I have signed up for two courses this summer. The summer quarter is much shorter (6 weeks) as opposed to the regular quarter (16 weeks). So we meet twice a week, for each course and each session is typically 5 hours. We are covering about four chapters every day. I have to hand over twelve assignments, two group presentations, four tests, conduct four interviews, do four observations on young children, eight hours of community service and write two advocacy letters by the end of July. Sounds pretty do-able under normal circumstances. But throw in two toddlers, a four day language workshop (I have agreed to teach tamil for the Indian Community Center and they require me to take this workshop) and house guests coming weekend, there isn’t much time left for doing all the reading. So I am up till the wee hours of the morning trying to finish my assignments and catching up with my reading. The class starts at 8.00AM, which means that I have to leave home by 7.30AM, which means that I have to wake the kids up at 6.00AM and start the much dreaded feeding session. All this does not leave me much time to sleep. In a way, I am enjoying this time. There are no little hands touching me, I am not needed to kiss a boo-boo just when I am desperately trying to tie my thoughts together! All this blah-blah-blah does not form the stressed part. It is the happy part! I love to multiplex, and push myself absolutely over the edge. Guess I must under value myself and have to have some zillion things going on to prove to myself that I am doing something worthwhile with my time!

The stress comes from the group I am struck with for group presentations. Today was the first meeting. I am not bad mouthing them, but I am this high energy crazy lady and they are relaxed……too relaxed for my comfort. There is a temperament mismatch. One of the professors told us that if one person in the group screws up, then the whole group’s grade gets affected. This is driving me up the wall. This is where my stress is coming from.

Okay, to the ancient part. One of my group mates is a 1988 born guy. The kid is 19 years old. A whole 11 years younger to me!! I felt like telling, “Go hide your face some where cos I am going to start wailing”

I am trying to get Toddler out of our bed and I am in the process of setting up her crib as a toddler bed. So I went to the store to pick up some fitted sheets and a guard rail to go with the new set up. While at it I also picked up some fitted sheets for the infant. Infant sleeps in her crib. She has thrown up in the crib whenever she is extremely congested with cold. Also she has the habit of pulling the sheets to entertain herself till she fell asleep. Me being the lazy person, got pretty tired of laundering sheets and making the bed three times a day and let things slack. Plus, I also started imagining that she threw up when ever I put new sheets on the crib! Long story short, she sleeps on her crib mattress, with nothing between the plastic of the mattress and her skin, hugging her favorite pillow and holding a queen sized comforter that is at least 10 years old. Why the queen comforter? Well it was very cold until very recently, even now it gets cold early in the morning and she just squirms out of her measly blankies. Anyways, digressions apart, the point I am trying to make is, her crib looks yucky.

So I vowed to dress up both the cribs and put some effort in making them look decent. We have a queen bed and two full sized cribs in our small bedroom. That means that I had to squeeze myself through three-inch spaces and set up the crib – new sheets, padding, two throw pillows, pretty blankie, baby sized comforters and a cute little teddy bear. Having done that. I stood back and admired the result of the effort. Looked wonderful, just like a place a baby would sleep in.

When bed time came I sang my usual song, kissed the children good night and moved out of the room. Infant started screaming her head off. Sometimes she does this, but after she cried for a couple of minutes and blew some steam off, she would go right back to sleep. So I dismissed her wails. But the kid kept screaming for more than 10 minutes. So I picked her up, hugged her, consoled her and put her down again. The minute I walked out of the room there was more crying. I tried everything, making sure her diaper was fine, her clothes were comfortable, we cooled the house by switching the A/C, gave her some water…etc. I suspected that she might be coming down with something, but again no. Whenever we carried her and bought her in to the living room, she started squealing with delight and was keen on watching X-Men. So hubby and self concluded that this is just a playful child who is throwing a tantrum because she is not feeling like sleeping. Not wanting to encourage her any more, we put her in the crib and walked away.

By now Toddler was intently observing hubby and self, walking in and out of the room, carrying the infant and (according to her) spending special time with her. So Toddler decided to throw a tantrum. She cried her heart out and came out in to the living room, found out that there wasn’t anything particularly interesting going on told us, “Okay amma, I want good night sleep tight” and went back to bed!

All through this time the infant was standing in her crib, and crying her lungs out. She was going strong and steady for 15 min now. Hubby and self decide to let her cry. 10 more minutes and we hear throw up (Hey, what about my theory about new sheets and throw up?! I am not lazy, I have a vision ). We did the usual soothing, cleaning routine. But nothing calmed her, she bought the roof down when ever we put her down on the crib.

