The past few weeks have been rough. I don’t know if I am happy about all the developments going on. I’m trying to wean my son off breastfeeding. He is growing up and he eats well. For the first time in his life, I am doing enough physical work in providing him food. So far, the only physical stress that I have been through because of him was breastfeeding and now I am replacing that with even more stressful work, for good.
Also, he sleeps in a separate bed now, even though the said bed is arranged side by side with our bed and in the middle of the night when he wakes up for nursing, I merely drag him near me to feed. He nurses for hardly 5 minutes and pushes himself into his bed to find comfort.
But I really don’t know if all of these are enough reasons to keep thinking about my son all the time and ignore the rest of life. I feel like a new mother with all her insecurities.
I didn’t realize it earlier. I have been lacking interest in everything including the business and the reasons became clear when I sat for a heart to heart discussion with Hubby. My past few posts suggest what kind of emotions I am going through. I am in fact, overdosed with emotions.
Today, long after my son fell asleep in my arms, I held him tight and kept kissing his huge head, and not willing to let him go, even if my actions would wake him up. For I know that soon, he will leave to find comfort in his own bed.
I can’t even start to explain what all of this mean to me, or if anybody would understand, or if anyone even cares.
I read somewhere that having a baby is like making a decision to have your heart walk out of your body forever. To me, making a decision to wean a baby feels more like cutting the last strand of the umbilical cord. The birth process is yet to be completed. At the end of the weaning process, I will have a normal, independent human being who needs real food and water and other drinks and not mommy’s boo boo. Isn’t this reason enough to be depressed or over stimulated, whatever my current state shall be named as?
Category: Being a Mom
Dear Baby,
You sit in your bed and cry for me. I put my computer down and run towards you, like I always do when you wake up from sleep. I took you into my arms and you lay down on my shoulder. I start rubbing your back and you start meddling with my earring. For a brief moment I realize how big you are. I know that if I stop you from doing it, you would get up from my shoulder and probably leave me.
My eyes glance at a random photo framed on the wall. It is from your 6 months, all 3 of us pose for the photo. I see the innocence in your face back then, which is completely missing from you now. Like a roller coaster, my mind quickly wanders everywhere. Within my mind, I leave this house, I leave you, I leave everything around me and travel to the past.
You are less than 2 weeks old. I nurse you and then sit you up in my lap for a burp. You are still asleep but you can’t sleep comfortably. You move your face here and there and twitch your facial muscles as if to suggest that you are doing some really tiresome work combined with a sigh. I laugh. You do it everyday and I laugh every time. And then I remark that I should take a photo of this expression of yours. After a few days, I keep the photo camera ready in my hands while burping you, but to my surprise, you stop doing it.
I wander from that stage of your life and I don’t see it again. My heart aches and I realize that I actually miss it.
And then my whole world is filled with spit up. Yes, white, curd-like spit up. My clothes always have white stains and I don’t care. My body and my hair smell of spit up and I don’t care. My breasts are wet with spit up and I don’t care. I wash it and within 1 hour I get more spit up. One day you spit up in your father’s face. Another day it was your grandmother’s mouth when she tried to delight you by holding you high. I don’t care. I look at flowers, rain, trees, nature and I smell spit up. No, I don’t care.
I wander away to a later stage of your life and I don’t see any spit up. I don’t smell it any more. Nobody knows when you stopped spitting up. May be it changed slowly, 20 times a day reduced to 10 times and then 5, 3, 1 and then no more. It happened gradually that I didn’t realize. I don’t carry a towel with me anymore to put on people’s shoulders when they want to carry you. You are clean. But now my heart aches again and I miss the spit-ups.
Then I remember your real baby smell, which is neither spit up nor baby powder. It is your smell. I miss it.
I remember your delicate skin which is not at all similar to the skin that got it’s first bruise this morning in the playground. I miss it.
I remember your coos and I miss it.
You laugh out loud looking at the air conditioner and you just stare at people’s faces. I miss it.
You cry when I bath you. I miss even that.
