(pic courtesy my grand uncle Sanmama)May there be much and many to cherish, may the bitter always come with the sweet and may you and your loved ones bloom with health and joy!
19 hours ago
Friday, March 27, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Turn off the lights
OJ Masi first turned the light on, here.
--
March 28, 2009, 8:30pm to 9:30pm. Try it. Turn off your lights at home for an hour. It should be particularly interesting and of importance for those of us with children. It's their future at stake, right? Ahmedabad has almost no powercuts, so the idea of a blackout, even if for an hour, should be fascinating for Nino. He knows he's got to save 'elecktricity', but well, does he know how different life would be for him without it?
Have a candle-light conversation with you kid. Sing aloud. Make shadows on the walls. Step out on the terrace and hear the sounds of the neighbourhood. Make dinosaur shapes from star constellations. Listen to heart beats. Whisper. Say a big thank-you to the lightbulb in the sky. Use a handmade fan. Blow on tiny curls that bounce back with such joy. And may be, if you're this side, you can watch a flock of egrets soar high above our high-rise, white lines of beauty and power, of white light amid a tar-grey sky.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The original sin
I've sort of lived with a certain regret that I was unable to have a normal delivery, not because of medical reasons, but somehow because I was not strong enough to bear the pain, to let my body 'open' for Nino. Even though this may not technically be true, the mutterings of the elderly in my family has seeped into my sub-consciousness. I am suddenly this low-pain-threshold person, this softie, you know what I mean?
Almost everybody I know has had a normal delivery, with and without pain medication, and I've listened in detail to the different types of contractions, the focal points of pain and the sudden plop of relief or lack-of-pain, kind of like blank sound, when the baby eases out. But I've never heard of an orgasmic birth, having an orgasm or a series of orgasms while giving birth. It's a theory that 'natural birth proponents' talk about: a birthing process that has no pain medication, little or not grunting or screaming, lots of breathing and physical touch with the partner/father, and where contractions are acutally orgasms.
First up, let me be honest that the idea is mildly offensive to me. Maybe I'm being a prude, but while sex can be and should be recreational, the process of pregnancy and creating a life and a soul transcends mere procreational needs. An orgasm seems so, trifle, considering what it is being associated with, somehow. One of my concerns during pregnancy was related to breastfeeding: how would it feel considering I'm very sensitive in that part of my anatomy? Breastfeeding was a delight: and I actually felt 'useful': if you can understand that. It was as if discovering the real purpose to having a particularly shaped body. It was in no way titillating, and the pleasure I derived from it was emotional, rather than physical, given how painful it can be sometimes.
That's why this whole theory about orgasmic birth is intriguing, for the lack of another word. It's not sado-masochistic as it seems - believers say this is not an instance of deriving pain through pleasure. Maybe what bothers me is that it sounds like there is an underlying expectation that birth should be pleasurable, that it is a choice between pain and pleasure. It questions my needs to screech, to feel fear, to rant about my gender and it's afflictions, to given in to my limitations as a human being: it lays yet another brick of guilt on top the many that entomb mothers.
But is it really such a loony thing? The Bhagwad Gita's Sundar Kand describes Devaki's labour in synonyms with nature, and her relief in Krishna's birth also, with similar simile that could be construed to mean that she felt absolute pleasure when he was born. There are many, including Osho, who believe there is a thin line between spiritual pleasure and sexual pleasure, and that an orgasm is close to meditation: its a split second where the mind is completely blank, devoid of any negative thoughts, immersed in pure pleasure that by its lack of negativity, becomes a positive source of energy. Several streams of medicine including Acupressure and Homeopathy believe that a child experiences physical, medical and spiritual side effects of his/her birthing: there are afflictions associated with how long the labour lasted, how the head was positioned, was it an easy plop or a major push-and-grunt affair. Does this then mean that having a pleasurable birth affects the child too?
What do you think: Before you classify this as a loony new trend that's taken Western imagination by storm, read the article and try and watch the video (it's a bit graphic for office/kid viewing). Have you experienced an orgasmic birth? Or a feeling similar to pleasure, that you're unable to tag as an orgasm? Does this disgust you, like it did me, when I first read it? Or is it one of those metaphysical cum spiritual things about motherhood and the gift of creating life that we're only meant understand when we are ready?