Suddenly it struck me. We put her on the naked crib mattress and thrust the ugly, huge green comforter at her, she clutched it, gurgled and went right back to sleep. So all this fuss was for the stupid comforter.

Boo and Kodi’s mom had left surprise comments about the preferences of a 2.5 year old after reading my post about the car seat fiasco. What do you say about this?

I used to be a legendary sleeper. Once when I was in my tenth standard, my parents left me alone at home and went out for a couple of hours. I did what I did whenever I had some time to spare. I lay down on the couch and started sleeping. My parents came back home and rang the bell…and pounded on the door…continuously…for 15 min…and I was there lying on the couch which was exactly 2 feet away from the door…and I didn’t hear a thing. The neighbors gathered, every one shouted my name. Some were trying to break the door, just like in movies. One went looking for a saw, the grand plan was to saw through the dead bolt. My father was flying in to a rage fueled by embarrassment and my mother was imagining that I might have electrocuted myself or slipped and fell and cracked my skull open and all the other unimaginables. The neighbors were concocting their own stories that involved a teenage girl and academic pressures…even better…. boy issues. Then one of these nimble neighbors, jumped from the patio on to the sun shade, peeked through the window, found me lying down on the couch and proceeded to prod me with a stick. Five minutes of continuous prodding did the trick, I woke up from my slumber and opened the door. The circus had lasted for approximately 30 minutes. This is how I used to sleep. This trend continued well in to college.

Yes, used to, in past tense. After I got married, some one cast and evil eye on my precious ability to sleep and I had to work to sleep. I needed my space, my quite and my blankie. Some time in the middle of the night I would get up disturbed by the rhythmic ticking of the clock and would lay awake for the rest of the night counting how many times hubby rolled over and how many times he ground his teeth. But still I use to make up for it in the early morning, sleep in late and wake up feeling better.

Then came the children. Toddler did not let any one in the house sleep for the first few months of her life. Then the pattern stabilized and I would say things were still better, as she was sleeping in her crib and I had at least my space.

Troubled started when she decided to sleep between hubby and me. I would say hubby is the real culprit. When infant as born I was in a bedroom with the infant, hubby and toddler were in another bedroom. Whenever toddler woke up from her sleep and cried looking for me, hubby used to pick her up and put her next to him and both father and daughter would go back to sleeping peacefully. So when we all moved in to the same room, toddler refused to sleep in her crib. Even if I put her in her crib, she learnt to jump out of the crib. But she went off to sleep by herself, no more sleep time dances and routines. So I compromised.

But this little demon, would toss and turn, slap me on my face, pulled the comforter away from us and pushed it of the bed. She insists that she lay down perpendicular to hubby and self (forming a H pattern) and push us both trying to roll us down from the bed. Hubby has no care in the world, he can sleep with a road engine rolling all over him. But my precious sleep was lost forever. In general I am not the kind of parent who can proudly boast that I have never hit my children. So far infant has escaped the wrath of my fury, but toddler has been on the receiving end a few times now and I have no qualms about it. I don’t hit for no reason, if I do then there is a very very very good reason for it, and mostly its just a one sharp smack on her diapered bottom and if I am really mad on her thighs. 90% of these thigh smackings have been delivered by me in the night when she has mercilessly jolted me out of my dear dear sleep. But she never even knows that I hit her. She has her father’s genes as far as sleeping is concerned.

Only few days back, I commented on Poppin’s blog that every parenting style is different, one has to pick their battles and I have decided not to pick my battle over co-sleeping. Yesterday night I REALLY needed, not wanted, I needed, to sleep. I don’t sleep in the afternoons and I don’t drink coffee or tea (Well, I am not so strict about tea. I do indulge in tea, may be 3-4 times a year. But after every cup of tea, I get very hyper and I can’t sleep for about 3 days) and I was blanking out when I was driving, which scared the hell out of me. And this girl tucked her knees in to her stomach and then plummeted her legs, landing her feet with full impact on my spine. THAT’S IT. I am at the end of the rope now. Now it is war time.

After a sleepless night imagining what will happen if infant also decides to move in with us in our small queen bed, I woke up totally fatigued and craving for sleep. So here I am sitting on my couch, finished a full packet of Swiss chocolates, high on sugar, blogging away.

I have decided to convert the spare crib in to a toddler bed and lure toddler to sleep on HER OWN MAGICAL BED. Will keep you all posted on how that goes.

If ever, in the near or the distant future, any of you get a chance to work with me, especially if it involves something artistic, brain storming and doing something creative, run for your lives. Don’t say that you didn’t know, because you have been warned!

