Why you can never be really ‘ready’ for a baby

When I was growing up, I thought I would get married by 27, because that’s when I would find the perfect guy, settle in my dream job and ace it. I would have a baby at 30. And would swing back into my career by 35.

30 came and went, and I neither had the dream job nor the man. The baby of course had flown off the radar. My mother treated me like a time-bomb with every oncoming birthday. Soon, relatives stopped asking me when I would settle down. Meanwhile, the rest of my friends were busy tying the knot and popping babies. I was busy playing the cool aunt and buying books that no one else would buy for them.

One day, I was 35. And I was told that I had totally missed the man and baby bus.

In the next five years, dream job, man and baby happened. I didn’t plan it this way. But I think the fact that I had stopped thinking about them had something to do with it.

Was I ready? Hell no. Being a cat lady, playing aunt all those years, buying baby clothes, books and toys, playing peekaboo was hardly a qualification. I had no idea how one tiny person can change your life so irreversibly, enough for you to never be able to find factory settings again. I still go to bed wondering if I could, just for one day, wake up single. And the strange part is, I have a good kid, and he is really fun and kind and sensitive and bright  and I had no idea of the person I could be without him around. Does that mean I was ready for a child? No.

My friend A’s kid and mine share the same name. Hers is 16, mine is 6. She and I are the same age. Hmm, maybe it’s a good thing to have kids early, I thought. You can just get on with the rest of your life soon. She has entered the second phase in her career, and is pursuing her new entrepreneurial role with renewed vigor. We met last year. And then she told me about the black hole her life had been for the better part of the last 20 years. And then I felt bad that I was backpacking the countryside and switching boyfriends when she was tending to two kids, trying to get a new degree to stay relevant and managing a home.

When someone tells you what is the right time to have a baby, they are actually talking body time. Which is also fairly subjective, because your body is not readier just because it is younger neither is it less able because it is older. I never thought I would be able to dissect it this way, but there are three things in close competition in this whole phenomenon of baby-readiness: the biological clock, the career clock and the emotional clock. For the purpose of convenience, let me divide this into three time zones when babies are usually had: the 20s, the 30s, the 40s. The inbetweeners get the worst deal. And ironically, this is the time when most women are choosing to have kids- the early thirties.

The flip side to this is: women who have their kids in their twenties actually have a shot at getting their life back in their forties. On the contrary, women who have kids late have been there, done that, hopefully ticked off some items on their bucket list by the time the child comes along.

But no matter how much you factor in and how ready you are with a plan C, D and Z, a baby is one thing that will most certainly throw you off the loop and leave you wondering: is this what I bargained for? And worse, you will use your situation to feel that sense of entitlement because others did it to you and you will never forgive them.

Motherhood is the most irreversible thing that can ever happen to you. And yet it is the one thing that is the least thought through. Most women end up having babies either when it’s too early for them to actually evaluate what’s happening, or too late for them to have the luxury of thinking it through.

I can’t really tell you when you are ready for motherhood but I can take a good guess at when you are not:

1. You are not ready because you have a stable job you love: The job will be the most difficult thing to navigate post baby, because it will always demand a rational side of you that will often run in short supply. Plus there will be more able, less baggage workers dying to take your place when you are busy planning night feeds.
2. You are not ready because you have a willing partner: Once the sperm contribution has been made, partners often tend to run out the door and invent meetings and difficult work projects that keep them as far away from home as possible. If this is non-negotiable, you need to have that talk before you jump into sex on ovulation days.
3. You are not ready if you think having kids is fulfilling. Or noble. You are better off winning medals at sport or cracking sales targets. There is nothing fulfilling about never knowing if you are good enough.
4. You are not ready if you think having a child will take your marriage to another level: On the contrary, this will be the most trying time of your marriage, but no one will tell you that because reproduction just means more companies can sell you more things for the rest of your life. And there is a lot of money to be made.
5. You are not ready because the child has two sets of grandparents intact: After the initial photo-opps, most grandparents are difficult to sustain as a constant presence in the child’s life and involve careful engineering or emotional blackmail of the highest kind.
6. You are not ready because all your friends have babies: There is no guarantee that their babies will be willing play-dates or holiday-worthy. Or that you still like them.
7. You are not ready because you have had a cat. Cats do not ask you to read the same book 19 times.
8. You are not ready because you were a really good baby sitter for your friends: There is always an exit plan for other people’s kids. None for your own.
9. You are not ready because you like children: Children as playmates and amusement devices and children as things to care for 24X7X365 are very different things.
10. You are not ready because you have enough money: It is never enough. Remember the black hole?
11. You will never feel grown-up enough to know what to do, be a role model, give hope and direction to a small innocent child who will never tire of questions.
12. You are not ready because you have a stable marriage: There is no such thing.

