This blog, as many others that follow, are being typed on a tiny computer, when I have a few minutes to spare from my sleep deprived life! Therefore, please excuse my grammatical errors and typos.
I grew up with books, bicycles, swimming pools, ovens, dogs and rocky stretches of isolation. Therefore I was completely unprepared for this new event that occurred in my life - a few weeks ago when my baby boy was handed to me after surgery in hospital.
This tiny creature, swaddled in an old soft sari of my mother's, lying inert and helpless before exploding into a mass of loud cries. What was I supposed to do with it?
First things first. I was to begin to think of it as "him" and not "it". The next thing, of course, was to feed him. That thought got me on my feet a couple of hours after surgery and as I sat up in bed, a nurse placed him in the crook of my arm and showed me how to feed him. This process continued, every couple of hours, all the time that I was in hospital. My main concern then was how I would ever manage to lift him and place him on my arm for a feed. Seems laughable now, but back then it drove me to tears. As did most innocuous things for a new mom.
The next thing, of course, was to change him- but how? My husband and I poured over the diaper packet instructions (which don't say anything about how to get the thing under him in the first place). A crying bundle with a wet diaper is a tricky object.
"Lift up his legs," a well meaning passer by said. That's the other thing about having babies - people are always freely venting their views on how small or thin or undernourished or cranky your kid is and throwing oodles of advice at you, which is hard to completely ignore. Only a small fraction is useful, and, fortunately, this bit of advice came in that category. But one really must follow one's instincts when the books and doctors (and passers by!) fail, for normal everyday matters. That is what I am learning, the hard way.
Lift up his legs- but how? A nurse came and showed us. By unceremoniously hauling his bottom off the table. I wondered if his little body would take all that. But I learnt that babies are flexible and strong. My heart would almost break when I saw various people thumping the life out of him (or so I thought) in order to elicit a burp. But he survived.
And so have I. And with these three fundamental things in place, I managed for a few days till new, other challenging things had to be dealt with.
I grew up with books, bicycles, swimming pools, ovens, dogs and rocky stretches of isolation. Therefore I was completely unprepared for this new event that occurred in my life - a few weeks ago when my baby boy was handed to me after surgery in hospital.
This tiny creature, swaddled in an old soft sari of my mother's, lying inert and helpless before exploding into a mass of loud cries. What was I supposed to do with it?
First things first. I was to begin to think of it as "him" and not "it". The next thing, of course, was to feed him. That thought got me on my feet a couple of hours after surgery and as I sat up in bed, a nurse placed him in the crook of my arm and showed me how to feed him. This process continued, every couple of hours, all the time that I was in hospital. My main concern then was how I would ever manage to lift him and place him on my arm for a feed. Seems laughable now, but back then it drove me to tears. As did most innocuous things for a new mom.
The next thing, of course, was to change him- but how? My husband and I poured over the diaper packet instructions (which don't say anything about how to get the thing under him in the first place). A crying bundle with a wet diaper is a tricky object.
"Lift up his legs," a well meaning passer by said. That's the other thing about having babies - people are always freely venting their views on how small or thin or undernourished or cranky your kid is and throwing oodles of advice at you, which is hard to completely ignore. Only a small fraction is useful, and, fortunately, this bit of advice came in that category. But one really must follow one's instincts when the books and doctors (and passers by!) fail, for normal everyday matters. That is what I am learning, the hard way.
Lift up his legs- but how? A nurse came and showed us. By unceremoniously hauling his bottom off the table. I wondered if his little body would take all that. But I learnt that babies are flexible and strong. My heart would almost break when I saw various people thumping the life out of him (or so I thought) in order to elicit a burp. But he survived.
And so have I. And with these three fundamental things in place, I managed for a few days till new, other challenging things had to be dealt with.
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