Be it picking curio shelves or picking curtains, I get all crazy. First I come up with a mental image. Then I put it down on paper – I either draw it or photoshop it, then I go around all the shops looking for it. The more I find that what I have in mind is not available anywhere, the more obsessed I get with what I cannot have. Then I come back to the table make some compromises, change the design a bit and go shopping again. After a million trips and a zillion changes, I realize what I have in mind is still not available anywhere. At this point of time, I give up shopping for it and, here comes the real headache, I roll up my sleeves and decide to make it myself. In the process the people around me and the people who interact with me go nuts.

I applied every ounce of my usual craziness to infant’s birthday cake. I was desperately looking for a theme and nothing unique came on to me. Hubby simply couldn’t understand the fuss behind all this. His logic is very simple. Cake = something we eat. So it has to taste great, who cares how it looks. Also he is oblivious to all the theme fundas I put. He noticed that the girls and I wore pink only after his elder sister pointed it out to him and this was about two weeks after the party! So I was on my own in picking the theme.

Suddenly a week before the party, the light in my head went on. Remember how toddler calls herself ‘Toddler Shortcake’ and infant ‘Infant Dumpling’ – after the Strawberry Shortcake and Apple Dumpling? Plus, I really liked the concept of spelling happy birthday with wooden alphabet blocks. This is her first birthday, so there has to be the number 1 some where in the cake. So this would be the rough draft.

To get the theme going I need to have plates, table covers, party caps and balloons to match with the cake. Finding accessories to go with the cake was a challenge. I wasn’t able to find any Strawberry Short Cake stuff. So chances of finding Apple dumpling products was even bleak. After visiting couple of stores and extensive web searching, the only thing I liked was this.

So after I put eveything together, tweaked the cake design a little bit and came up with this. THIS, I decided will be infant’s cake.

Now, if I could get Charm City Cakes to make the cake! (Have you watched their shows? I am a big fan.) I would have made cold calls to 20 different bakeries. Most of the bakers weren’t willing to do it even if I was willing to pay by the hour! Finally, the bakery section of a local grocery store agreed to take up the order out of pity, only because I had put in so much effort. They had couple of conditions. They said they will not draw the picture of Apple dumpling and we both agreed to scan the picture and print it out on edible rice paper and then stick it to the cake. The second condition was that, they cannot gurantee that the cake will look like the picture. I had to go with them as I was running out of time.

This was the final result.

I wasn’t too happy about how it looked, but for what it was worth, it tasted YUM.

Note to self: Get proficient in cake decoration before toddler’s third birthday.

Around election time, in India, politicians fuss about building temples and reseravtion policies. In the US it is the abortion issue. It is right there next to troops in Iraq and before gay marriage. The abortion issue gets dusted up, the presidential candidates are expected to express their opinion every time there is a debate and these politicians carefully pick a stand that would work well with their own political agenda. Just because a person argues that he is pro-life it does not mean that he/she is such a loving caring human being who cannot stand a life being taken away. Every one has an ulterior motive. It is as simple as that. But why don’t you all go play with something else, instead of playing God with someone else’ life.

Let me give you a quick summary.
Pro-choice: for abortions
Pro-life: against abortions
Types of abortions. Partial birth abortion is the one in which an alive fetus is pulled out through the birth canal and its brain is sucked out with a vacuum. The other method is where they inject the heart of the fetus with Potassium Chloride, terminate the life and then pull it out.
1996 – Republicans asked to ban the partial birth abortion, but president Clinton decided that the ban does not make allowance for the mother’s health. He said that the physician must be the judge of what procedure must be used, it is not for the court or the congress to decide.
In 2003 president Bush approved the partial birth abortions ban.

The idea is to make abortions tougher and finally, and at some point of time, ban it completely. In some states like South Carolina they have made it optional that the woman watch ultra sound videos and pictures of the fetus before the abortion. This is to impress on the humanity of the fetus aka, emotional blackmail. “You want an abortion? Cool, let us first see what kiddo is up to then we can go ahead and kill him, if you still feel so. Hey do you see how great that kick was, may be the kid will grow up to be a soccer star some day. Awww, he is waving at you. Ain’t that cute? Okay, now let us discuss if you still want to proceed with the abortion?” According the pro-life people, this law is a milder version of their original request. They wanted that the ultrasound viewing has to be mandatory before an abortion procedure. I mean where do these people get off? I have gone through three D&E procedures. At least in my case the fetus was not a viable fetus, there was no heart beat. It was still tough. No body has any business impressing any kind of humanity in to a mother who has made the tough decision to abort. There might be genuine scenarios like the baby being diagnosed with a birth defect such as Down’s syndrome. Or may be the mother is a rape victim and simply does not want to keep the child. Or may be the baby’s physical development is not normal?
Or the mother is mentally/physically incompetent to have the baby? If at all for some vague reason the mother is an absolute physco who wants to have an abortion for fun, phlueese let her have one, not for her sake, but for that poor child’s sake.