I find the whole process of “waiting until you’re ready” to be a ridiculous idea, because it’s based on the premise that one can actually “prepare” for parenthood. It’s a baby. It’s as unpredictable as you are.

So where is this going? My two bits: You are truly ready for a baby when you are truly ready for yourself. Because the extremes of who you are and what you can or cannot endure fully sink in post motherhood. And it is not always a happy place to visit, because you never know what you are going to find out. But if you really want to have a child, you are as ready as you will ever be.

(A version of this post previously appeared in the White Swan foundation for Mental Health website here)

Two pink lines too late

BY LAKSHMI IYER

I remember the evening. I remember the lights and sounds muffled, trickling upstairs through the gaps in the doors. I remember the dust, the tendrils of hair coiled at the corner. I remember the smell of the clothes, damp and piled in the laundry basket in the corner. But, most of all I remember the utter lack of feeling.

I remember later when I shared the news with family and friends, they would ask, wide eyed and eager: “How did you feel?”

I was standing by the stove one early morning when it happened, a wave of dizziness. I felt the earth give away, the recessed lights swim before my eyes, a darkness envelop me before it was gone and I was back on solid ground again. I blinked. I looked around. Nothing had changed. The stir-fry in front of me sizzled and crackled giving off a delicious aroma.

I stood in front of my vanity, ready for my shower. Mirrors do not lie, I told myself as I looked at my reflection. Ten pounds, which is what I had as a return gift from my niece’s first birthday just a month ago on the west coast. I looked at the scale which stood a mute witness to all of the emotions raging within me. Water weight I concluded as I realized I was due to start my period. I took one last look at my bare torso and wished for just a minute that it was the body of a pregnant woman before I stepped into the shower.

Two days later, the app reminded me I was four days late. Slowly, uneasily, reminders of a past that I had boxed and put away surfaced. The hyper awakened state in which I functioned as each period neared. I remembered the methodical way in which my mind filed away each twinge, each pain as a potential symptom. I also remembered the deliberate nature of each minute, each hour ticking away to the next period or a baby.  Twelve years since I married my husband. Nine years spent ruing my fertility. Four years spent raising children who came to me from another mother. I should have this pat by now.

I was a week late. I broached the subject with my husband. He scoffed at the idea. I felt hurt. I looked back on my history. Three IUIs, One injectable cycle, Two IVFs, I would have scoffed too. I let the hurt slide and hauled my PMSing self to bed. I lay there, in the semi darkness, every sound amplified. The room felt suspended in the middle of nowhere, timeless and claustrophobic at the same moment. I tossed and turned. I was not sure what I was afraid of. Was it the possibility I could be pregnant? Was it that the test would be negative and I will have to go back to figuring out what was making me late?

The sounds from the TV filtered upstairs. The twins were giggling along. The husband was cleaning the house. On an impulse I slid out of bed, pulled a jean and tee and strode out of the house saying I needed a break. Not waiting to hear the reply, I pulled the Prius out of the garage and drove out into the sunlight. The dashboard read 4:00 PM.

4:25 PM. I am home, in the bathroom. My fingers tremble as I tear open the package. I sit down to steady myself. I find a cup and dropper from the supplies closet. I take a deep breath and do the deed. I set the test on the floor, and set a timer on my phone. And I watch.

I watch as the liquid travels along the strip. I see it move past the control line. I see the second line in the wet zone. I wait. My mind is spinning with possibilities. The control turns deep pink. Each second seems like eternity. A ghost of a line appears on the second. I am looking, but not seeing. I stare at the test till the timer goes off.

