Warm and Fuzzy

So I am not overly religious - I believe in prayer but don't do so everyday. I love going to temples but only manage to do so occasionally. However, I almost always leave a temple with this great feeling of peace and I don't know, maybe even a sense of freedom. Last week, I took my younger one to the local Udipi temple and we spent around 15 minutes there. I could see my son praying hard and heard him ask Ummachi for his ripstick back (long story, short version of which is that because of damages to the walls of our home, I confiscated their Ripstick from the kids). I reminded him that praying is not just asking for stuff but also thanking Ummachi for the things we do have. We spent the remainder of the time sitting quietly in front of the sannidhi, rang the bells, he did his thopukaranams that his grandparents have been teaching him and then we headed back home. One the way back he says " Amma, can we come more often to the kovil? Something inside me feels really good right now. ". I was surprised and somewhat mystified that a six year old could feel some of the same things I get out of a temple visit. I still feel all warm and fuzzy that this is something I can share with my little one, that he gets what I get from a temple visit. I am also humbled and a little bit ashamed by the fact that I was surprised at his reaction, that I underestimated his ability to perceive and express these deeper sentiments. You learn something new everyday I guess.

Take me for granted, please!

My son had a party at school for Valentine's Day and I had to decorate a bag for him. For non-creative me, that is a huge deal and I went to work with glitter glue and stickers. I took it into school the next day and my son ofcourse, was expecting me. Something about his confidence that I would show up with the bag struck me, made me feel warm and fuzzy. I remembered other times when I had seen that look before, that look that said "she'll be here". They take for granted that I will be there for them and to me, that is my gold medal. I hope they never change that.

Cuts both ways

I recently read MMs post here on the judgement SAHMs face and my comment ended up being too long so it is coming up as this post -

I think it it cuts both ways. I see plenty of SAHMs that tend to have a sanctimonious attitude when they talk to and of working mothers "I don't know - my family is so important to me that I could never leave them and go out to work". "I could never leave my child the way you do and go somewhere outside to work". Err, I think that a majority of mothers anywhere in the world would place their family and children on the top of their important list, working or not. WHy then do I have to hear statements that imply that by choosing to work, I have somehow brought down my family's importance in my life? That I choose to add something to my list of what is important in my life (in this case, me, namely because I don't need to work for the money but for the rush I feel from working))?. A lot of SAHMs behave like they have martyred themselves to the cause of raising their babies, especially when they sound defensive and qualify their choice with how important their family is to them and how they have placed their children over their selves. Plenty of SAHMs go to a gym, go shopping, get on the telephone with their chums everyday - arent they choosing a few minutes or an hour or two for themselves during those times? That is their "me time", granted. My "me time" takes up more time in a day than their "me time". So what?

The bottom line is this - each of us have to be at peace within ourselves for the choices we have made. For the longest time, statements like the ones above made me feel less of a mom somehow, that somehow I was committing a crime for leaving my children under someone else's care. As time (and a short 3 month stint at home) went by though I realized this - you do what you have to to be in a happy place deep inside. The happy place changes, what makes you happy changes but only you can judge what that is - you only need to be flexible enough to recognize that and move with the flow. Something that another mother does is not necessarily one that puts you in your happy place. As your kids grow and mature, their needs increase in certain areas and decrease in others and as a mother, you instinctively recognize the increased pockets of need and step in while pulling away from other places where they don't need you anymore or need you less (and I believe that pulling away is as important as stepping in). As more and more mothers choose to either join or leave the workplace, we have to recognize that it is OUR" choice and cease to make excuses for making them, other people be damned! Nobody else walks in my uniquely fitting shoes and nobody else is qualified to make a pronouncement on how those shoes pinch their feet, whether I am an SAHM or a work outside the home mom!

Breastfeeding - the right to choose?