There are so many loop holes to this whole pro-life scenario.The AFP procedure that tests for genetic abnormalities like Downs is and can be done only around 16 weeks. Why even go through with this charade, if you are pushing for banning late term abortions? What is the sadistic pleasure one derives by saying that the kid is not normal and is clearly going to suffer for the rest of its life and the force the mother to bring the kid in to this world?

Now congress, courts and pro-life activists being the smarty pants they are discuss about what options the woman might have. Actually it is not option’S’. It is singular. The woman has only one option – to deliver the child. After birth the woman can either keep the child or give it away. Then they go about painting rosy pictures of orphaned children growing up happily, chasing butterflies, in orphanages and foster homes. I have heard enough of blood curdling stories about foster care abuse to believe these people.

And how does the government care for a new mother? It gives her 6 weeks of paid vacation and then magnanimously says that she can take 12-16 more weeks of unpaid vacation. If you are a single mother, oh you are screwed and if your baby is a special needs baby, you are doubly, royally screwed.

All this bunch of baloney from the same pro-life people who were involved in massive arson, 1700 acts of violence against abortion clinics resulting in the death of 5 health care providers and 18 bombings against abortion clinics. Now what exactly does pro-life mean? Just because they are doing something that you believe to be bad, they don’t deserve to live? So you can choose who lives and whom dies, but a pregnant woman cannot make that decision about her baby? Sounds quite unfair.

Choice has to be in the hands of the woman and her health care provider. Every person has his/her own faith or believes. Let us keep those value systems to ourselves. We have to learn to co-exist believing in our own value systems and also respecting believes of others. If we start deciding for others and start stuffing others with our values, we are engaging in an act of violence.

PS: There was this very well written article in the Mercury News. Do read it of you get a chance. My post might contain shades of the author’s opinions. Purely a case of thinking along the same lines.

The author talks about how this might affect assisted reproductive procedures like invitro. I hadn’t thought about this angle.

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I can explain the long absence folks. Infant turned one last week, so we were celebrating with umpteen cake cuttings and we partied the whole week like crazy. Toddler bunked day care, we went out to Jungle, played the whole morning, had a quite afternoon, went to the temple in the evening, cut a cake and ordered pizza for dinner. Boo, Baby Boo, Big Boo and Mr.Big Boo joined us and helped us celebrate. I had baked cupcakes for all the three kids and they all cut their cupcakes with a vengeance. We did a webcast of the cake cutting for my parents, it was fun.

The next day we had a cake cutting and goody bag distribution at toddler and infant’s day care. All the kids had cake and vanilla-chocolate chip icecream.

Last Saturday, we had a big bash with all our friends. We had rented a community building in a park, we had about 50 adults and 20 kids attend the party. We had an entertainer who did face painting, balloon animals and a small magic show. We ordered pizza. I made appetizers, pastas and baked some cookies. I had really put my heart and soul in to every detail like goody bag, cake, hall decoration. I started to work after the kids were in bed and stayed up till 4.00AM every day for the past week – this is to implement the ideas I had sketched out. Time spent on conceiving the ideas – quite a lot, I was practically thinking about this 24X7 for the past couple of months!

We still have the religious celebrations on her star birthday, coming up in two weeks. I have the guest list and menu ready. I will be doing my crazy dance once more and after that we are all done with infant’s first birthday.

For me there has been no questions or doubts about how my children’s birthdays must be celebrated. A BIG BASH IT IS. Sure, it is mostly for me, the kid does not enjoy it a bit, but who cares? Hey, I spend 363 days of the year as a cook, janitor, housekeeper, mother, playmate, teacher, disciplinarian, nurse, constantly working in the background without any compliments. Don’t I deserve two days in limelight? It is not like I just stand there and expect people to oooh and awww me, frankly I work quite hard for it. It feels good to get compliments. It makes me happy.