In that window is a line. Not the dark line that would put an end to the misery but a ghost of a pink line, shimmering and swaying till there are dots in my eyes. I look because I cannot turn away. I cannot think. I cannot move. After what seems eternity, I pull my clothes on, wash my hands and walk downstairs. The TV sounds louder. The sunlight seems harsh. The dust motes are swarming in the air in a band of sunlight streaming in from the top windows. Everything looks magnified

I am too overcome by the implications of what I have seen to function. As if on autopilot, I pack the test away, remembering to take a picture for posterity. I wash my hands again and walk downstairs to the world I know and I am comfortable in.

Numb, Empty, Scared and Afraid.

About the author:

Lakshmi Iyer is mom to three, an open adoption advocate and a blogger. She resides on the East Coast of U.S.A with her husband and three daughters. On most days, she can be found by the stove serving up hot food. When she is not cooking, she recounts the mundane-ness of her life in startling detail on her blog Saying it aloud!. She also blogs occasionally for The Huffington Post. She is on Twitter as @lakshgiri.

Marissa Mayer’s maternity leave is her problem. Choosing her as a role model is yours.

So Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo announced (yet again) that she was taking limited time off for the birth of her twin girls in December. “Limited time” here refers to two weeks. Yes, you heard right.

Depending on where you are in the spectrum of mothers, babies, careers and work-life balance, this is either a complete blow or totally motivating. This is also incongruous at a time when companies like Flipkart in India have just started warming up to extending maternity leave

I have been hearing a lot of “how dare she?” and “what does this mean for mothers?” and “how can she set a precedent?” and other such outcries on social media and it’s amusing that history has repeated itself so soon. The reactions were not very different three years ago, and I had responded here to Mayer’s first micro maternity leave announcement.

A few months later, in a lean-in blog post, Mayer explained the circumstances surrounding her decision:

‘After 13 years of really hard work at Google, I had been envisioning a glorious six-month maternity leave. However, if I took the new job, a long leave couldn’t happen. The responsibilities were too big, and time was of the essence—it just wouldn’t be fair to the company, the employees, the board, or the shareholders for me to be in the role, but out for an extended period of time.’

Soon after that, she issued an internal memo to her employees on introducing a ban on working from home. Needless to say, the memo sparked a debate on whether remote working leads to greater productivity and job satisfaction or kills creativity and is just a chance to slack off.

Is this the same woman? Doesn’t this sound dichotomous?

But then, motherhood is the biggest dichotomy anyway. There are ways and ways of negotiating it and there is no right or wrong about any of them. There are those like my mother who get on with it, leaving the baby with family and formula (those were the glorious joint family days). She was a school teacher, so her hours were good. She loved her job and retired from the same school 36 years later. There are others who do daycare, nannies, grandparents, or a combination thereof, depending on what their sanity or salary can afford. There are those, who like me, decide that jobs can be got back, but baby time can’t, and plunge into full-time baby care.

If you do the former, you are often looked at sceptically as someone who chose career over motherhood, money over emotional bonding, bottle over breast. If you choose the latter, you are looked upon as someone who was using motherhood as an excuse to sit at home and ‘do nothing’, who is an emotional sucker waiting to be manipulated by her child, who wanted out of the rat race and has found her way.

Not that quitting work is an option for most women – you need a partner who is willing to put the bread on the table, sometimes jam and cheese too, for an indefinite period of time, while you play primary caregiver to the baby.

So damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

Your reasons for going back could be as compelling as your reasons for staying at home. Money, of course is the biggest reason, considering that two incomes are better than one, now that there is an additional member in the family.

What about caregiving to the newborns, you may ask. It’s evident that Mayer won’t be breastfeeding her twins (most of the times, twins are not breastfed anyway as there is never enough milk). It’s silly to even ask if she has support because she can afford the entire daycare industry. She can build one right next door to Yahoo if she so chooses.

And why is no one questioning her husband’s paternity leave? Isn’t that equally important in a power couple scenario? Why is he not being judged for that?

It strikes me as odd that we are discussing Marissa Mayer only when it comes to her maternity leave, and never for the work she does (which must be a lot, as Yahoo! CEO). And that, I think is a greater crime against feminism than questioning the signs she is sending out, coming to work two weeks after popping twins.

If she joined Yahoo as CEO when she was 28 weeks pregnant, her game is clearly different from millions of other mommies. So why judge her for playing what is clearly not every woman’s game?