There was a recent report here that talks about how exclusively breastfeeding can save more lives every year. The report states that new moms should not be blamed but instead lays the blame on latching on problems and grandmothers dissuading against the practice. I breastfed each of my children exclusively for 6 months and then almost till each was almost 13mths and 19mths respectively. I can tell you what an effort it took to stick to my beliefs. First of all my children were diagnosed with a dairy allergy so that if I took even a spoon of any dairy product, they would pass blood in their stools. I went through 2 excruciatingly painful months for mother and child when we put baby(ies) on a special formula and waited to flush the dairy out of their system. All this while, I still wanted to keep my supply up and ended up pumping and throwing - I know how much it hurt to throw 30 to 40 ounces of pumped milk each day while my children would refuse to drink that nasty smellling formula. All this while, the doctors kept telling me to stop eating most of the food that I eat because they were making my children gassy until all that I was left with eating was rice, green beans sauteed in a little oil and chayote squash cooked with mung beans every single day for 3 months! There was not even a gaurantee that I could go back to feeding them myself if they didn't stop the symptoms. Once I started work at 6 weeks, there were other challenges. My employer fortunately is one of the few that have made provisions for breastfeeding moms (and deserves a kudos for taking these steps) - our sites are fully equipped with rooms that have pump bases and refrigerators and access to support groups to connect to other working and breastfeeding mothers. However, when you go back to work after a baby, you are already aware that people are watching how much you let that affect your work. When you take 15 (and sometimes 30 minutes) every 3 hours to pump to keep up supply and baby's needs, there is a ton of guilt associated with that. That of course is my problem to deal with because at the end of the day, I was lucky that my employer had provided the facilities and once they do that, they are aware of the time spent with the activity. I however know other women that have not had that luxury - some of them have actually used a restroom and a hand pump and tried to relieve painful mastitis because there was nowhere for them to pump! Employers also do not take kindly to a woman that has just come back from a 6 week "vacation" (a lot of single guys would ask me when I was going off on "vacation" to have my baby:)) taking off what would amount to a hour of each day trying to pump milk to keep up breastfeeding. The other aspect that needs mentioning are lactating consultants. While what they do is laudable and they do help so many women with supply and lactating issues, many of them come across very strongly and refuse to consider the possibility that mom is actually trying hard but baby just will not drink. One woman told me how much the lc blamed her for not trying hard enough that she ended up thinking she was committing nothing short of a crime by switching to formula. The "grandmother" factor is very strong too. My children were advised not to have any solids till they were 6 months old and to be fed exclusively on either breastmilk or formula during that time. I met a woman on the flight back from India who was shocked that any one would consider "starving" the baby that way (and she was'nt a grandmother to be sure - she had a baby girl 4 months older than my son at that time!). It was quite annoying to listen to someone tell me I was starving my children after all the trouble I went through to stay off dairy just to be able to breastfeed them. And ofcourse the numerous people around that will jump up and say that baby is crying so much because mother probably doesn't have enough milk? Or to be made to feed the baby within half an hour of feeding because baby was making sucking motions with his mouth in his sleep which can only be interpreted as hunger again? No wonder women find it hard to stick to exclusively breastfeeding their baby, with all the pressures they face today. The benefits are many, I believe in them tremendously. However, like the right to choose, I do believe this is one issue that is a mom's right to choose and she should be allowed to make that choice without society blaming her for being a bad mother or predicting doom for baby.

PS: Since I last wrote this, I came across an article here detailing that President Obama has signed into that it is mandatory for companies with more that 50 employees to provide a private, secluded area for mothers to safely express breastmilk. Awesome!

Let there be a decree...

..that guys with a serious case of foot-in-mouth disease not go anywhere near me, not within a mile, not within a 100 miles.
So I see this guy-I-knew-from-way-back-when yesterday in the elevator. After a few seconds of pc, he looks at me excitedly and says "So are you having a baby?" I feel my smile freeze and begin to crack on my face as I say "No". So guy with the dreaded (for me) f-i-m says "Oh, so did you just recently have your baby?". Now my cheeks and my whole face are cracking to the point of falling off and just to be spiteful (I refuse to be kind to people that just keep shoving that foot deeper inside with each sentence), I say "Actually my last baby is four years old". He flees from there.
Oh well, some shirts just need to be retired :(
And some guys too.