Also, after becoming a mother, I hardly find time to express myself creatively, the way I see it these parties are a perfect outlet for my imagination. I put in lots of thought about what I cook, how the dish has to be presented, party theme, take home gifts, entertainment etc. I like doing it, I do it. Since it is quite taxing on the purse and a huge strain on the marriage(I snap A LOT at hubby and after every party I am quite surprised that the marriage survived it!), I have decided to celebrate every other year. Birthdays 1,3,5,7 big bash. Birthdays 2,4,6 quite ones at home. After 7, toddler and infant might come up their own ideas for celebrating their birthdays, I would go along with their wishes feeling very sad about missing my adrenaline rush and the good old times I controlled every single detail in their lives.

-You loose your innocence when you have a child. All of a sudden the world becomes a much more dangerous place.
-Jon Stewart in an inteview in PBS

Am sure most parents feel the same way, but every time I hear some one say this, it is an extra validation that I am not a crazy lady!

Any one seen the tamil movie Tenali? Kamal tells his shrink that he is scared of anything and every thing. It starts with, “Yellam sivamayam endru solvargal. Aanaal yenakku yellam bayamayam” (Meaning: People say that God is everywhere, but for me I only see fear in anything I see) and he gives a list of everything under the sun. I am pretty much in the same boat.

I fear so much for my girls and news like the Virginia Tech shootings are not helping in any way. I can no longer watch movies like Life is beautiful, which by the way is a wonderful movie and no one could have taken a better war movie, conveying the impact of war, without even one scene of violence in it. But sometimes you don’t have to show bloodshed and gory details. You show scenes like the father and son been taken to a concentration camp on the day of the little one’s birthday and the viewer’s heart is in a vice. Any way the point is, I watch a movie like Life is Beautiful and start imagining, which is quite vivid by any standard, self and kids in such a situation. What would I do if toddler and infant don’t co-operate like the kid in the movie? I am thinking, “May be each kid is different and I must adopt a different technique with toddler and infant” and by the time I realize that it is just a figment of my imagination and snap out of it, I have stressed myself out more than necessary.

So touchy feely movies, especially the ones in which kids are involved, are pretty much out for me. Same is the case with books, anyways I have hardly read anything other than Brown bear and Cat in a hat in a long time, so that’s okay. The other day I was flipping channels and happen to catch a glimpse of a sitcom. In the sitcom, an intruder enters a house and kills the mom, though the details were pretty graphic, I was still doing okay. But the mom collapses near the baby’s crib and the baby wakes up and starts crying. Something about the image of a helpless baby crying messed me up completely. I was dreaming about it again and again and it took me a quite a long time to shake myself out of it. Then I hear from my neighbors that there was a break-in in the neighborhood when we were in India. That’s it, my dreams return. As of yesterday we have a new security system installed at home.

I used to trust people blindly. I can write a book about the number of times I have been taken for a ride. After becoming a mother, I think everything with my girls in mind. I am having trust issues, I am so frightened to leave my girls alone with anyone but a few close friends and close family. So far concentration camps and torture seems to be the #1 fear, closely followed by kidnapping and child molestation. Slowly I am trying to affect the people around me too, recently scared the hell out of a friend telling her about an imaginary kidnapping scenario. The reason for this post is the hope that talking things out loud might ease my imagination a little bit. So if any one feels the same way as me, please do leave comments that way I would feel happy that I have company. If any one feels that I am being a fuss bag, please do leave reassuring comments, that way I can work on myself. Ideally it will be perfect if I can find someone to top my story, but I feel like I have hit rock bottom, so I guess it is hard.

Tharini’s post on feeding time battles inspired me to write this.

By the time I feed toddler and infant I go nuts. They are at an age (two and a half years; 11 months) where they have to be fed. Also I am the kind of mom who will feed them happily till I die. Not out of love, but because of the extra cleaning I have to do if I let them eat by themselves. So I bring up age as an excuse.

It takes me exactly 2 hours to feed them their breakfast. Same thing goes for dinner. Toddler eats lunch at her day care. Some days she eats well some days she starves. Of late I don’t even ask her day care provider if she ate well. It just gives me extra stress if I hear that she didn’t eat. So what ever she eats outside of home is an added bonus for me. We used to read books together and bond as I fed them their food. In the past five months things are taking the worst possible route. I play Barney or Curious George or some VCD from India while I feed them. (God, how I used to smirk at moms who used to say, “Oh, he needs his Dora or Clifford to eat. So I always carry a cassette or DVD along”. Life Lesson Learnt: What goes around comes around) At least if they eat well, I would not feel so guilty doing what I am doing now. They wait for me to finish feeding them and just as I put that last spoon full of cereal in their mouth, they throw up. I clench my teeth to prevent myself yelling, now a days I am left with a throbbing pain in my jaws.