Of course, the US has a dismal maternity leave policy and surely the law in the country should be strengthened to guarantee paid parental leave. But the jury on when is it okay for mothers to return to work post-childbirth is still out there. I would certainly judge her if she applied the same rules to her employees, but she hasn’t done that yet, has she? In fact she has changed maternity leave policies and granted eight weeks or more of paid maternity leave.

The point is, none of you is Marissa Mayer, and so your motivations will never be same as hers; her stakes are very different from yours. She signed up to be the CEO of Yahoo, not a maternity leave role model; she is only doing what it takes to keep her equity as a CEO intact. If she has decided that much rides on her FaceTime with the investors of a much crumbling Yahoo, that is her strategy. It need not be yours.

Marissa Mayer is not asking you to give up your maternity leave for your career. If that’s what you are reading as a subtext of her decision, that is clearly your problem, not hers.

(A version of this post appeared in indusparent.com)

(image courtesy: glamour.com)

How a daddy met his nurture side and loved it

BY NITIN PUJAR

Women who give birth have often ranted about the physical and mind-numbing body changes that they endure during the conception and postpartum processes. They own this kind of physicality of process that they thumb all males down with and, of course, never let their men forget for the rest of their life.

And I have seen all sorts of women personas go through this: the quiet pregnant woman who is nothing more than slightly plump through her ten month process of being mollycoddled by everyone around her, to the glaring ‘the-world-is-so-unfair’ working woman who is a shrieking banshee at work as well as home through her pregnant months..

One thing is common to all women who are pregnant: the presumption that men do not, will not and cannot understand what they are going through. And yes, that is physically true. But what is not true is that they don’t go through their own sets of peeves, fears and personality swings through this process.

I was suitably abused for not understanding anything about anything, for the entire nine months by my daughter’s mother while she was being tracked through a series of doctor visits in the womb. The doctors, some male and a couple of delightful females, kept looking at me quizzically as I seemed chilled and question-less while I interjected with nods and paper napkins when they were reached out for. I was asked by the mother of my daughter to read up tomes of day-by-day pregnancy symptoms and indicators and told the books were written for the Americans and so were irrelevant. The doctors had the ‘eyes rolled up’ look of having to deal with the over-involved couple, all the time. Though to be fair, I said very little.

The mother of the mother, both in-law and out-law, would call in and ask inane questions about their daughter’s (in-law and out-law) eating habits and so on and proffer advise to me about what their daughter should be drinking or such. All this was of course followed by the wife asking me what they said and then, being told in turn about how they don’t know anything. See? Makes sense, right?

My clients, my work and my life in general had ceased to be meaningful to my wife or should I say irrelevant. Which was fine because they all understood what it meant to be in the generic thankless process of being ‘becoming’ a father. They sympathized, or in most cases if they were men, did not even ask about it or talk about it.

‘Lamaze’ or something (laa-maaz) classes were paid for and thankfully not attended due to the fact that they were inconveniently timed for the wife (who worked till the last possible day ). Some sensitive friend of hers had done them with their respective loving wife and so we had to pay and forget about it and never mention it, ever. (“Never, ever”..like Arnab Goswami famously says).

Then there was that last minute panic outside the labour room of the Christian missionary-run hospital which forbade me from entering the labour room!! This is where the macho, male assertion that one will be there with the wife even if one were to be jailed for it, worked. Not that my wife noticed or has even spoken of it ever after.

Yes, it was horror inducing to see all the animal reality of mammalian birthing and the equally horrifying cutting and suturing and casual mayhem of a surgical labour room. In the middle of the timing the breathing I asked my wife “Shucks, what if it’s a boy? I have not thought of a name!!” She just looked at me with her cold stare and shrieked, “You are supposed to help me push, not ask me questions!”

And then of course, the moment when the tall woman who is now my teen daughter came into the world with nary a whimper, but a happy cough and sniffle, I was all relived that I did not have to think of a name. But what I was never prepared for was the stunning sense of nurture that washed over all my senses as I was given this tiny bundle of helplessness to hold. It is a trip that was never experienced before and never ever after. It is a physical, chemical and mental zoning out that makes for a whole lifetime of waiting.

 

About the author:

Nitin Pujar enjoys the never ending luxury of being curious about all of the women in his life, while trying to decipher them, knowing he can never do so.