I miss all of our past together. All of those memories make my heart ache and when I am about to burst……
….your fingers holding my earrings start to feel ticklish. I come back to this world and hold you finger tight to stop you from doing it. You raise up your still sleepy head and smile at me. And then you hold my other earring. I hold that finger too and you laugh. You slowly drift away from your sleepy self to your active normal self. I can’t resist any longer and I start kissing your cheeks hard. You give in and enjoy the cuddling. I hold you tight and before my mind drifts away to think about how I would miss this moment one day, I get into the mode of enjoying the present. I lay you down on the sofa and start tickling you. The house fills up with your laughter.
Love,
Mom
In which I take the risk and use this space to vent about something that has been bothering me too much that I have to stand on top of the Singapore flyer and shout so that everybody will listen; as if telling the same story to my mom 10 times a day is not enough.
Okay, you men who are reading this, you shall leave now. Either hit the back button to return to where you came from or skip to the previous post and celebrate my 100th post after helping yourself with a drink. And you girls who are not mothers, you shall go too if you do not know me personally or if you do not care. Now, you mothers who love to read mommy blogs, come closer. I’ll tell you a secret.
I’ve been struggling hard with the weaning process. As much proud that I was and I still am about breastfeeding, weaning has become my biggest thing these days. I had planned to wean him when he becomes 18 months old, even though I actually wanted to nurse until 2 years. At 2 years, I understood that weaning would become difficult and I thought I was smart enough to have planned so well to wean him at 18 months. I thought it was going to be easy-peezy.
When he reached 15 months, I decided that it was time to start the process. I had finally out grown the initial guilt of not having enough milk when Pappu was born and also Pappu had started following a good diet. I was happy about my change of mind and announced to the world that I would wean him soon and I even bought some normal clothes (I was on the boring, no-style nursing clothes till then)in celebration of my decision. I thought babies wean themselves unless we desperately what them to keep nursing!
I do not know what kind of energy my behavior passed on to Pappu, but he suddenly started becoming more demanding of breastfeeding. I can’t even use the word ‘breast milk’ here because he shouldn’t be getting enough milk to fill his appetite. He was just suckling for the sake of fun, or comfort. Actually he nurses himself to sleep. I was the culprit, for I always opened up for him to nurse whenever he felt sleepy so that I wouldn’t have to carry him and walk until he falls asleep on my shoulder.
The next couple of days was tiring for me. I would carry him, walk and sing to him for more than an hour, twice everyday to put him to bed. Other than sleeping time, whenever he demanded nursing, I would shortly tell him that big boys drink from a cup and that he was a great big boy now, and I would do something fun with him. My strategy worked very well. He stopped demanding and I would let him nurse only once during the day that is before going to bed at night. I was happy at that advancement but I had also started missing the nursing days especially at the end of the day when my breasts were heavy and painful!
Not that it happened for so long. Within 3 days of that schedule, Pappu got a fever and my mommy-guilt raised as much as the temperature did. Without much thoughts, I put him on fully breastfed diet even though he was taking a good enough diet even then. I jumped into action and happily let him nurse for the whole week that he was down, fully expecting him to stop nursing by himself when his temperature was normal again. It was only after that I realized what I had done. He turned into a nurse-aholic* and got addicted to my breasts. All he wanted to do was to nurse and nothing else.
I’m still working hard on it and I have to say that it’s much much harder than how we had progressed before the fever.
*This word may not be found in dictionary
… about the d**n great award. This morning when I was busy consumed with myself cleaning up the kitchen, Pappu came in front of me and said ‘bubba’. I was surprised because I had just changed his diaper.
“What is it, baby? Is that your diaper?”
“Bubba Bubba”
“What else is it?”
He touched his tummy and repeated ‘bubba’.
“Are you hungry?”
“…..”. He looked satisfied. (Yes, dear internet, you can bring that knife and stab me. What kind of mother waits for her 16 month old to ‘ask’ before feeding or changing him?)
I quickly fixed up some bread and he sat happily in his high chair to eat. Awwwwww. My son’s growing up.
We went to this familiar restaurant after a long shopping and seated ourselves comfortably. Just when we were about to order food, Pappu decided that he has had enough. He refused to sit or be in our arms and he wanted to run around. I put him down hoping that he would be having fun with the friendly waiters. He fell down and broke his ego and started throwing a fit.