After a lot of pressure from hubby, I decide to some how let go of my preferences and train toddler to eat by herself. This way I have only infant to feed. I gave her a variety of finger food – easy for her to eat, easy for me to clean. But after a couple of mouth full she declared that she is “All done Amma. Amma, can I throw it in the garbage?” and walked away. Then I had to chase behind her and feed the rest of the food for her, back to square one.

Then I made food interesting for her. She was very kicked when I presented “Shapes Upma”(I made rice rava upma, cast it in to a variety of shapes and steamed them). Same story all over again, she took a bite and walked away.

If I force her to sit in front of her plate she sits there and waits for me to turn my head. That fraction of a second I am not paying attention, she runs to the kitchen sink and empties her plate full of food in to the kitchen sink and says, “All done Amma. Amma, I put it for washing” I just loose it. I would endure about 10 throwing up sessions or 100 starvation sessions instead of seeing food being wasted like this.

It is the same with the desi kids I work with. It brings tears to my eyes to see how the preschoolers I work with, throw food. The kid wants a banana, the minute the teacher opens it, she/he would have already changed their mind and they would want yogurt. If the teacher tries explaining that the banana needs to be finished before the next snack is opened there is absolutely no effect. Either there is lots of crying or no eating. It is not the same with most of the Caucasian kids. They do justice to their food.

Is it all desi kids? I mean, is it something in the genes? May be desi kids can absorb the required nutrition from air and manage to sustain. Or, are the kids just trying to push our buttons? May be we desi moms are so uptight about food, quantity and quality that makes the kids act this way? My daughter’s pediatrician always says that the kid eats whatever he/she needs. But really, is 3 tablespoons of cereal, 2 tablespoons of mac and cheese and one Marie biscuit enough for a two year old for one whole day? Sometimes I am just struck, I can’t let go and I don’t have the time or patience to follow through. By the time I am done with breakfast, clean up, drop toddler off at day care, finish my chore, it is lunchtime for infant. That takes about two hours of cajoling, dancing and singing. Infant takes a short nap and it is time to pick up toddler from day care. Before the evening snack is done, I am getting their dinner ready. Couple of time I have woken up at 3.00AM, all drenched in sweat and with a strange sense of fear because I had dreamed that it is time for infant’s feeding time! No kidding.

I keep telling my toddler that it is not okay for her to waste food. I give her small portions and give her lectures about responsibility. She has heard so many of these ‘responsibility lectures’ it is impacting her negatively. Yesterday she threw her corn down and when I called out her name in that special tone, she realized that it is time for the lecture, she tells me, “I know amma, I know, I am not responsible”. Once she closed her ears with her hands, shut her eyes tightly and said, “Amma, I can’t see you, amma I can’t hear you”. (She tried walking away from the kitchen with the same pose and walked straight in to the wall. It was one of those crazy “you-have-to-be-there” funny moments. ).I know that it takes lots of repetition and lots of patience to get through to them. But I will be glad if I see light at the end of the tunnel!

** Be warned this is long one folks. **

It is that time for the year. Mother’s day is in the air. The preschools and day cares are making the kids do cute stuff for their moms. The television is thick with jewellery, perfumes, cell phones, chocolate advertisements, all sending out messages that you have to give something to your mother or grand mother or god mother or some one else’s mother. They don’t care about motherhood, they just want to sell.

This is my third Mother’s Day. I got portraits of hubby and baby#1 as a gift for the first mother’s day. Considering hubby’s aversion to dress up and get pictures taken that was a monumental gift! Our second baby arrived a few weeks after my second mother’s day. My parent’s were here, so hubby and self were able to take off for a nice quite lunch.

All this noise about mother’s day made me take a trip down memory lane. Quickly rewind to year 1999. I was a totally different person then. Newly married, young, immature, cocky, arrogant, selfish, stupid, naive are some of the words that can be used to describe myself. Hubby wanted to have a child because there is no time that would be the best time to have a child, so we might as well have one and get it over with. I was not ready. There were so many fun things to do. We had to travel to Europe, circumventing the Kailash, what about Egypt?, hike the Machu Picchu, great barrier reef, Japan….soooo maaaanyyy things to do and see. Besides how long was it going to take to have a child? You pick the right time of the month, do the thing you have to do, the sperm is going to find the ovum, millions of people have been doing this for ages, even animals do it, how difficult can that be?