The Politics of Thin

I used to be thin. Like, stick-insect thin. This was before stick insects became fashionable.

My mother asked me when I was 14 if I had grown breasts. Fact is, they were more like insect bites, but I was too proud to tell the truth. I said yes. She promptly went and got me a bra. It was a dream come true. Me? Bra? Finally!

Yes, it bothered me that I was 14 and still no boobs! But then, I knew all the answers in class. I always put my hand up when the teacher asked a question. I had good handwriting. I aced composition writing.

I thought that would get me the boys.

Wrong.

The bra didn’t feel as great as they said it would. For the most part, I was just fidgety and adjusting. I felt like I had to stop the bra from overriding my non-existent boobs and so it was all clumsy. It still is, actually, but I seem to have developed a nonchalance about it.

I reckon Amma was a bit worried that I still hadn’t got my periods. I wondered too, because every other day some girl in my class would stain and they would all whisk her away as if it was some kind of conspiracy they didn’t want me in on. I longed for the day when I would stain and be whisked away. It never came. Instead, I got my first period when I was at home, studying for my class 10 board exams. There was no audience, no one to high-five. I hated it. I had just turned into a woman and there was nobody I could scream it to? So I jumped in front of the mirror… and that didn’t go very well.

I told Amma when she returned from work and she just heaved a sigh of relief, like I had checked a huge box.

The boobs took their time, but one day I was a proud 32B. Along the way, I dated wrong guys, underwire bras and several wrong shampoos, met my hair, grew an ass, and realized it looked great in shorts.

I moved from a 24 waist to a 26, which was a more womanly size, I thought. I had moved from thin to voluptuous. It was a shift, but I didn’t mind it.

32B cups and size-26 jeans were my best friends for years. Size zero still wasn’t in yet, so I basked in my glory. I had good limbs, a décolletage when I needed one, my ass was as perky as ever and there was no dearth of sales I went to and the clothes I bought. “Extra Small”, I’d proudly announce even as the sales girl tried to hand me a Small. I was the size to envy. I bought tiny little skirts, boots, ultra short shorts in which I could flaunt my bronze legs, singlets and tank tops that revealed my bone structure, LBDs and the gang. I was the girl who would float in someone else’s clothes every time I had a sleepover, and I could never got enough of, “Oh god, how tiny are you?”

I always thought the only way to be was tiny or big, but never in between. I liked big girls. They had so much gravitas. They filled chairs, they made you make room for them, they never sucked their stomach in, they looked so cool when they smoked and they could really carry off jewelry. When I grew up, I wanted to be big, I thought. Never medium. Medium was nothing. Medium was neither here nor there. Medium had no personality, no gravitas, no backstory.

Cut to pregnancy, motherhood, nursing and more boobs. I added on 15 kilos and dropped them in the next six months post-delivery. I was back in my size 28 jeans. What post-baby body were they talking about?

Losers, I thought.

They hated me for it. Like they hated me for getting pregnant when I was 40.

May be it was voodoo, but three years post-baby, I was somehow something of a blob. When I last checked, my rib cage, waist and hips were the same dimension as each other. I am square. I’m Rani Mukherji, I thought. I always wonder why women are so delighted when someone else puts on weight and not them. Is it because you have just lowered the bar for them? Is it because it gives them someone else to point a finger at to deem: Work in Progress? I also find the same delight on women’s faces when hot girl ends up with not-so-hot guy.

It was official. I had moved from XS to S to M.

This is it, I thought. This is the beginning of the end. I am Medium. I am nothing.

I stopped buying anything that had a waist (including jeans) because I didn’t have one anymore. Empire line dresses and leggings never said no, no matter how much I grew. I passionately embraced them. Maxis were the new me.

And then I found saris. I always loved their drape and how they could do as much or as little as you wanted. I had quite a few that I had stacked up in a trunk (in my youthful body phase that was all about flaunting limbs, the poor sari had taken a backseat). There they were, inviting me to start all over again.

