If you are new here, you can read the rest of this story in its first five parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
I sent a few photos from the paediatric ward to mom. She asked a simple question - where will you sleep? I remember getting teary eyed reading it. Because this was going to turn out into a horrendous ordeal.
One of my key learnings during 2017-18 was that I had been protecting my mother my whole life. Me - an 8 year old - wanted to save my mother from heartbreak as she discovered my father was cheating on her. Me - a 11 year old - wanted to pick her if they ever asked which parent I wanted to live with so she wouldn’t feel abandoned. (of course it never got to this Bollywood-like scenario in reality). Me - a 13 year old - would sleep in mom’s room so she wouldn’t feel scared at night. Me - a 31 year old - sent a message to my mom - “they have a proper pull-out bed here mom. And they also got us a fridge so we can keep our food.”
Funny. Also pathetic. But in retrospect everything makes you smile.
I wondered what mom was going through as she sat downstairs and waited for Angad (my brother) to pick her up. I knew it must have been terrible for her to watch me go in by myself. I know she was hurting because she hadn’t been able to hold Rumi for over 24 hours now. But more because she couldn’t hold me. After all, how was her emotion any different than mine? Like I pined to be there for Rumi, she pined to be there for me.
She sent me a beautiful message.
“This was the time to pamper you and help you recuperate from such a stressful period. I am sorry that my little baby will be so uncomfortable and alone ....my heart, thoughts, love, prayers are all with you 😚😚😚😚😚”
As a newborn mother, I could feel her pain as if it was inside my own body. Life goes full circle.
The highlight of this evening was another full circle. As she sat two floors below me in the hospital waiting area, she told me papa (my birth father), had reached out. Those that know me, know that he has been pretty much an absentia in the last two decades of my life.
He talked about a poem he wrote for me, and would sing to me when I was a newborn. He talked about how he had a connection with Rumi. For that moment, I felt like I knew my father. That he knew me. That we were still part of a whole. And I needed that. I needed to hear from him then. I needed to know that we weren’t so far gone that even a tremendous moment like giving birth wouldn’t move him. Move him it did. And how.
As I sat there, it was beginning to look like the tide was turning. The same nurse who had torn me apart from mom, came back to tell us that they would make an exception. That they would allow Lohit to stay the night. How little an accommodation on a regular day. What a life altering one on that day in December.
The night was a long one. For the first time we learnt how hard parenting with someone is. You think you know each other. You spend years dating, marrying, quibbling, loving each other. And you think you have been through it all. Nope. Not until you bring a child into the world together.
New lines are drawn. New emotions are discovered. From partners first, you turn into parents first. While you try to find empathy for each other, all your emotions are sucked into protecting this little being. This tiny piece of you that consumes you and becomes your world. It is as if the baby is in focus and everything else is hazy. Hunger, thirst, sleep, communication, everything, a blur.
On top of that, you want to follow your instinct but your partner vehemently disagrees. And there you have it. A cocktail for marital disaster.
Lohit - the same husband I fell in love with all over again as I saw him transform into a father - became a force to contend with.
We were both at so many odds, so quickly, that it felt like we would be irrevocably broken.
Simple things became world wars. Should we give him a pacifier? Should we swaddle him? How should he be burped? Is he still hungry? Should we top feed him? Should we continue to wake up every thirty minutes to demand feed? Should we even worry about cleaning the room around us? Should we brush! And it went on and on and on.
Wow. That we are seven months later - stronger than ever - alive to tell the story..that is mind boggling to me.
Over the course of the next five days, Lohit would lose 10 kgs. I would lose my emotional balance and every last inch of composure.
But we would gain something tremendous. And I don’t mean Rumi.
We would learn that it is possible to sleep on a narrow sofa-turned-bed with one of us unable to move or turn. It is possible to do so when one of us has been through surgery (yes, a crazy birth is no less). It is possible to do so without bathing for 3 days. And it is possible to sleep with the feet of the other next to your face as you do so (because that is the only way to fit).
We learnt that it is possible to survive on meagre cold food for days. To live on less than an hour of sleep. To cry in pain and not feel understood. And yet to turn towards the other and not away.
We learnt to transcend every last shame and bodily need to take care of this being we created together. We learnt that being parents means giving up everything else. That reaching the end of your limit often leads to a new dimension within yourself. That while we broke each other’s hearts a thousand times over in those five days, we are still alive to tell the story.
We learnt that forgiveness and love are simply two ways to describe the same thing.
We learnt that if that didn't break us, nothing else can.
Zoya, you have penned down every emotion very beautifully ❤️. Enjoy every moment of this beautiful phase, it's precious in every way. This write up for me is like revisting memories
Memories Revisited...
just sharing - I wasn’t that close verbally with my mom until I became a mom.Even after being a diabetic, hypertensive and a cardiac patient she stood up for so many nights to make sure I could catch up on some sleep...
our mothers are the biggest benchmarks when it comes to nurturing our kids ...
beautifully penned.❤️