Work isn't worship, especially when you are from a communist family.
Medium Boss is the life and work of Gounder Brownie.
Reality TV without Shilpa Shetty.
Many of my favourite bloggers have also won. The list offers great reading material on gender issues that touch everyday life and beyond. Happy blog hopping!!
Ah well, here I am, behaving like Jayasuriya, promising to retire but coming back. By public demand (and also because I'm like any other obnoxious parent who wants to keep boasting about their offspring's genius), here's some news on GBM.
She's 5 weeks and 3 days old today.
GBM now sleeps for five to six hours at a stretch at night. Wakes up, feeds, fusses for a bit, and then sleeps again for three hours. In her crib. Ha. Ha to all the nay-sayers who said babies will refuse to sleep by themselves.
Obviously, this has more to do with GBM's personality than my star parenting skills, but I'll take credit for it anyway :D
GBM has decided that one colossal dump a day is enough. Not for her the tiny bird-like droppings through the day. Our girl does it once and does it explosively. So everyone knows she's arrived. This saves me considerable laundry time.
GBM wakes up in the evening between six and seven and insists on staying awake for three hours after that. During this time, she wants to be fed, cleaned, and taken sight-seeing all at the same time. Nobody knows why exactly she chooses this time. We call it the Koundamani Phenomenon (those of you who watch Tamil movies will undoubtedly remember Koundamani's 6'0 clock maalai kannu problem). She acts cranky towards the end of this period and is somewhat soothed if we play Beethoven symphonies. Yeah, that's right. I told you my daughter is a genius. Shuddup.
GBM reads books. Okay, not reads exactly. But she does look intently when I flip the pages and point to illustrations. That's almost the same thing, you must agree.
Earlier, I used to wait for her to fall asleep. Now, I wait for her to get up. I must be in love.
***
Okay, bye. This time, I really, really am going! *waves bat at audience*
I'm afraid this blog is going to fall asleep for a while. I'm getting back to regular work from today (though I'll still be working from home). I've also crash-landed on a lot of writing work (more details on that later!) which means I'm going to be spending whatever time and energy I have on moving ahead with that. Of course, all this is going to happen in between feeding GBM and changing a million nappies.
I'm an optimist, looks like.
Actually, GBM has done wonders for my writing. I've always worked better when I have a deadline. Otherwise, I'm quite likely to open an MS Word doc auspiciously and then waste the rest of the day refreshing my Facebook homepage or reading Rediff message boards. Now, I'm so sincere to my writing, I ideate while feeding her and then quickly put it down the second she falls asleep. Yay me. I must be Superman.
So till I manage to pack in blogging too in this wonderful schedule, astalavista, as they say in Konkani.
You might remember listening to it when you were inside me. Remember that terrible day when I had a bad headache and nausea all at the same time? I couldn't keep any food down but I was also ravenous because I was pregnant. So I kept eating and throwing up and my head felt like it was going to explode. I didn't know what to do, so I just lay on the cold floor and watched Pandiaraj comedy videos on Youtube. Somehow, that seemed to help. Then, I decided to listen to some music and M played this song. It's all about Rajnikanth's devotion to his mother, see? He says even if he took nine janmas and attempted to repay his mommy for all the sacrifices she had to go through in those nine months, it wouldn't be sufficient. An admirable sentiment. Though I was more entertained by the thought that perhaps the mother was shaking her finger throughout the song to indicate that she wanted her teeth brushed and Rajnikanth completely missed the point and gave her a bath instead.
It's almost a month since you arrived. Time flies. But not fast enough. I think you should turn three months old at the earliest just so I don't get freaked out by your wobbly head (Dear God, Intelligent Design this is not). I'm seriously worried that my clumsy hands might drop you when you squirm and your adorable little head goes this way and that. Also, I'd like to sleep some more, please. To be fair, you aren't really a fussy baby. Your requirements are basic. A. Feed Me. B. Change Nappy. People would think this is quite simple. I used to think so too. But motherhood is like a game of Chinese Whispers. You start it and by the time you go a full circle, you are pretty much clueless about how things changed the way they did. Somewhere in between, you lose control and surrender to fate. And the end result has you shaking your head Prufrock-like- This is not what I meant at all, this is not it at all. I'd be feeling like a crap mother by now if not for the fact that I know all this is normal. Your mommy has the power of the internet and has read enough blog posts by new mothers to know that she's not alone.
Which makes me wonder what it was like for mothers of my mother's generation. Were they allowed to feel frustrated? Did they know it was normal to get mad and maybe want to resign from this post? Did they feel it was okay to miss their old life? And not feel like bad mothers?
One of my college-mates who read my birth story post wrote me an email thanking me for narrating the experience the way it happened. Not hiding the brutality of it. She said she was glad she read it because older mothers when asked about their labour experience dismiss it by saying they forgot all about it as soon as they saw the baby's face. What a TV moment. The mother with her perfect mascara beaming at her cherubic angel. A soulful melody playing in the background. A gentle tear sliding down the father's face. What a shock it'd be if they instead showed a half-crazy woman with bad hair looking down with fright at this tiny stranger who is howling at her breast in an antiseptic hospital room?
When that is the truth. It may not be poetic. But like war, it could be made to sound so. Instead, I wonder why we are constantly shown only mothers who've taken to the role like cheerful kamikaze pilots. Another curious observation I've made is that most of these Maa songs are sung by sons. Why aren't there as many Maa songs sung by daughters? Maybe because the daughters have an inkling that this shit ain't true. I think they know it in their bones that mothers are human and might prefer going to the toilet when nature calls over feeding a hungry baby.
Dear GBM, I cannot trim your nails. I cannot give you a bath. I'm not the best at putting you to sleep. All I can do is run to you at your first howl and feed you. And yes, my singing calms you down. The only other person who has the same effect on you is MS Subbulakshmi. Who would have thought. Sometimes, I think you deserve better and your behaviour which is actually golden in comparison to most other newborns should get far more appreciation than I'm able to dole out. But thankfully, I don't feel guilty. Like I said, I only need to go online to know I'm normal. If not for a space where women are finally speaking out and narrating their experiences without mincing words, I'd have let the likes of Vairamuthu and Vaali judge me. You see, motherhood would have been easy if I had indeed been God. But I'm only human. And that makes me greater.