Almost everybody I know has had a normal delivery, with and without pain medication, and I've listened in detail to the different types of contractions, the focal points of pain and the sudden plop of relief or lack-of-pain, kind of like blank sound, when the baby eases out. But I've never heard of an orgasmic birth, having an orgasm or a series of orgasms while giving birth. It's a theory that 'natural birth proponents' talk about: a birthing process that has no pain medication, little or not grunting or screaming, lots of breathing and physical touch with the partner/father, and where contractions are acutally orgasms.
Amber Hartnell did not intend to have an orgasmic birth - it just happened. "Trying to have an orgasmic birth defeats the object," she says, "I just got into this ecstatic state where I had these peaks of orgasm. There were these rolling waves coming through me where I was laughing and crying. I didn't feel like I was having contractions. They were more like rushes. I did not actually experience pain, I experienced intense sensations."
"It was the most overwhelming pleasure I have ever felt in my life," Hartnell says.
First up, let me be honest that the idea is mildly offensive to me. Maybe I'm being a prude, but while sex can be and should be recreational, the process of pregnancy and creating a life and a soul transcends mere procreational needs. An orgasm seems so, trifle, considering what it is being associated with, somehow. One of my concerns during pregnancy was related to breastfeeding: how would it feel considering I'm very sensitive in that part of my anatomy? Breastfeeding was a delight: and I actually felt 'useful': if you can understand that. It was as if discovering the real purpose to having a particularly shaped body. It was in no way titillating, and the pleasure I derived from it was emotional, rather than physical, given how painful it can be sometimes.
That's why this whole theory about orgasmic birth is intriguing, for the lack of another word. It's not sado-masochistic as it seems - believers say this is not an instance of deriving pain through pleasure. Maybe what bothers me is that it sounds like there is an underlying expectation that birth should be pleasurable, that it is a choice between pain and pleasure. It questions my needs to screech, to feel fear, to rant about my gender and it's afflictions, to given in to my limitations as a human being: it lays yet another brick of guilt on top the many that entomb mothers.
But is it really such a loony thing? The Bhagwad Gita's Sundar Kand describes Devaki's labour in synonyms with nature, and her relief in Krishna's birth also, with similar simile that could be construed to mean that she felt absolute pleasure when he was born. There are many, including Osho, who believe there is a thin line between spiritual pleasure and sexual pleasure, and that an orgasm is close to meditation: its a split second where the mind is completely blank, devoid of any negative thoughts, immersed in pure pleasure that by its lack of negativity, becomes a positive source of energy. Several streams of medicine including Acupressure and Homeopathy believe that a child experiences physical, medical and spiritual side effects of his/her birthing: there are afflictions associated with how long the labour lasted, how the head was positioned, was it an easy plop or a major push-and-grunt affair. Does this then mean that having a pleasurable birth affects the child too?
What do you think: Before you classify this as a loony new trend that's taken Western imagination by storm, read the article and try and watch the video (it's a bit graphic for office/kid viewing). Have you experienced an orgasmic birth? Or a feeling similar to pleasure, that you're unable to tag as an orgasm? Does this disgust you, like it did me, when I first read it? Or is it one of those metaphysical cum spiritual things about motherhood and the gift of creating life that we're only meant understand when we are ready?
Friday, March 20, 2009
Mutiny
She's lying down on the bed in the room down the corridor, and I can smell her even as I walk towards her room.
It's a smell I've come to associate with old age: a putrid mix of medicines and urine, of foul breath and incense sticks. It invades my nostrils and I'm startled for a bit, resisting it's strength and the need-to-escape that it brings, all in the same moment.
The floor tiles are cool beneath my bare feet, and my black toe-nails seem ominous. Her room's less than 10ft away, but I'm already reliving words I've heard dozens of times before. If I could run away now, I would, but there are several pairs of eyes following me, and they anchor me down.
She coughs as she sees me enter, a frown creasing her proud and wide forehead, then a momentary lapse of a smile, as she sees the grandson-in-law behind me. She shifts a bit in the bed, adjusts the bedcover over her, clasps her hands on her abdomen: 'how are you', she asks him, pointedly ignoring the girl who has sat down next to her, in four measly inches of urine-stained bedsheets.
