Phases of early parenting – the “next” 9 months

Magic, I said, in my last post, didn’t I ? Such a beautiful feeling, so many emotions going through me…When I lifted R and looked at her – I felt Magic, right ? Well, it does not take long for Magic to turn to Manic !
As R completes as much time outside the womb as she did inside, I want to recap, briefly, the various manic phases that we went through during this time.

Phase 1: Jaago Zaraa

We want to create memories for our children, don’t we? We have the means to do so. When I was a baby, the camera was not digital and the camera film rolls were expensive. You couldn’t click as many photos as you want to and then delete the shaky ones. Videos ? What was that ?

Now, we click our children like paparazzi clicking film stars. I have R’s first yawn, first look at N, first maalish, first bath, first roll over, first everything captured and saved in some archive on my hard drive.

But, the only distinct memory of those first months that I will carry with me is the lack of sleep. I was with the family during only the first month after R’s birth – but the total sleep was only as much as one would sleep in a few days.

R was not just like any baby who stays up. She was special. She was colic. Just like her father, as I was told later. As if that helped !
So, colic – it is something that the doctors use as an excuse when they do not know what is wrong with the baby. Here’s a sample conversation scene at 2 am in the night when we rushed with R to the hospital as she would not stop crying. Also, it is only one of many such 2-3 am scenes

Participants: R, N, me, my mom and/or dad, the receptionist at the main desk, 2 junior doctors, 1 senior doctor (SD), many sleepy faces in the hospital corridor who have been rudely woken up.
Scene: I am carrying R, and trying to rock her to sleep (more aptly, doing anything to shut her up). N and my mom are waiting for the senior doctor as the juniors are incapable of diagnosing R. Like I said, she was special ! Hers’ is the only sound in the quiet of the night. The senior doctor walks in..

N: Doctor, she won’t stop crying
SD: Again ? Weren’t you here day before?
N/Me/Mom: Yes, but she is crying again
SD: Let me have a look.

We wait as the doctor inspects R’s ears, nose, mouth, stomach etc. for any signs of anything. And then he asks the MAIN question that all doctors want the answer to be Yes to.

SD: Is she exclusively breastfed ?

Now, this is a “get out of jail free” card for the doctors. Apparently, if the answer to the above is yes, nothing can happen to the baby. If she were to fall off the bed, she would float and land on a feather – as long as she is exclusively breastfed. If she were fed a burger when she is a month old, she will poo proper pav bhaji – again, as long as she is exclusively breastfed.

We fell for it, didn’t we. We answered yes. Then came the observation that we could have arrived to ourselves without the doctor’s help.

“It must be colic. You can’t do anything. Some babies are like this. Give her XYZ to soothe her stomach and hope for the best.”

Right ! That hope for the best is going to bring us here in another couple of days !

Anyways, it was a tough and trying few months when colic was cited the reason for her crying at the randomest of times, always at night. Of course, she continues crying – but now it’s for reasons for which we can do something – she is either hungry, feeling hot, feeling cold, has poo’d etc.

Phase 2: Abba Dabba Jabba

After the first few months, we were sleeping better, R had mastered rolling over and it seemed like that’s all she wanted to do.

As we sung to her while rocking her to sleep, she started humming with us ! She used to hum herself to sleep. Sometimes, it would be 10 mins of continuous humming by her before she used to turn her head and drift off to sleep.

There were one-off mamama’s in the middle some times. But, the fun began when she started babbling contantly. Suddenly one day, while she was humming, came out a long “aaabababaaaababababaababa” – yep, long time no c !

It was fascinating. We started trying to teach her to say the thing we want to hear – mama and papa and dada. But she was adamant – aabbaa aabbaa bababab it was for a long long time.

Phase 3: Tum shabri, hum bhagwaan Ram

Feeding a toddler can make you patient, like no other activity. It’s such a difficult job feeding “solids” to a toddler. Of course, by solids I mean mashed fruits, lentils, vegetable purees and the like. R can put an Olympic gymnast to shame by the way she twists her body to get out of our lap or the high chair or anywhere she is when we feed her. Earlier, she could not do much, except twist herself out of our laps, but now as she starts crawling – she escapes our clutches and speeds away to some corner of the house where she thinks the spoon full of the tasteless goeey stuff can’t reach her.

We have tried switching on the TV, one of us singing to her, putting her noise-making toys in front of her, feeding her as she is playing so she doesn’t realise that she’s being fed, dancing in front of her to distract her (yes, our cleaner does “balle balle” in front of her as N feed her spoon by spoon. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t get time to do the dishes properly). But, 2 spoons of anything and she starts her trials for the Olympic Games in 2032.

