Hazy Musings From the First Few Weeks of Motherhood
Chapter 7 in the Times of Amma Story.
Honest Dispatches From The Trenches of Motherhood
January, 2012
Sleep deprivation, hormones and tears. When I think back to the first two weeks of new motherhood, all my memories are covered with this film of exhaustion tinged with sadness.
((For context, read the earlier chapters of the Times of Amma here. But if you’d rather just read on, you do you!))
It felt weird after my parents returned to India. I missed them so much. I just wanted to hold on to my mother and father and cry and make them stay, just like my tiny 2-week-old baby was doing. I was a mom now, but I felt like a desperate child.
My in-laws were staying on. They would travel with us to India- where my daughter and I would stay for a couple of months as my husband went on to set up a house in the brand-new location we were off to. More on that later.
But right now, I felt like I had to be the understanding daughter, the grateful daughter-in-law, for my mother-in-law had taken over all the cooking and the responsible mother of the baby. I knew my mother-in-law was fantastic, but I would be lying if I told you I was as comfortable with her as I would have been with my mom. Though she probably never expected it from me, I felt I needed to mask the extent of my pain and discomfort.
“Thank you for doing this, thank you for bathing my baby, thank you for making me this food, thank you and big smiles.”
Sometimes, a girl doesn’t want to say thank you. She just wants to receive and know that her mom doesn’t need her gratitude. It’s not like my mother-in-law was helping me with my daughter for my vote of thanks at the end of the day. But at the risk of sounding spoilt and privileged, I have always thought it an incredible luxury to feel entitled to the love and care my parents have lavished on me. It probably stems from being an only child, too. The idea that you are unconditionally loved even at your worst and that you need to be on your best behaviour for anyone outside that tightly knit unit. Or maybe that’s just the overthinking, people pleaser in me. Or maybe it was the hormones.
Either way, feel free to take the tiny violins out for me dear reader. In the larger scheme of things, these were but tiny issues that I have long since moved on from.
The days began to take on a rhythm of sorts. My pain was slowly receding. I had tried small walks around the apartment complex grounds, and while I still wasn’t as fast as I used to be, I was slowly getting stronger. My daughter had her own rhythm, too. She would wake up at 5:00 am for her first feed. Nurse a bit. Go through her cloth diapers. Around mid-morning, she would be given a bath. After some nursing, she would nod off. I would lay her down for a nap next to my husband, who would be sleeping after wrapping up work in the wee hours of the morning. Working US hours meant he was asleep during the day and awake at night. Working on a start-up meant he was working through the night and got just a couple of hours with his brand-new daughter before logging back into work. The only time they actually got together in those early weeks was when we co-slept with her in the middle.
Around the third week, colic reared its head. Like a rooster you could set your clock by, my baby would transform into a raging, crying machine at 5:30 pm on the dot. We tried everything — nursing, swaying, changing her clothes, her diaper, trying pacifiers (that one had the interesting effect of getting her angrier if that was even possible), changing hands to grandparents or dad, nope, the girl had some stuff to scream about for around an hour or so and she would. It was like the scheduled meeting from hell.
The only thing that seemed to calm the screams to a whimper of sorts was me putting her in a baby sling and walking around the apartment complex singing wheels on the Bus go round and round. And that’s the only song that worked. So we went round and round and up and down and open and shut and swished and swished and jingle-jangled and beep-beep- beeped and everything else till her tense body would slowly soften and relax. And I could breathe easy till 5:29 pm the next day.
Despite all the routines we were trying to settle into, a cloud of change loomed over our head. We were moving to El Salvador — a country in Central America for my husband’s work. There were only many minor hitches — it was a Spanish-speaking country, and neither my husband nor I spoke Spanish. The easiest way to travel to El Sal was via the United States, but neither I nor my daughter had a US visa. We didn’t have access to movers and packers who could transport all our things from the Philippines to El Salvador. This meant that we could only take the things that would fit within our airline luggage allowance. Most of our stuff had to go.
My husband and I had lived in pre-furnished rented apartments ever since we got married, so we didn’t have a lot of big-ticket stuff. But strewn around us in that small apartment was the life we had started to build together — memories in physical form.
Framed photographs from our travels and art were given away. Books donated to almost anyone who would read. Clothes that looked like they wouldn’t fit for a long time were parcelled off. The things that pinched the most thought were things that probably seemed like the silliest. My collection of chunky jewellery that had some pieces I wore way back in college and my one pair of high-heeled shoes.
You see, I’ve never been into heels. I’ve tried them on and off, and it’s always been a wasted investment for me. But a couple of years back, I had found the perfect pair of black heels. They were of reasonable height, they didn’t bite in the back, and they looked really good. There was only one problem: I didn’t see myself wearing them again anytime soon, and we had to prioritize what we took to El Salvador as we didn’t have the option to ship stuff. So, was I to chuck some of the stuff that I would actually use in favour of the heels that I most probably wouldn’t?
Was liking the heels justification enough to let them continue to take up valuable space?
I decided to donate the shoes. Just like I donated the chunky jewellery, which I knew wouldn’t be able to rock while simultaneously rocking a baby sling. The road ahead would have to be walked with sensible shoes and clothing and accessories that baby would not be able to hurt herself on or tear off me, hurting me.
It was goodbye to some parts of me, if not forever, but then for some time at least. And I was aware that not all mothers had to make these choices, but as a self-employed writer, this was the choice I made.
Would it be one I regretted?
Only time and the next few chapters can tell.
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This is me documenting my early motherhood journey before it gets hazier and hazier. If you can connect, relate, or like what you just read, please feel free to hit me up on Instagram.