'How are you', I ask her, gingerly reaching out to her now-lined but beautifully fair hands. 'Just surviving', she says, 'you finally found time to ask how I was doing?' It's the patent first jibe as always, and I can feel the husband's uneasy eyes on my face, I know he's asking me to keep my armours up. This looks like its going to be a long afternoon, followed by an evening of tears as I will try and salve my wounds. I wait, a sigh of resignation escaping me, for more word-lashing.
None follows. In that word-less few minutes, I'm pained by how grayish her eyes appear: a decaying spirit that shows itself in the spots around her pupils - and how strong this smell of despair is around her. I caress her partly grey hair, without thinking my act through, and she turns to me, startled I think by this act of affection: there is no one who has the courage to come this close, or perhaps there is no one who feels this affection for her, a mothering feeling of wanting to protect. She has always been the indefatigable one: the towering loud-voiced woman who braved straying sons and 'exotic' daughters-in-law, who raised her fours son and two daughters on nothing more than pittance and raw nerve. She was the protector, the hunter, the procurer, the final word, the chieftain. She knows she no longer is, and she will never forgive time for that.
Her chin shakes with the tears her ego won't let her shed, there are a few stray grey hair there and I'm suddenly in need to hug her, with the abandon that is characteristic to my love: reason has no place in it, neither does memory no matter how painful. 'What's wrong', I ask her. 'Why won't you get up from the bed?'
There's the back that hurts, a right leg that won't listen, a swollen ankle. 'Remember last year', I prod her. 'It was the same thing, you just need to start walking, you need to get up and get about', I say. She pushes my hands away and turns on her side: 'No one tells me what to do', she says. 'You don't know what I'm going through'.
I joke a bit, telling her about Nino's crazy antics, some real, some made to seem more funny. I know she's listening, I can see her smile. 'Is he eating properly', she asks me. 'Yes, Ba', I say. 'He's eating just fine'.
My aunt comes in and we discuss what the doctors have had to say, and she tells me, in a voice that I know is meant to carry its message to more ears than mine, how difficult Ba's been, how she screams viciously everytime they try and take her to the loo. 'She throws all her weight on me and I can barely walk with her nails digging into my shoulders', my aunt says, 'I'm too scared to be with her alone'.
Fear. I can smell it in Ba's breath. In my perspiration. In my aunt's constantly flitting eyes. It's a feeling that's at home with my grandmother. Her tales of oppression are legendary: there is not a single person in my family who has not been afraid of her, who has not been subjected to her rage, at some point in their lives. Rebellions were squashed with a force so brute that a few damaged specimens in the family are still trying to piece their lives together.
There is talk of how her sons have no time for her, the daughters-in-law are good and serve her well, but hell, they're someone else's blood at the end of the day. The stench of bitterness is so strong, remorse has no place here, nor does nostalgia. Does she ever wonder if they will cry after she has departed? It's a thought that has no place in this time and circumstance, and yet, I can't help but marvel at her. There are reasons for this version of her: I know the hows and whys that my father patiently explained to me once, his words perhaps echoing those that a little boy and then a young man must have said, over and over again to himself, as he searched for a little love and a mother's soothing touch.
I can't help the words of advice that occur to me: I'm driven to frustration by a situation that I know a few answers to. 'Wriggle your toes', I tell her. 'Try and sit up and move the right leg a bit.' 'She only needs to keep herself occupied', I tell my aunt. She gives me the knowing 'empty mind is devil's workshop' look coupled with helplessness.
I know Ba hates to read: I think she went to school only for a bit, and the written word has always irked her. Perhaps it was among the few things she was unable to conquer with the brute force of her tongue or the bitterness of her heart. I see the marble devghar right next to her bed, lined with fresh dust, no fresh water or fruit in front of the Gods, as is her customary offering.
The answer to the need for religion is something only old age offers. At that time, as you grapple with a body that is giving up and a mind that is no longer in control of its place of residence, religion becomes less of a ritual and a name, and more of a spirit-building and will-strengthening exercise. The old turn to chanting and praying sometimes out of fear of the outcome of death, but there are also some who truly discover a meaning and sub-text to life through it.
'Why don't you chant His name', I tell her, 'count the rosary beads a hundred times over'. Just another routine to take her mind off her pain, both real and spiritual, I think to myself.
She turns around with a vengeance that scares me. 'I will never take His name,' she says, in a half-scream. 'I walked 400 miles barefoot for him. Fasted half my life. Bought Him new clothes and beautiful jewellery even when I din't have enough to spend on me,' she seethes. 'And look at me now. He doesn't even look at me, doesn't even ease my suffering. I walked 400 miles and I can't walk a step now.'