I learnt it the hard way that it can be very very very very difficult. We started trying roughly around May 2002. We had been married for three and a half years. I was still immature, cocky, arrogant, selfish stupid and naive (young was starting to get debatable!). I didn’t have a problem getting pregnant; as a matter of fact I got pregnant three times. The difficulty was in keeping the baby.

The first time I miscarried at 12 weeks. There were no symptoms. We had announced to the whole world the minute the home pregnancy test came out positive. Here I was sitting on my high throne, expecting, demanding special attention from every one and taking maximum advantage of my situation, thinking that every thing was going on well and the baby had already died. There was no heart beat at the 12th week ultra sound. I was still clueless. I thought that the baby might be developing a little slowly, may be the baby needs one more week. It’s a funny thing how human mind works, till you believe that there is a little life inside of you, you hold it so dear and do all the special things. You find it so hard to let go even if there is scientific proof that things are not going well. But one fine minute you wake up, smell reality and this ‘life’ inside of you becomes ‘a thing’ to be more precise ‘a dead thing’. Words can’t describe how much that realization hurts. I wanted the thing out of me as soon as possible. I had a painful D&C and things were over.

8 months later I got pregnant again. We made no announcements. This time we scheduled an ultra sound at 6 weeks. The doctor said that the heart beat was there but the baby is too small for 6 weeks gestation and wanted us to come for another ultrasound in two weeks. I came home and started eating like crazy. Whatever I put in to my body goes to the baby, so I spared nothing but the kitchen sink. Some times it hurts to think how naïve I was. At eight weeks it was a horrible de ja vu all over again. There was no heart beat, the baby was frozen at five weeks development. It was like God was playing this cruel joke with me, “You prayed for a heart beat, I gave it to you. But you never mentioned for how long you wanted the heart beat to last”. As if one D&C wasn’t hard enough to go through, I had to go through two this time, thanks to the doctor’s screw up.

We changed doctors. We did all the tests. Hubby and self were certified as perfectly healthy people with no obvious defects. Did the news bring me happiness? No, I was looking for some defect that on diagnosis can be treated and we will be good to go! Now we had nothing to work on. 8 months later I got pregnant again. Oh, this is the most horrible of all my experiences. The implantation was in my tubes. Imagine an orange inside a straw. That was what happening to my tubes. The straw was threatening to burst. I had serious pain and high fever. Why I didn’t go to the doctor immediately? Well, in the past I have had stone formation in my kidneys and the symptoms are very similar. So I was sitting in the bed, drinking plenty of water and hoping to pass the stone. I was getting to a stage were even breathing hurt me like hell. I bore this pain for two days (hey, I have amazingly high tolerance for pain), and finally gave up. At three in the morning hubby and self ran to the emergency. We didn’t have to wait even for a minute; they put me on a wheel chair and I was taken to the ultrasound room and was wheeled to the operation theater with in two hours! Me being the naïve one asked the doctor if by any chance they can take the implantation from the tube and put it in to the uterus and save my baby. Duh!

I was lying there in the post-op in a semi-consious state. I could feel the commotion around me, but couldn’t focus on anything but the throbbing pain in my heart and a sense of worthlessness. All I want to do is just die, silently without waking up from this coma, then all my troubles will be over. Meanwhile my BP and pulse kept dropping; they had to transfuse approximately 2 liters of blood – no effect. Suddenly I felt a strange realization seep through, may be my life is not over, I may never have children, but there are other things that are meant to be done by me and I could almost hear the nurse saying, “BP stabilizing, pulse recovering”! Finally I regained consciousness.

4 months later I was pregnant with my baby #1. She came as a surprise. It was tough, all through the pregnancy, I was as detached to the baby as possible. I did all the right things I had to as a mother, but was mentally prepared incase I loose the baby. Every visit to the doctor was a major milestone, I would give a smile only after the doctor put the Doppler on me and let me hear the heart beat. Baby #1 came out without giving me much trouble. I knew I could bear the pain and deliver her without pain medication, but I still took epidural. Well I had already gone through enough shit, is some one going to build me a temple or what? Within 10 months, we were blessed with baby #2. She came 15 days early and was even more easier to deliver. She practically walked out of my womb!

The journey to motherhood really rocked the strength of our marriage. If at all I learnt something it is this – babies come when they are meant to, you can stand upside down but still you cannot ‘make’ it happen. The second thing I learnt is, men and women deal with pain in very different ways. Mentally it was definitely as hard on hubby as it was on me, he was the one who had to hear from the doctor that I had lost almost 2 liters of blood due to internal bleeding and that it will be a lucky thing if they can get to the tubes before the tube burst causing an internal infection. He was the one who had to be left in suspense in the waiting room, “Er, your wife, we don’t know, she is supposed to regain consciousness in 20 min, we don’t know why it is taking two hours”.

