I do not recall much about my sixteenth birthday and year, except that it was another day and a whole year. The struggles remained the same. Getting through high school with good grades if possible, no dreams or aspirations, a confused teen cursing for not being intelligent enough, pretty enough, fair enough, or to be a wannabe at the least for a day. Yes, it is indeed the story of more or less most teenage kids back then and I guess even now. Just that the amount of confusion in teenagers have risen alarmingly, that's what I feel observing them these days. Parenting, on the other hand, has evolved to a great extent and parents now, are much more informed and willingly go that extra mile for their children. I missed all of that in my parents though. We just grew up like any other kids in the neighborhood and our parents never worried about our adolescent trials and tribulations, the many struggles we had with our inner voice and no parent to share with because these weren't issues for them that mattered at all. Infact they were not issues at all. The emotional connect was completely missing. Today I see so many of my mates from school and college giving it all to parenting. Coming back to myself, I had serious doubts ever since I conceived. I used to even have nightmares of not being a good enough parent. However things were different now, I wasn't as confused as I was growing up to be sixteen and even when the confusion rolled over to my early twenties. A good decade plus of work experience, meeting people from different walks of life, being a listener , reading books and inspirational write ups, made up for some amount of that mentorship I always sought but never had. Surely I didn't feel as helpless as I used to then, for I knew that the greatest of all achievements was in overcoming one's fears. Hence no matter how much I feared, that I may not be a good enough mother, I still worked my way through it.
Some of the basic things I did was of course to reach out to my friends who had by then, become an ace in parenting , some of my cousins as well and referred to the book," What to expect when you are expecting?" Of all the options the Paedritician and my friends practical hands on experience helped the most. Nevertheless the book was still useful. The only part that I didn't approve of, in the book, was that it gave too much information about what could go wrong in each stage of pregnancy. Though it is good to be informed but for souls like me, who could easily be swayed into pessimism, I preferred to read more on the brighter side of pregnancy. If anything at all has to go wrong in the whole nine months of evolution process, I would deal with it anyway. Having said that, the book still added to my limited, to almost no knowledge about pregnancy and parenting. It certainly helped. Infact any help or positive advice during this phase was more than welcome. I took one day at a time, did not overload with too much information but kept myself open to any learning. The biggest difficulty was however our shift of base from India to USA which I did not realize immediately. The birth of a child itself is such a paradigm shift of life for a mother, having to deal with many aspects never known. So any help in the form of maid, cook or family members, is the biggest relief. Unlike in a country like USA where you have to be multi tasking between the role of a nanny cum cook cum cleaner cum host. It indeed becomes a daunting experience. I hardly ever cooked before marriage and post marriage we had a cook and a part time maid. Life was easy. The whole equation changed the moment we landed in America. Every household work has to be done by you. Of course you can hire cleaners and cook, but unfortunately we didn't have that privilege as it was too expensive.I had to step into the shoes of multi tasking all household chores. Of course my husband would chip in, and I slowly started to get a hang of it though I was still far behind.
Finally the day dawned when I held my baby boy in my arms. Weighing a mere 5.11Lbs (2.3Kgs) and arriving three and a half weeks early he still looked such a handsome little man and by God's grace perfectly healthy. He was tiny and I remember being scared of holding him. The moment he was born, he gave birth to a new, me. There were no excuses , even if I didn't know an iota of parenting. It was simply expected that I would know it all. But to tell you the truth, changing diapers, to feeding, to changing clothes, bathing, putting baby to sleep, every damn task was alien. But I learned and I learnt it with patience and eagerness. I was so happy from the moment I set my eyes on my little magic, that I was willing to learn and unlearn anything and everything to make each day a happy one for him. Thanks to friends, Internet and social media, interactions across globe helped me pulled through the toughest phase. And the instructional designers who do a great job of visual explanation of how to do things behind every little stuff we bought for our child. Starting from diaper change to clothing, to feeding bottles, every instruction would be in detail. And that helped immensely. My husband was helpful too but men would be men. As much as he tried to learn himself, he still preferred cooking and cleaning over babysitting, feeding or for that matter anything to do with the baby except for napping together😎 Both of them loved snoring and napping away.