'All my life I prayed to Him, I sang His songs, made Him the food He likes. For what? For this pain? For this humiliation?'
Ba makes a brushing-away movement with her arms, looking at the devghar. 'Take Him away,' she tells me, as her tears finally begin to flow. 'I can never forgive Him. I don't want Him now.'
It's a smell I've come to associate with old age: a putrid mix of medicines and urine, of foul breath and incense sticks. It invades my nostrils and I'm startled for a bit, resisting it's strength and the need-to-escape that it brings, all in the same moment.
The floor tiles are cool beneath my bare feet, and my black toe-nails seem ominous. Her room's less than 10ft away, but I'm already reliving words I've heard dozens of times before. If I could run away now, I would, but there are several pairs of eyes following me, and they anchor me down.
She coughs as she sees me enter, a frown creasing her proud and wide forehead, then a momentary lapse of a smile, as she sees the grandson-in-law behind me. She shifts a bit in the bed, adjusts the bedcover over her, clasps her hands on her abdomen: 'how are you', she asks him, pointedly ignoring the girl who has sat down next to her, in four measly inches of urine-stained bedsheets.
'How are you', I ask her, gingerly reaching out to her now-lined but beautifully fair hands. 'Just surviving', she says, 'you finally found time to ask how I was doing?' It's the patent first jibe as always, and I can feel the husband's uneasy eyes on my face, I know he's asking me to keep my armours up. This looks like its going to be a long afternoon, followed by an evening of tears as I will try and salve my wounds. I wait, a sigh of resignation escaping me, for more word-lashing.
None follows. In that word-less few minutes, I'm pained by how grayish her eyes appear: a decaying spirit that shows itself in the spots around her pupils - and how strong this smell of despair is around her. I caress her partly grey hair, without thinking my act through, and she turns to me, startled I think by this act of affection: there is no one who has the courage to come this close, or perhaps there is no one who feels this affection for her, a mothering feeling of wanting to protect. She has always been the indefatigable one: the towering loud-voiced woman who braved straying sons and 'exotic' daughters-in-law, who raised her fours son and two daughters on nothing more than pittance and raw nerve. She was the protector, the hunter, the procurer, the final word, the chieftain. She knows she no longer is, and she will never forgive time for that.
Her chin shakes with the tears her ego won't let her shed, there are a few stray grey hair there and I'm suddenly in need to hug her, with the abandon that is characteristic to my love: reason has no place in it, neither does memory no matter how painful. 'What's wrong', I ask her. 'Why won't you get up from the bed?'
There's the back that hurts, a right leg that won't listen, a swollen ankle. 'Remember last year', I prod her. 'It was the same thing, you just need to start walking, you need to get up and get about', I say. She pushes my hands away and turns on her side: 'No one tells me what to do', she says. 'You don't know what I'm going through'.
I joke a bit, telling her about Nino's crazy antics, some real, some made to seem more funny. I know she's listening, I can see her smile. 'Is he eating properly', she asks me. 'Yes, Ba', I say. 'He's eating just fine'.
My aunt comes in and we discuss what the doctors have had to say, and she tells me, in a voice that I know is meant to carry its message to more ears than mine, how difficult Ba's been, how she screams viciously everytime they try and take her to the loo. 'She throws all her weight on me and I can barely walk with her nails digging into my shoulders', my aunt says, 'I'm too scared to be with her alone'.
Fear. I can smell it in Ba's breath. In my perspiration. In my aunt's constantly flitting eyes. It's a feeling that's at home with my grandmother. Her tales of oppression are legendary: there is not a single person in my family who has not been afraid of her, who has not been subjected to her rage, at some point in their lives. Rebellions were squashed with a force so brute that a few damaged specimens in the family are still trying to piece their lives together.
There is talk of how her sons have no time for her, the daughters-in-law are good and serve her well, but hell, they're someone else's blood at the end of the day. The stench of bitterness is so strong, remorse has no place here, nor does nostalgia. Does she ever wonder if they will cry after she has departed? It's a thought that has no place in this time and circumstance, and yet, I can't help but marvel at her. There are reasons for this version of her: I know the hows and whys that my father patiently explained to me once, his words perhaps echoing those that a little boy and then a young man must have said, over and over again to himself, as he searched for a little love and a mother's soothing touch.