Hubby and I tried our best to keep others’ comfort at the best and somehow made Pappu sit on the high chair. I started feeding him his food and when Hubby finished eating, we switched places so that Hubby could feed Pappu while I had my dinner. That’s when I noticed the family sitting next to our table who were smiling at us sympathetically. The reason for that smile was evident when I actually overheard their comments about my family that were being exchanged within my earshot.
The woman said, ‘See. He didn’t let his mother eat at all. Now they are taking turns, this is the only way to survive.’
The man said, ‘What a torture!!’. Their 2 kids who must be around 18 years old were joining them.
The woman replied, ‘Some kids are just calm. That is good. But this…….’.
I didn’t want to listen any more. I mean, what? A torture? Oh come on, you should realise that I am sitting so close to you and it’s obvious that you know that I am listening. I quickly changed my attention to my own food and family.
On a completely unrelated note, soon after that family left, my son started behaving and ate all of his food and made friends with all the staffs in the restaurant. Like I said, unrelated!
My chances of getting ‘best mom ever’ award are getting thinner. A couple of days back, my son woke up from his afternoon nap and quickly climbed out of the bed. I laid on his bed and during that lazy moment, he looked at me quizzically and said ‘baba’. While I tried to figure out which ‘ba’ he was referring to, he repeated it several times. I tried to help him by mentioning every word that we know in common that had a ‘ba’ in it; baby, bottle, ball, bow wow, bus, pa and many other words that came to my mind. I hoped that he would express assurance to one of the words that I said. But the look in his face didn’t change. I somehow diverted him by raising excitement for the ball.
The next day, he did that again. His father saw it and was convinced that he was just saying that for fun while I was sure that there was something he wanted and that we were not able to find it out. It’s been 3 days since he did it first.
Today while I was arranging his wardrobe, he took a diaper in his hand and said ‘baba’. He surprised me when I asked if he said ‘diaper’. He smiled in acceptance and repeated ‘baba’ in a tone of affirmation. For a moment I considered teaching him to say the right word but then it suddenly occurred to me. I checked his diaper for poop and it was positive. I was embarrassed for having my 16 month old to tell me to change his diaper. I quickly cleaned him up and asked if he could say ‘diaper’. He happily said ‘baba’ and ran to the other room to play.
Dear Pappu,
Yesterday when you saw a friend’s little baby sleeping in his pram, you looked up at me, put your finger to your mouth and said ‘shhhh’. Even though it was not quite a hush, it conveyed the meaning.
You are such a fast learner and you behave so big boy-like in front of younger babies. You are very gentle to them when you pamper them and you shake your head up and down just the way adults do. I can’t help but imagine how you would react when your sibling baby would arrive even though we won’t have another child unless you are a bit grown up.
With older kids though, you are a different personality. You grab toys from other kids’ hands and try to push them away and refuse to share yours. I just keep telling you to share things and promptly return other’s toys but really I don’t bother much about this behavior because I know that it’s just a passing cloud.
You are learning new words everyday. The other day when you heard people clap in another room, you said ‘clap’ while cheering and clapping in your usual style. You repeat most actions that we do. Just today you tried to snap your fingers after me. I should say that you did pretty well.
You call me ‘amma’ sometimes by yourself and mostly on demand. You prefer referring to your dad as amma too may be because it’s easier. I see that you enjoy my company more than before. Who else will be ready to do all the funny things that I do to keep you entertained?
As far as playing favourites is concerned, your favourite people are the ones who can provide most fun at any given point of time. You get along with everyone very well and you make friends easily. Last week I tried to leave you with a babysitter. You enjoyed her company and was playing with her very well when I was with you but once you found that I was trying to leave you alone with her, you decided that you shouldn’t like her.
You seem to have developed a passion for music. You sit quietly and listen to a pianist for as long as 10 minutes which I consider is quite long for your age. You sing along with me and most of the time, you are able to repeat the exact tune of my singing.
You have learnt to express and you have different expressions for just about anything, like kicking the ball, getting your legs massaged or seeing another baby, all in an adult-like manner. Even though you do not talk much, you communicate so well by expressions, symbols and single syllables.
We are in the process of weaning you and the day I made this decision, I don’t know how you found it out, as if to defend your stand, you started being more demanding of nursing. I would wish to say that we both are doing fine with it, except that we are actually having a tough time trying to get used to this.