Interesting how ...

...women take pains to ensure no baby sounds are heard on the phone when taking meetings from home, while many men couldn't care less to do the same. Wonder why.

Dream for your daughter?

I am living the feminist dream - I am married to an utterly wonderful, non-chauvinistic man, who is not even aware while he is making them that his choices speak of equal rights for women. This post is not about my husband, but he is my excuse for why I have not had a single feminist rant on my blog so far. I read about issues women face and feel far removed from it all in my day to day life. Sometimes though, I read or come across something that shakes me out of my stupor and make me rethink my whole "I don't have a single reason to rant" lifestyle - what affects one woman affects all women as a collective and advocacy for women's rights cannot be dependant upon our individual life experiences - in that you can start advocating for a cause because of a negative experience you may have had, but you cannot stop because of one positive or continuing positive personal experiences. So here goes ...

I recently was speaking to a group of working mothers, most of us had cajoled, bribed and pushed our children into getting ready for a swim class and were exhausted and one mom started talking about how hard it was working and taking care of home and children and how going to part time hurt her career so she had to switch back to full time. What she said next made me sit up and take notice. She said " What do I tell my daughter about careers? I am personally at a point where I feel tired and exhausted and that I have completely wasted a good portion of my life following a dream that I am even debating that I needed in the first place. I could have just stayed at home, never had a career and hence never had a conflict of interest. Do I tell my daughter that she would have a better life if she decided to stay at home ?".
This stayed with me the whole day - how much our mothers influence our choice of life styles, career choices and life goals. I have sons and have never given much thought to their career choices or whether they will even have one. I hope I haven't been sexist in assuming my children would of course work outside. My own mother dreamt for my sister and me and she dreamt big. My grandfather used to joke that she had determined that I was going to get a Ph.D. at 2. Anyway, I wonder whether my life would have been different if my mother had decided to work outside, if she had become disillusioned with the inequities that exist in the pay structure based on sex, if she had tired of the constant battle to manage home and her job outside, would she still have pushed us as she did?

While you hear more and more about the stay at home dad, Woman is still largely the parent that quits her once loved job to look after her children. Woman is still the parent that has her career stunted because of a choice to cut back on responsibility or go part time. Woman is the parent that will hang herself out on a limb for missing bedtime because of a deadline. Woman is crying on the inside for giving up the opportunity to work in another country for two months while the mother in her thanks her for sparing them the separation. Woman is the parent that in many jobs earns lesser than Man for the same load of work - apparently, as a society we still are under the impression that women produce lesser throughput than men. Woman is the parent that has to learn to not act like a girl to be taken serioulsy - apparently, men will promote only if a woman is man like in nature. Woman is the parent whose choice is constantly reviled - her choice of working outside makes her seem uncaring and unloving to some and her choice to stay at home makes her seem antiquated and unambitious to another. Woman is the parent whose right to choose is constantly threatened - she must have her baby even if it means she will not survive the pregnancy to raise it. Woman is the parent who is under constant pressure to live the image of the "perfect mom" touted on any which magazine she reads. Woman is the parent who constantly has to maintain the perfectly spotless home, cook perfectly nutritious meals, coach perfect little soccer games, make the perfect presentation at work and have the perfect bedtime story. Woman is the parent that must be super-mom.
Little wonder then that my friend was confused about whether she wanted this life style for her daughter. I wonder what I would have told my daughter.

Do you have a daughter? What would you tell her?

Out of the mouth of babes ...