I can't help the words of advice that occur to me: I'm driven to frustration by a situation that I know a few answers to. 'Wriggle your toes', I tell her. 'Try and sit up and move the right leg a bit.' 'She only needs to keep herself occupied', I tell my aunt. She gives me the knowing 'empty mind is devil's workshop' look coupled with helplessness.
I know Ba hates to read: I think she went to school only for a bit, and the written word has always irked her. Perhaps it was among the few things she was unable to conquer with the brute force of her tongue or the bitterness of her heart. I see the marble devghar right next to her bed, lined with fresh dust, no fresh water or fruit in front of the Gods, as is her customary offering.
The answer to the need for religion is something only old age offers. At that time, as you grapple with a body that is giving up and a mind that is no longer in control of its place of residence, religion becomes less of a ritual and a name, and more of a spirit-building and will-strengthening exercise. The old turn to chanting and praying sometimes out of fear of the outcome of death, but there are also some who truly discover a meaning and sub-text to life through it.
'Why don't you chant His name', I tell her, 'count the rosary beads a hundred times over'. Just another routine to take her mind off her pain, both real and spiritual, I think to myself.
She turns around with a vengeance that scares me. 'I will never take His name,' she says, in a half-scream. 'I walked 400 miles barefoot for him. Fasted half my life. Bought Him new clothes and beautiful jewellery even when I din't have enough to spend on me,' she seethes. 'And look at me now. He doesn't even look at me, doesn't even ease my suffering. I walked 400 miles and I can't walk a step now.'
'All my life I prayed to Him, I sang His songs, made Him the food He likes. For what? For this pain? For this humiliation?'
Ba makes a brushing-away movement with her arms, looking at the devghar. 'Take Him away,' she tells me, as her tears finally begin to flow. 'I can never forgive Him. I don't want Him now.'
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The ten things they never told you about motherhood
It's going to be Mother's Day in the UK soon, and we've been (I work with a British Asian mag) ploughing through mothers day messages by the truckload. Apart from the fact that I think mums need to make their kids spell better (I mean the grown up ones) and that flowers are so bloody expensive in the UK, I might have just given the whole festival a miss, till I received this in a forward.
Interestingly, it's from a dear friend, R, who is single, and who surprisingly gives the most sane advice on balancing kids and married life and sanity, ever. This is one of those irreverential lists, the one that cocks a snook at this life-changing decision. It's a good laugh in places, and comes especially recommended for new mothers. Us old ones, well, we're too jaded with removing curry stains from hair and clothes and sofa to eek a smile.
The things I personally related to, are points 4, 5 and 7. I'm a beached whale with whiplash-like stretch mark scars: and I haven't fit into anything remotely S in three years. This was a big part of my lows after motherhood: I remember walking into changing rooms in malls armed with only XS and S (my size before Nino came along) and then crying for hours in the changing room. M was for Mum, and well, that was what I was. Though I try to crack a joke at it now, my weight affected my disposition, my drive for physical intimacy, lead to huge fights with the husband whose every 'but I think you look great' snowballed into his being an insensitive jerk. I'm not completely okay with it, yet, but I'm getting there. (who am I kidding?!)
Then there's school politics. Tales of wit, wisdom, brilliance and otherwise, as I've tried to bond with the folks who send their kids to Nino's school. I've managed a few friends, and that's because we're not talking about our kids and their capabilities.
Finally, one serious recommendation I'd make you, is to have a friend who is single. Preferably a woman. Needless to say, she needs to be prepared for your Momzilla side, but heck, her importance in your life is one of those things that they don't tell you about motherhood.
Tell me what clicked with you on the list and what did not. Or do you have your own list? And if you're a single friend to a mommy, what's it like for you to be surrounded by poop-tales and teething-worries? Tell, tell, tell!
--
Ten things they never tell you about motherhood
- Sarah Vine
There's a conspiracy of silence about motherhood, argues our writer. From schoolgate gossips to bed-wetting, here is her guide for Mother's Day...
Motherhood is one of the great obsessions of our age. Everyone seems to have an opinion, even those who will never experience it (men), and those for whom it is a distant memory (grumpy old ladies). Whether you breast-feed or bottle-feed, give birth naturally or deliver by Cesarean, stay at home or return to work, the impression is that whatever you are doing, it's almost certainly wrong.