As I type this, we are on the bed and you are supposedly asleep on me but everytime you hear a car outside on the road, you open your eyes, smile at me and say ‘car’ and fall asleep again. I’m so thankful for this moment, with you on my chest and for being able to witness all this cuteness, so close to my eyes. I’m also thankful that I’m holding my phone right now and that my phone responds to wireless even though my computer doesn’t, so that I can record all these moments before forgetting them…
Is it unusual to ask one’s spouse how much he or she loves them? May be not for reassurance, but for fun? How about a conversation like this?
Woman: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love roti?
Man: 6
Woman: on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love dosa?
Man: 9
Woman: on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love me?
Man: 15
Woman: on a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you love Pappu?
Man: 20
If you were the said woman, what exactly would you feel?
a. Happy that your husband loves you immeasurably (count exceeding the scale actually means immeasurable)
b. Sad that he loves you a little less than he loves your son
c. Proud about the kind of love that your husband possess for your son
d. All of the above
I was talking with a friend of mine who recently had a baby. We discuss about various personal things and more often it’s either about our babies or hubbies. We found something. Men are proud. Very very proud when they have a baby!
I still remember when I was pregnant, hubby took care of me and our unborn baby so well. But hubby didn’t seem as much excited as I was. Of course, he was all gaga about the pregnancy and even claimed that he should be the one to break the news, even to my parents. But about the baby, he talked nothing of.
During the following weeks, he accompanied me to all our prenatal appointments. He never missed one. We either fixed the appointments on weekends even if it’s more expensive, or he takes some time off and joins me to see the doctor. But he never joined me in guessing if it was a boy or a girl, in listing names for the baby, in window shopping baby clothes even though we had no plans to buy so early, in singing to the baby and even in waiting patiently in front of me to catch the baby’s movement every now and then. I often argued had a loving discussion with him about why he showed no interest in our baby. And he would say that he was just so excited as I was about the whole pregnancy but he cannot do much for the baby he has never seen or touched. He said “as a woman, you might have felt like a mother as soon as you knew about the pregnancy but as a man, I will become a father only when I hold the baby in my hands”. Makes sense alright!
And he was right. The moment the baby was born, he was a father. That too a good father. He loved the baby very much and he could carry him around. But he couldn’t make him sleep. He couldn’t bath him. He couldn’t feed him well. That said, dads cannot do much of ’caregiving’. But it is their pride that amazes me.
The way he handles his child’s ego is amazing. He is a great friend and he doesn’t want to restrict him. As long as he is safe, it’s a green signal. He participates actively in my positive speaking program and teaches his son. There must be some reason why Pappu always prefers dad over mom, right?
There were some of these days when I made a mistake regarding Pappu. I had never seen hubby as furious as he was those days. Rather than feeling hurt or angry that he was mad at me, I felt warm, smiled, and at the same time had tears in my eyes.
When I was pregnant I started listening to lullabies. It came in handy after child was born and at one point music meant lullaby. I didn’t remember any other kind of music. Even when the baby was asleep or even when he was not even around, I caught myself humming lullabies. Here’s an introduction I wrote about myself about an year back.
I’m young. I’m busy. I do poopy laundry, change diapers, bath infants (is it just one?), force medicine down throats and sing Lullabies until my throat breaks. When I’m not doing any of these? I write about it all in my blog.
(Unrelated: An year back I considered myself a ‘mommy blogger’?!?!?)
Towards the end of first year, Pappu started responding to rhymes and our interest changed. I made myself very skillful at singing rhymes and reciting poems in a funny enough tone which keeps the excitement level up.
Last night when my regular bedtime routine failed to induce sleep in a toddler, I remembered that I hadn’t been singing lullabies for so long. And I decided to try it. As soon as I started, my son stopped jumping on the bed, laid down next to me and kept calm. After what seems like a dozen songs (actually it was just one and a half songs, but the fact that I was so sleepy and that hubby was snoring next to me made it look like it was dozen or more), I confirmed that the boy was sleeping and just when I was about to sleep, he laughed, clapped and appreciated my singing and then he even tried to imitate the song.
SIGH!! Lullabies really don’t have the magical charisma of inducing sleep like they used to have, do they?