Today my little boy completes 16 whole months! As I look back on the sixteen months gone by in a flash, I realized it was the most fulfilling, satisfying, full of love, exhilarating months of my life. Forgot to mention, the most tiring, exhausting beyond compare, overwhelming, at times nightmarish in broad daylight, insane but these negative feelings were tucked behind somewhere in comparison to what I received from learning to be a mother to my handsome child. He is a happy, energetic, lively, bright eyed honey toddler with the most beautiful smile that could melt any heart. It has been and will continue to be on top of the world feeling probably forever. Not because that I became a mother but because I quite successfully nurtured him all alone through these months and still managed to keep him safe and alive. Why I say alive is something that only mothers will understand? The kind of tumbles, falls that infants and toddlers manage to survive, sometimes makes you wonder if at all they are made fall proof :-) Nevertheless it is the best sixteen months that it has turned out to be since I turned 16 decades ago!
Some of the basic things I did was of course to reach out to my friends who had by then, become an ace in parenting , some of my cousins as well and referred to the book," What to expect when you are expecting?" Of all the options the Paedritician and my friends practical hands on experience helped the most. Nevertheless the book was still useful. The only part that I didn't approve of, in the book, was that it gave too much information about what could go wrong in each stage of pregnancy. Though it is good to be informed but for souls like me, who could easily be swayed into pessimism, I preferred to read more on the brighter side of pregnancy. If anything at all has to go wrong in the whole nine months of evolution process, I would deal with it anyway. Having said that, the book still added to my limited, to almost no knowledge about pregnancy and parenting. It certainly helped. Infact any help or positive advice during this phase was more than welcome. I took one day at a time, did not overload with too much information but kept myself open to any learning. The biggest difficulty was however our shift of base from India to USA which I did not realize immediately. The birth of a child itself is such a paradigm shift of life for a mother, having to deal with many aspects never known. So any help in the form of maid, cook or family members, is the biggest relief. Unlike in a country like USA where you have to be multi tasking between the role of a nanny cum cook cum cleaner cum host. It indeed becomes a daunting experience. I hardly ever cooked before marriage and post marriage we had a cook and a part time maid. Life was easy. The whole equation changed the moment we landed in America. Every household work has to be done by you. Of course you can hire cleaners and cook, but unfortunately we didn't have that privilege as it was too expensive.I had to step into the shoes of multi tasking all household chores. Of course my husband would chip in, and I slowly started to get a hang of it though I was still far behind.
Finally the day dawned when I held my baby boy in my arms. Weighing a mere 5.11Lbs (2.3Kgs) and arriving three and a half weeks early he still looked such a handsome little man and by God's grace perfectly healthy. He was tiny and I remember being scared of holding him. The moment he was born, he gave birth to a new, me. There were no excuses , even if I didn't know an iota of parenting. It was simply expected that I would know it all. But to tell you the truth, changing diapers, to feeding, to changing clothes, bathing, putting baby to sleep, every damn task was alien. But I learned and I learnt it with patience and eagerness. I was so happy from the moment I set my eyes on my little magic, that I was willing to learn and unlearn anything and everything to make each day a happy one for him. Thanks to friends, Internet and social media, interactions across globe helped me pulled through the toughest phase. And the instructional designers who do a great job of visual explanation of how to do things behind every little stuff we bought for our child. Starting from diaper change to clothing, to feeding bottles, every instruction would be in detail. And that helped immensely. My husband was helpful too but men would be men. As much as he tried to learn himself, he still preferred cooking and cleaning over babysitting, feeding or for that matter anything to do with the baby except for napping together😎 Both of them loved snoring and napping away.
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| Far from the Maddening crowd |
Today my little boy completes 16 whole months! As I look back on the sixteen months gone by in a flash, I realized it was the most fulfilling, satisfying, full of love, exhilarating months of my life. Forgot to mention, the most tiring, exhausting beyond compare, overwhelming, at times nightmarish in broad daylight, insane but these negative feelings were tucked behind somewhere in comparison to what I received from learning to be a mother to my handsome child. He is a happy, energetic, lively, bright eyed honey toddler with the most beautiful smile that could melt any heart. It has been and will continue to be on top of the world feeling probably forever. Not because that I became a mother but because I quite successfully nurtured him all alone through these months and still managed to keep him safe and alive. Why I say alive is something that only mothers will understand? The kind of tumbles, falls that infants and toddlers manage to survive, sometimes makes you wonder if at all they are made fall proof :-) Nevertheless it is the best sixteen months that it has turned out to be since I turned 16 decades ago!