I found new joy in blouses. Funky, psychedelic, elegant, elaborate—I bought any fabric I liked and imagined it as a blouse. Sometimes I mixed them up and gave them totally new identities. I serial-dated tailors till I found the right guy. It never bothered me when a blouse didn’t have a sari to flirt with. If the blouse rocks, the sari will find its way, I thought. And it did. Friends were suddenly gifting me saris, I became a hand-me-down mascot. Each time I visited my mother, an old sari beckoned me. My measurements are locked up in a nice little book with my tailor. He doesn’t judge me. He never will.

In an age where relationships are as old as Facebook accounts, perhaps no one will now remember that I had a thin past. But thin is not a mother’s best friend. Thin is not inclusive. Thin is not “Moms Like Us”. Thin is what people who ‘got stuff done’ were.

My mother recently told me I’ve never looked healthier in my life. I read this as: This is the fattest I’ve ever looked. It’s a bit depressing to know that your mother thinks you were all wrong for most of your life. But I still smiled.

When men ask me if I’ve put on weight, I say, “I gave birth. What’s your excuse?”

When I go clubbing or am invited for cocktails, I don’t think sexy anymore. I think comfy, snug, no-bra, something in which I don’t have to fidget too much, fabric that flaunts the nice bits and camouflages the not-so flattering bits. I still have legs. Although I’m yet to fathom what has happened to the rest of my body. The last time I wore an LBD, my Facebook profile picture got 120 likes. “Hot mamma!” one said. No one noticed that it was very clever dressing. (Should have bought it in other colors too, I thought). People still want to believe in the idea of thin-me.

I don’t have aspirational jeans in my closet waiting to motivate me. If I don’t fit into them, someone else will. I have regular hand-me-down dates with women who still have the body for clothes I once had a body for. Surprisingly, it makes me happy to see them in clothes that once fit me so well. I’m also happy to take clothes from big girls who are happy to see their small clothes on me.

Medium is a whole new ecosystem for me. I have gathered enough equanimity to glide over the politics of thin and pretend I have left the room. I have made my peace with my contours or the lack thereof. I have stopped treating my body like a Work in Progress. I might have occasional flings with Spanx, but Spanx will never be someone who can move into my life. Thin is past tense and I’m happy to let it stay that way. The boobs and ass are here to stay, and so are the pelvic wattle and the thick waist.

But the last time I went to a store and wanted to try something, and the lady assistant said, “Wait, this is Large. I will get you Medium,” I was grateful. Ever. So. Grateful.

(I originally wrote this post for theladiesfinger.com)

Pregnancy for Idiots: Contest no. 1

It’s about time we had some fun with our pregnancy stories.

Of course, you will, when you read my book, I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot!, but let’s do a countdown till it’s actually out there, for all of you to devour and share.

So here is an idea:

Post your most idiotic pregnancy story/moment/episode here on the facebook page of the book here and the winner gets a copy of the book signed by me, couriered to you anywhere in India. Come on people, spread the word, and get your friends to participate and win! But remember to keep it short. We don’t want women to go into labour reading it!

Go for it!

 

How normal is normal birth?

When people say normal what they are implying is natural birth, which is so not the case, ninety-nine percent of the time. ‘Natural’ birth, as the word suggests, is how nature intended it. Which means your body tells you when it’s ready to give birth, and you do a series of things that make it comfortable for you to do it. Like squat, or take a sip of water or pace around restlessly, looking for a comfortable spot (like my cat did), and well, just do it! It is not a medicalised birth by any means. Sometimes, you might be helped by a midwife or a doula, but only in as much as making it smoother for you, and in no way terrorising you to push or breathe or whatever it is they normally tell you to do. Haven’t we all heard of women in the villages who disappear into the wilderness when they go into labour and squat to give birth? Well, that’s natural birth.
But even so, every woman thinks she is going to have a perfectly normal delivery especially if her pregnancy has been more or less stress-free. (C-sections are things that happen to someone else.) ‘Normal birth’ as it is commonly referred to, is an anomaly in itself. Normal is not being made to lie on a bed and put on a gown. Normal is not having a retinue of doctors and nurses shouting ‘Push, push!’ at you. Normal is not being refused water or candy when you want it.
But, in reality (and some of this might gross you out, but is good to know):
• Asking a woman to lie in a supine position when her body is almost defying gravity (a prerequisite for a natural birth) is considered normal.
• Withdrawing any form of food or drink from the woman about to give birth is considering normal. (Although the body’s natural response in times of stress is to chew or drink something.)
• Asking a woman to ‘push’ when her body tells her otherwise is considered normal.
• Giving her a synthetic oxytocin drip hours before her body is ready for labour, is considered normal. Although oxytocin (the hormone that induces contractions) is released by the body in adequate amounts at the onset of labour.
• Giving the woman an enema (which helps accelerate one of the routine bodily functions of egestion) is considered normal.
• Restricting the woman from any form of movement while all she is dying for is to pace up and down, is considered normal.
• Giving the woman a spinal anaesthetic or epidural, which immobilises her from waist downwards, and then asking her to push when she cannot feel a thing, is considered normal.
• Performing an episiotomy, which is a cut in the perineum (area between the vagina and the anus) for easy passage of the baby from the vagina, is considered normal. This, when the perineum is fully capable of tearing itself in adequate measure and healing the tear on its own.
• Shoving a suppository up the woman’s rear or dousing her with a laxative for weeks after birth to ease passage of stools is considered normal.
• Taking the baby away to be bathed and put under UV light immediately after birth while all it needs is skin-to-skin contact with the mother is considered normal.
(An excerpt from my book, I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot!)