The most curious aspect of this is that much of the pressure comes not from some patriarchal conspiracy, but from women. Even the National Childbirth Trust recently stated that it wants to see the use of epidurals during labour reduced by 40 per cent to “boost traditional births” - aka “agonising pain”.
Most confusing of all is what a friend of mine calls “the conspiracy of silence”: the abyss that exists between what people will tell you about having children and what it really entails. The truth is, as my mother once remarked darkly, that if women thought properly about having children, no one would ever give birth again.
Here then are ten things about motherhood that no one will tell you.
1. Bottoms
Motherhood, especially in the early years, is a scatological business. You will find yourself responsible for more dung than the keeper of the elephant enclosure at London Zoo. As a result, things that would once have made you gag are now mild inconveniences. At 3am, when your youngest, all snuggly next to you, covers your side of the bed in a wet, warm pool of wee, you don't leap out and strip the sheets. Oh no: you stagger to the bathroom, grab a few towels, cover the wet patch and go back to sleep. You get to the stage when having “a little bit of wee, Mummy” on your trousers is normal. You will get used to sharing a lavatory cubicle with at least one other person, sometimes two or three on an outing. With a son you will, at some time, have to hold his willy when he goes to the loo.
2. Partners
You know those frazzled couples you used to see around at weekends? The ones who don't appear to have washed or ironed their clothes? They call each other “Mummy” and “Daddy”, even though they once had names of their own. Their vocabulary now consists of a series of stock phrases: “You can't have another Lego Star Wars Space Ship”; or “You can have an ice-cream, but only if you eat your broccoli.” Don't get too cross with these couples. Remember, they've been up since 6am and they probably haven't had sex for, ooh, about a thousand years. And crucially, one day that might be you.
3. Making a fool of yourself
It doesn't matter how cool you are, once you have children you will snort like a piggy-wig, neigh like a horse, run through the park shouting “Here comes the wibble-monster”. Sometimes this can be liberating. Other times it's just very, very embarrassing.
4. The body
Despite what the manuals tell you, pregnancy is not a return journey. Your back may go; your arches may fall; you will get brown spots on your skin. There may be whole areas of your body that you no longer recognise: Cesareans leave you with a weird stomach overhang; a natural birth means you will never again perform star jumps with confidence. Pilates, yoga, Power Plate. All these help. But unless you work at it like Madonna, you will never be box-fresh again.
5. The school gate
For some, an opportunity to display to the world their offspring's brilliance. For others, a Dantesque vision of Hell. You'll know which within seconds of your child's first day at nursery.
6. Celebrity mothers
The only secret to the marvel of the celebrity mother, with her flat stomach, her 6in heels and her sexy husband, is this: 24-hour childcare. Don't believe the hype.
7. Single friends
It can be hard, not to say very dull, for your childless friends when you turn into a milk-obsessed insomniac whose idea of spontaneity is giving her baby puréed avocado instead of banana for tea. Your friends' obsession with the banal issues of life, such as whether to invest in this season's new jump-suit, can seem absurdly indulgent. Besides, you are secretly jealous. Yet if you can both curb your tongue, a childless friend is often the best a mother can have - someone to talk to about the important issues in life; someone who will remind you that you once had an identity of your own and that there is more to life than school admission procedures.
8. Sleep
Unless you happen to be SAS trained, there is nothing that can prepare you for the effects of the prolonged sleep deprivation that comes with having children. They will wake you once, twice, three times in the night; if you have two, they will wake in relays, so as to inflict maximum damage. Should you attempt any sort of alcohol-based evening celebration, you can guarantee that the children will wake an hour and a half before they usually do, with twice the energy.
9 Birthing pools
If you like the idea of sitting in your own bodily fluids, then fine. If not, well, not. I know a man who had to perform an unpleasant fishing operation using the kitchen sieve during the later stages of his wife's labour. He has never recovered.
10. The Fear
The most agonising aspect of motherhood is the terrible fear that you may lose your child. With the fear comes guilt, worry and, occasionally, panic. There is little you can do about this, except push it to the back of your mind, avoid listening to certain news reports - and pray that it never happens to you.