The funniest such attempt of ours was when, before giving her the spoon, we pretended to eat from her spoon, purposefully let some stuff stick to our lip as she can see that we have genuinely eaten the same thing we are giving her, and then feeding her. It works, at times. She readily accepts the spoon. But of course, she soon realizes that as we are feeding her some bland dal-khichdi, we are simultaneously having pani puri in our plates. Well, that’s how gold medal winning gymnasts are trained.

Phase 4: saat samundar paar main tere peeche peeche….

What gets me through my usually dreary day is the anticipation of seeing R when I open my house door. There have been times when the smile she gives me takes away all the tiredness of the day and I just want to hold her, hug her and play with her. Of course, there are times when she ignores my presence and continues playing with her toys – but why would I talk about that !

One of the times that will always stay with me was the first time she crawled up to me as I entered home. Now, let me be truthful. I had seen this dad-baby video on youtube where all babies crawled, ran, danced with happiness when the fathers came home from work. Nothing of that sort had happened to me since the time R had learnt crawling. The closest I had gotten to it was some beautiful 5 second smiles before the focus was shifted to the closest toy. Needless to say, I was getting anxious !

But it happened - it happened ! As soon as I opened the door, she shrieked with happiness and started crawling towards me. It was slow, with many distractions along the way, once when she almost turned around, even. But she eventually reached me, after much goading from me and after I had closed down the distance to half by going towards her – but who’s looking at specifics !

Talking about crawling – once crawling starts, it makes life difficult for parents. As all the baby wants to do is crawl. I have realized that difficult to reach places like bottom of the sofa, the small gap at the bottom of your shoe rack, inside of the refrigerator, inside of the TV cabinet are the places they like to aim for. Just like Abhimanyu. And with crawling, also begins their culinary experimentation. They start tasting a variety of new foods – shoes, socks, nail cutters lost behind the bed rest, phone chargers, TV wires etc. im not sure that fits into the food chart for a 9 month old.

And now, there is no escaping her. If we go to the kitchen, she follows. If we go out the door, she follows. If we go to the balcony, she follows. If we go to the bathroom, she follows. If we stand up, she positions herself and waits for us to move. She is ready, she is prepared. We can’t wait for her to start walking ! I’m sure things will only get easier.....

Magic

I thought I knew what’s coming when I saw the 2 shaded lines on the home pregnancy kit. I thought I will be ready when I saw that small dot on the screen at the gynaec’s and heard my baby’s fast heartbeats (just like a running horse’s hooves). I felt sure I will be prepared when I registered myself as a “dad” on babycenter.com and whattoexpect.com and started reading their weekly posts. I actually felt at ease when I devoured multiple pregnancy and baby books. I felt SO content when the kicks stopped as I sang to the bloated tummy (yes, truly ! The magic song was "so gaya yeh jahaan" from Tezaab and the Namokar mantra). I felt confident and a bit impatient even when I successfully (or so I think) dealt with N’s morning sickness and mood swings. I felt I had it all under control as I held N’s hand and urged her (filmy style) to push in the delivery room.

But nothing prepared me, nothing could have prepared me for the moment I saw her. She was tiny and shrivelled, she was wet and sticky, she was blood stained…she was beautiful. And then, she cried ! The most beautiful sound in the world. Of course, I could have never known my feelings about her crying would drastically change later, but that rant’s for another day, another blog post.

Everything I had done, read, heard or seen earlier went to trash. I suddenly felt I wasn’t prepared, I wasn’t ready. I felt like I had no idea what I would do now. I felt like I definitely did not get the memo. I felt…overwhelmed !

Later that night, as N was asleep and I was still overwhelmed and unable to sleep, I picked the little bundle up and half hoped that in true Bollywood/Hollywood style, she would hold my finger and suddenly, everything would make sense. Of course, no such thing happened. I just kept holding her steady, afraid to drop her. I kept staring at her. This was a person that I (with a little contribution from N) had created. This was the 2 shaded lines on the pregnancy kit. This being with arms and legs and face was the little dot on the gynaec’s screen. These were the legs that kicked from inside, these were the ears that heard my singing voice. It was unreal… otherworldly, even. It was a feeling that N & I kept sharing and discussing over the next few months as we saw R grow. For lack of words, to us, it can just be described as… Magic !

Disclaimers:
In no way do I take anything away from what my wife (N) had to face during pregnancy. It was infinitely more than what I faced and I can only hope I was enough of a support. However, this blog remains purely my perspective, a dad’s perspective