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHKMZWyLwjI&f

Thinking good thoughts, my a#$%*!

In short, nothing in your life has changed, except that there is a spectator inside you who is taking it all in. The only way you can become the epitome of calm is if you stop going to work, travelling anywhere, talking to anyone, and just staying put and listening to Bach at home. Sure, there were fleeting moments of peace and quiet, when the husband would indulge me with his famous calf massage, pour me an occasional glass of wine or beer (yes!), and we would talk to the baby in dulcet tones. It felt like this was the best time of my life and I had never been so tranquil or centred before.
Till I went to work the next day. And found that life and the universe around me was pretty much the same as before. People were still being mean to animals. Trees were still being cut randomly. Drivers were still driving with their eyes shut and their brains locked up somewhere. Rich brats in posh cars were still pretending that a pot-hole-laden road was the expressway. Colleagues were still slacking off. Telemarketing pests and PR executives were still calling you at 2 p.m. Stock broking companies were still bulk-texting me hot tips at 6 a.m. My mother was still whining about my father.
In the midst of all this, you are expected to be this immaculate, calm mother who will give birth to this angel of a baby who will do everything right, stay happy, never cry and always sleep when you want it to. Such babies and mothers don’t exist and the sooner you learn that, the better it is for you. I found that when I came to terms with my imperfections instead of trying to fight them, I was able to be a much better mother.

(An excerpt from my book, “I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot!”)

View the trailer here: http://youtu.be/DHKMZWyLwjI

 

Doing the pregnancy math

So what does it take to get pregnant? One might think it is the easiest thing on earth, considering that at least three millions sperms enter your body during unprotected intercourse. Surely one of them should be fit enough to make a baby? But there are technicalities:
Is it the right day of the month?
Is it the right time of the day?
Are these sperms motile enough, or do they need some ‘speed’ to be able to make it?
Is there any sperm at all?
How lazy is your egg/ovary?
Okay, once the sperm and the egg have done their bit, do they have enough room/conditions to survive in your uterus? Is your uterus classic, deluxe, super-deluxe or a suite?
Are your numbers good? Haemoglobin, platelets, WBCs, amniotic fluid, sugar levels, thyroid, other hormone levels?
If you beat all the odds and still get pregnant, congratulations!

It’s simpler in the movies. All it took for a Bollywood heroine of yore to get pregnant was a stormy, rainy night, a fireplace, a man and a song. I always wondered: How is it that sexual intercourse (even if it was the first time) always happened in her ovulation window, her most fertile time of the month? How is it that the hero never suffered from lazy sperm syndrome? Or she, a lazy egg?

(The above is an excerpt from my book  “I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot!”)

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I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot!