Interestingly, it's from a dear friend, R, who is single, and who surprisingly gives the most sane advice on balancing kids and married life and sanity, ever. This is one of those irreverential lists, the one that cocks a snook at this life-changing decision. It's a good laugh in places, and comes especially recommended for new mothers. Us old ones, well, we're too jaded with removing curry stains from hair and clothes and sofa to eek a smile.
The things I personally related to, are points 4, 5 and 7. I'm a beached whale with whiplash-like stretch mark scars: and I haven't fit into anything remotely S in three years. This was a big part of my lows after motherhood: I remember walking into changing rooms in malls armed with only XS and S (my size before Nino came along) and then crying for hours in the changing room. M was for Mum, and well, that was what I was. Though I try to crack a joke at it now, my weight affected my disposition, my drive for physical intimacy, lead to huge fights with the husband whose every 'but I think you look great' snowballed into his being an insensitive jerk. I'm not completely okay with it, yet, but I'm getting there. (who am I kidding?!)
Then there's school politics. Tales of wit, wisdom, brilliance and otherwise, as I've tried to bond with the folks who send their kids to Nino's school. I've managed a few friends, and that's because we're not talking about our kids and their capabilities.
Finally, one serious recommendation I'd make you, is to have a friend who is single. Preferably a woman. Needless to say, she needs to be prepared for your Momzilla side, but heck, her importance in your life is one of those things that they don't tell you about motherhood.
Tell me what clicked with you on the list and what did not. Or do you have your own list? And if you're a single friend to a mommy, what's it like for you to be surrounded by poop-tales and teething-worries? Tell, tell, tell!
--
Ten things they never tell you about motherhood
- Sarah Vine
There's a conspiracy of silence about motherhood, argues our writer. From schoolgate gossips to bed-wetting, here is her guide for Mother's Day...
Motherhood is one of the great obsessions of our age. Everyone seems to have an opinion, even those who will never experience it (men), and those for whom it is a distant memory (grumpy old ladies). Whether you breast-feed or bottle-feed, give birth naturally or deliver by Cesarean, stay at home or return to work, the impression is that whatever you are doing, it's almost certainly wrong.
The most curious aspect of this is that much of the pressure comes not from some patriarchal conspiracy, but from women. Even the National Childbirth Trust recently stated that it wants to see the use of epidurals during labour reduced by 40 per cent to “boost traditional births” - aka “agonising pain”.
Most confusing of all is what a friend of mine calls “the conspiracy of silence”: the abyss that exists between what people will tell you about having children and what it really entails. The truth is, as my mother once remarked darkly, that if women thought properly about having children, no one would ever give birth again.
Here then are ten things about motherhood that no one will tell you.
1. Bottoms
Motherhood, especially in the early years, is a scatological business. You will find yourself responsible for more dung than the keeper of the elephant enclosure at London Zoo. As a result, things that would once have made you gag are now mild inconveniences. At 3am, when your youngest, all snuggly next to you, covers your side of the bed in a wet, warm pool of wee, you don't leap out and strip the sheets. Oh no: you stagger to the bathroom, grab a few towels, cover the wet patch and go back to sleep. You get to the stage when having “a little bit of wee, Mummy” on your trousers is normal. You will get used to sharing a lavatory cubicle with at least one other person, sometimes two or three on an outing. With a son you will, at some time, have to hold his willy when he goes to the loo.
2. Partners
You know those frazzled couples you used to see around at weekends? The ones who don't appear to have washed or ironed their clothes? They call each other “Mummy” and “Daddy”, even though they once had names of their own. Their vocabulary now consists of a series of stock phrases: “You can't have another Lego Star Wars Space Ship”; or “You can have an ice-cream, but only if you eat your broccoli.” Don't get too cross with these couples. Remember, they've been up since 6am and they probably haven't had sex for, ooh, about a thousand years. And crucially, one day that might be you.
3. Making a fool of yourself
It doesn't matter how cool you are, once you have children you will snort like a piggy-wig, neigh like a horse, run through the park shouting “Here comes the wibble-monster”. Sometimes this can be liberating. Other times it's just very, very embarrassing.
4. The body
Despite what the manuals tell you, pregnancy is not a return journey. Your back may go; your arches may fall; you will get brown spots on your skin. There may be whole areas of your body that you no longer recognise: Cesareans leave you with a weird stomach overhang; a natural birth means you will never again perform star jumps with confidence. Pilates, yoga, Power Plate. All these help. But unless you work at it like Madonna, you will never be box-fresh again.
