouse sized baby correctly. Oh, and did you know, babies need to be burped after every feed? And that you can't put them down unless they do? And that they can take forever to burp. So much time in fact, that by the time they do, it is time to feed them again? On night 3 of doing this, i even fell asleep with my head resting on my baby as i held him up to burp. I told you, i had to learn how to be a mother - especially when it came to poop.

I have to confess that the first poop cleaning for my baby was done by my mom because i couldn't stop getting grossed out. But then the hospital i was at wouldn't let her stay the night and i was thrown, quite literally, into the deep end. Also, no one told me that new borns poop several times a day. And night. The only silver lining was that it wasn't smelly. But it did go from black to green to mustard and it was then i learnt the most important lesson of parenthood - everything is about the poop.

On this smelly note, Part I ends.

Part II shall be about more poop, pee that goes in all directions, sleep cycles and bath time. Amongst other things. 

2 comments:

Mihir Satokar said...

good to see your post after ages! congratulations on motherhood and the added responsibility!

EJ said...

Couldn't stop laughing reading this one and just had to comment. I have an almost 3 yr old daughter and a 4 month old son. I tried to avoid the cycle the second time, but God had different plans for me.

Yes. It was all about Poop for me till my son was born. Now it is all about Vomit which means that you have to change your top every time he is burped when he disposes the old curdled milk because he is suffering from acid reflux. So poop got a second place