Today, I held my second baby in my hands. It felt surreal, perhaps a bit more surreal than when I held Re for the first time. It also took longer to make than Re, but it was immensely more satisfying. The book will be in the stores soon, and you can pre-order on any of the portals below at fabulous discounts. Here is an excerpt, to begin with:

**

‘You will know when you become a mother,’ my mother always told me.
‘Why should I wait so long? Tell me now, I will understand,’ the cheeky me would always retort.
‘No, you won’t,’ she would say, almost resignedly. ‘You just wait and watch.’
And so I waited.
It is very difficult to point out exactly when motherhood begins.
Is it when you finally decide you don’t care if the bra is ugly or not, but it bloody well be comfortable?
Is it when your husband’s boxers suddenly become the most comfortable underwear ever?
Is it when you suppress the urge to scream ‘ASSHOLE!’ at the biker who overtook you from the left in peak traffic, thinking, What if the baby hears?
Is it when pulling your boob out in public becomes the most natural thing to do, and you don’t care if the taxi driver is taking a good look in the rear-view mirror while your partner is desperately looking for something to cover you with?
Is it when you realise that your breast is the solution to all cries, big and small?
Or does motherhood begin when, a week after you missed your period, you finally decided to take the pregnancy test?
Or when you surreptitiously bought the pregnancy kit from the chemist, rushed home to douse it with your urine, waited
with bated breath for the verdict, and decided, yes, there must be something growing inside me?
Or when you were pacing up and down the house, waiting for your husband to come home so you could tell him, ‘I have some news!’?
Or when you held a report in your hands that enlisted the potency of the pregnancy hormone in your body?
Or when the sonologist pointed to something on the screen and said, ‘Can you see that? That is the baby’s spine!’? When you squinted your eyes, trying to look intelligently at a visual you could make no head or tail of? When you mumbled a ‘Yes!’ just so you don’t end up looking like a cold, non-maternal bitch?
Or does it all begin when you felt the first sign of movement within you? The first kick?
Or the day you ate an ice-cream cone and heard someone devouring it inside you within seconds?
Or when you suppressed the urge to run across the street with your very pregnant belly and decided to wait for the green signal instead?
Or when you were handed, along with a baby, a card that read, ‘Infant of (your name here)’ at the hospital, post-delivery?
Or when you turned over in bed, and decided you have to be careful, as you might roll a tiny someone else over, or crush him or her?
Or when someone infinitesimally small latched on to you and began to suckle, and you and your husband gave each other a we-made-this look?
It is hard to decide exactly when you become a mother.
But this book is not about motherhood really. For starters, it is about you, and not about the baby. The you that sometimes gets
lost in the whole pregnancy and motherhood journey. The you that can be angry, sad, silly, excited, confused, wicked, rude, girl, slut and everything un-mommy. The you that is spending lonely nights, tossing around in bed with a heavy belly, while the husband is watching television. The you that is silently cursing, muttering, wondering why sleep is so elusive when the world is expecting you to ‘talk to the baby’ or ‘think good thoughts’.
The you that sometimes looks at your significant other and wonders: Is that the father of my child?
The you that shudders to think how much your life is going to change with motherhood. And how irreversibly.
The you that hasn’t really fathomed how to do motherhood.
The you that sometimes wants to make it all go away – the man, the marriage, the pregnancy – and be footloose and fancy-free again.
The you that knows that soon, your goals and ambitions may not be a priority and that you will always have to put someone else’s interest before yours.
The you that is excited and petrified about motherhood, yet has no clue what it really means.
The you that will wonder (mostly in anger), Now why didn’t anyone tell me that?
The you that will never be the same you again.
This book is about the Jekyll and Hyde of being pregnant. And being a mother. It’s about the happy stuff, but it’s also about the ugly stuff – the stuff that makes you mean, even vicious, while still feeling oodles of love for the thing you just created. The stuff that makes it okay to kill anyone who comes in your way of doing things the way you think is right for your baby.
Because it’s far from rosy out there. And it’s not about knowing when your ‘foetus’ will be the shape of a lemon, an avocado, an aubergine or a pumpkin. Or when will it grow a heart, a brain,
lungs or kidneys. This book is not about finding out how to get your body or your sex life back.
I only summoned the courage to write it when my husband read a sort of chapter and told me it had him riveted. And he wasn’t even pregnant.
Perhaps it should have been written during my pregnancy. Or during my baby’s initial months, in real time, when one could feel it all, much more intensely.
Perhaps. But it would have been too raw, too real, too debilitating.
A friend even suggested I get pregnant again and do it like a diary – he just escaped getting disfigured by me.
So it took time. It took healing. It took really long to feel ‘me’
again.

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