5. The school gate
For some, an opportunity to display to the world their offspring's brilliance. For others, a Dantesque vision of Hell. You'll know which within seconds of your child's first day at nursery.
6. Celebrity mothers
The only secret to the marvel of the celebrity mother, with her flat stomach, her 6in heels and her sexy husband, is this: 24-hour childcare. Don't believe the hype.
7. Single friends
It can be hard, not to say very dull, for your childless friends when you turn into a milk-obsessed insomniac whose idea of spontaneity is giving her baby puréed avocado instead of banana for tea. Your friends' obsession with the banal issues of life, such as whether to invest in this season's new jump-suit, can seem absurdly indulgent. Besides, you are secretly jealous. Yet if you can both curb your tongue, a childless friend is often the best a mother can have - someone to talk to about the important issues in life; someone who will remind you that you once had an identity of your own and that there is more to life than school admission procedures.
8. Sleep
Unless you happen to be SAS trained, there is nothing that can prepare you for the effects of the prolonged sleep deprivation that comes with having children. They will wake you once, twice, three times in the night; if you have two, they will wake in relays, so as to inflict maximum damage. Should you attempt any sort of alcohol-based evening celebration, you can guarantee that the children will wake an hour and a half before they usually do, with twice the energy.
9 Birthing pools
If you like the idea of sitting in your own bodily fluids, then fine. If not, well, not. I know a man who had to perform an unpleasant fishing operation using the kitchen sieve during the later stages of his wife's labour. He has never recovered.
10. The Fear
The most agonising aspect of motherhood is the terrible fear that you may lose your child. With the fear comes guilt, worry and, occasionally, panic. There is little you can do about this, except push it to the back of your mind, avoid listening to certain news reports - and pray that it never happens to you.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Top Clicks
I've put up a Top Clicks section on the right-side column of the blog, just below Nino's b'day ticker. So often through the day, I stumble across a story/an incident that just grabs my attention and my soul, and I can't get it out of my system, purely because I believe it needs to be heard more.
I work with a magazine, that like all of them out there, has its own agenda and a soul that is more market-driven than cause-oriented. I can't put these stories there, and so I put them here, hoping you will read it, hoping the word gets spread.
And even though we may not always be in a position to effect a change, I believe no story, no life must go unheard. These are my recommendations. I don't know how often I'll change it, I was looking at once a week, but some stories need to stay on longer.
Like this one about lesbian women in South Africa being subjected to 'corrective rape' by men who believe that freedom of choice is basically a lack of experience in the 'straight fine thing'. The video (linked in the third para of the Top Clicks) section is heartwreching - you've a young man saying that while he wouldn't commit 'such a rape', he's very happy someone else is doing it, because the women need to be taught a lesson. The story itself, as reported in the Guardian, is so heart-breaking, it left me feeling with what I've come to term as 'arm chair vulnerability'. Its so shocking it gives me jitters just thinking of it, forget putting myself in those women's battered and bloodied shoes. Please do read. And remember.
I work with a magazine, that like all of them out there, has its own agenda and a soul that is more market-driven than cause-oriented. I can't put these stories there, and so I put them here, hoping you will read it, hoping the word gets spread.
And even though we may not always be in a position to effect a change, I believe no story, no life must go unheard. These are my recommendations. I don't know how often I'll change it, I was looking at once a week, but some stories need to stay on longer.
Like this one about lesbian women in South Africa being subjected to 'corrective rape' by men who believe that freedom of choice is basically a lack of experience in the 'straight fine thing'. The video (linked in the third para of the Top Clicks) section is heartwreching - you've a young man saying that while he wouldn't commit 'such a rape', he's very happy someone else is doing it, because the women need to be taught a lesson. The story itself, as reported in the Guardian, is so heart-breaking, it left me feeling with what I've come to term as 'arm chair vulnerability'. Its so shocking it gives me jitters just thinking of it, forget putting myself in those women's battered and bloodied shoes. Please do read. And remember.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Umm...
...My post on the World Wide Web's 20th birthday, was selected as one of Blogadda's five 'Spicy Saturday' picks for last week.
If this is a hoax, don't tell me. I'm enjoying it immensely :)
If this is a hoax, don't tell me. I'm enjoying it immensely :)
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