The most pathetic part was that some people around us thought that THEY were the victims in the whole game! I don’t even where to get started with the amount of confusion they caused in our lives. So people, never take it upon yourself to solicit worthless free ‘advice’ to other people in sensitive issues like this. You never know how much pain the couple are going through already.

From my personal experience and through my friends, I have seen it all – miscarriages, ectopic, birth defects, IVF, still births, D&C done at 20 weeks due to chromosomal abnormalities, babies born with heart defects and parents had to see their barely born babies go through multiple major surgeries, surgeries while the baby is still in the womb….., each one wondering if they are better of or worser than the others. It is tough, no one knows why all this happens. But we just have to keep trying and hope things work out. I know how difficult it is to put it in to action because I have been there and I have done it. Behind every woman who has become a mother, there is a big story. Sometimes it is a happy one and sometimes it is a sad one.

I have two girls, they are 15 months apart. I had always wanted two kids, initially I had no preference as to the sex of the baby, at least that’s what I thought. But thinking back I now feel that I have always imagined having a boy and a girl. Well balanced picture perfect family right? Not that girls are any inferior or it is easy on parents if they have boys. I still have memories of my mom being ridiculed that she had a girl (I am an only child and hence the preconceived idea that I will have two children, one boy and one girl). I was just shooting for perfection…or what I thought to be perfect.

When we found out the first one was being a girl, we didn’t give any second thoughts about the sex of the baby. We had lots of other issues to think about. Even though the baby was doing great and I had a dream pregnancy and a picture perfect delivery, getting to the point of conceiving a baby was very tough on hubby and self. So all we wanted was a healthy baby in our hands. Or may be I had it in the back of my mind that I have second chance, so I didn’t care about the sex of the baby this time. The rest of the family must have felt the same thing, so they were very supportive, but kept dropping comments that it is good to have the girl first because later when the baby brother comes along she will be responsible(for the baby brother).

When I was pregnant with my second child we found out that we are having another girl. My picture of perfection was shattered. But I never voiced it out till this moment, because 4 years back, I was desperate for a baby, it seemed so wrong and ungrateful to be choosy. Plus I have a history of longing for the things I cannot or do not have. But my parents were disappointed because they feared that I might be pushed in to a spot where I might be forced to have babies till we have a boy. Others were disappointed because…well it is another girl.

Every time some one asked me if we knew if the second one was going to be a boy or a girl and when I said that it is another girl, these were the response I got:
Okay better luck next time.
Oh…(the tone, ahhhhh the tone bothered me)
Poor you…
That’s okay. In our family we always have three girl and then a boy, so don’t worry the fourth one will be a boy (why the hell will I have four babies)

A Caucasian dude who came home to fix some termite damage said, “For your own good I wish that this one must be a boy.” I didn’t share with him that we already know that we are having another girl.

I felt irritated and dreaded the question when ever I went out. Partly because I was nursing a secret longing for a boy and since this was my last chance I was disappointed. I hated myself for this thought but couldn’t help thinking this way.

Now my baby girl is 11 months old, she is so precious. My daughters look at me and smile I forget all my troubles. I see a drop of tear rolling out of their eyes it tears me up. When they reach for me and hug me…..oh man it is so divine. Who cares if I have two girls, I am happy, hubby is happy.

We go to India with both the children, immediately it starts,
“Oh, both the girls look like the father, so the boy will look like you”.(Okay sick people when is the next flight back ? I came all the way for this????)
“The first child’s ear piercing was in 2005, the second one’s ear piercing is in 2007, in 2009 we will have your boy’s ear piercing” (Can you come closer, I feel like piercing something else.)
“I will worry only if you have five girls. Till that point I will not worry”(Yep, it is not your responsibility, then why will you worry?)
“Did you get the operation done already? You will get it done only after the boy right?”(They want to know if my tubes are tied or not. This question was posed to me by three different people, whom I have met only 6-7 times through out my life, in a family function, while others were starring. Come on people how much more personal can you get?)
The house help tells me with lots of self amassed liberty that, the next trip I make I must come with a boy otherwise I need not make any trip to India. (Good God that would be so perfect.)

Seriously how big is this in this time and age? Boy or a girl, you still have to put them through college, take care of them and there is no guarantee that they will be taking care of you in your old age. I am not worried that I will not go to heaven after I die because…people…have you seen my daughters smile?…I ALREADY AM IN HEAVEN.