They say it takes a village to raise a child. I think I will need a whole village and maybe the next ten to raise both of mine. Or atleast to answer questions I cannot answer and do not ever remember asking my parents. I don't ever remember asking my parents what marriage was - for the longest possible time (and this stymies even me how I was that ignorant for that long), I just thought my parents were siblings like my sister and I are, and that my grandparents were siblings too, this somehow reinforced in my mind because both my grandfathers had a "murthy" in their name - Ramamurthy and Krishnamurthy. Like I thought Rajnikant and Vijaykant were brothers (I know - I must have been a really lame kid) And then one morning, I woke up and I just knew what the whole deal was about. I just never asked my folks questions about stuff that I somehow knew would earn me a mild rebuke or at the very least some form of a dismissive answer. I stumbled into my own answers through incorrect assumptions and convoluted conclusions. Kids nowadays are different. And let's face it - we as parents are too. I would not dream of brushing off questions about marriage and babies and death as being too much too soon(or atleast I thought so). Hence the quandary - How much do you tell them? How much is too much? ANd on greater questions like religion and being a vegetarian, how do you teach them to accept that they are one while others around them are another? I obviously did not do a good job with the whole vegetarian shebang because one hiking trip, Vinay turns to the two other sole hikers - both white, strappy males in their 40s and says loudly, in English "Hunters! Bad hunters! Amma, do they eat the animals?" Needless to say, we cut our trip short.

Sample (on the subject of marriage):
Vinay: Amma, are you married?
Me: Uh huh. Yes baby I am
Vinay: To whom?
Me: Why, to your appa!
Vinay: Oh. Can you get married again?
Me: Oh no, I don't think so. And who would I get married to anyway?
Vinay: You could get married to Varun (this softly) or how about me?
Me: Oh baby, you will get married to someone else .
Vinay: Why?????

Sample on death:
Me(in a scream): Varun! if keep jumping off the bunk bed you are going to fall and break your neck!
Vinay: So then he will die?
Me: Er....no.
Vinay: He could die, right?
Me: Er ...we would have to take him to the hospital and the doctor would have to give him shots
(Now the "shot" word used to be enough to silence them both for a looooong time, sadly no more) So again....
Vinay: But could he die??
Me: Hey! WHo wants candy??!!!!

There are many times I simply bow to greater experience and influence and I let his teachers know. And they have been absolutely wonderful, guiding me through some particularly tricky ones and handling some at school in ways that I would never have dreamed of but which have worked out beautifully. Like the other day in the car, on our way back from school
"Amma, do you know some people have babies. And then some don't"
"Uh huh"
"And that's okay" "And then some people don't want babies -for a loong time. And that's okay too"
I sat there in stunned silence while my heart was just overflowing with gratitude to his teachers for patiently answering my inquisitive child his incessant questions while injecting a learning of acceptance in him.
So they say it takes a village.
I'll bow deep to that.

Sweating the small stuff

I had an epiphany today - I never truly appreciated before my two little brats just how many decisions a mother makes. And I am not talking about the life changing, incredibly big decisions like "I am going to raise my children to be vegetarian" or the "I am going to send my children to a public/private/charter school" or even the "I will let my son wear pink and show the world that there is no shame there" kind of decisions. No. I am talking about the small(er?) ones which still consume and ultimately subsume us. The decisions like "Has Vinay outgrown this shirt so that his entire tummy shows or can I still get away with calling it a midriff showing t-shirt? Do I need to put this pant away now? " or "Do they need to eat vegetables twice a day ?" or even "Does Varun's cold look bad enough to warrant a day off from schhol and me a day off from work". Somewhere around the 4 month mark after my first was born, in the interest of "making decisions jointly where our children are concerned", I asked Patta "Do you think his pillowcase is disgusting enough to wash today or can it wait another day or a week or so?". He looked at me like I had grown two heads in addition to the 20 (ahem) pounds from the baby and and like it was totally obvious said "Just turn the pillow over ". Huh. So much for making decisions together. Since then I have been plodding through these decisions alone, deciding what color vegetables and fruits they eat today, what color socks go best with their shirts(the red or the white?), whether to let them nap or whether not to...You get the picture. And all I can say is, vive la madre! while debating to myself whether the kids get to go to the park or the pool this evening.