Life Love Laughter: Every Other Mother

My sincere apologies to all my readers for writing after such a big gap. In my defense, that's what this post is all about, hope you find it worth the wait..

Dear baby

You are 31 weeks old now and the special day is coming closer when you will enter this beautiful world and we will meet our little angel! I wonder whether you are a boy or a girl and this suspense is amazing in itself , but I see you as a chubby cute bright eyed darling who will brighten up our lives with your presence. Yes, knowing your gender would ease the process of choosing names for you..

Believe me darling, that is one big confusing task.

What should we name you? What would be the perfect word that could possibly describe the special place you will hold in this world! You'll not be just another person joining the population of the world, you would be "Our world" and a beautiful addition to every beauty and every virtue to the world and life.You would not be papa's copy or mine, you will be so much better and more amazing and creative than us. You won't need to learn from us baby, we will be learning from you!

Thank you for reading patiently, these are some lines from the letters I wrote to my daughter 'Pari' when I was expecting her. Why I mentioned them here is because this was the first phase of Motherhood.. the dreaming phase, creative phase when we use all the inputs gathered so far about motherhood and imagine our own version of ourselves as mothers and our babies as our heart and soul. And this is much before even looking at the baby or knowing if she is a girl or a boy..

Following this are many phases we go through, emotionally, physically and mentally and there is a rainbow of feelings we experience, when we hold the baby, when we hear their voice, when they make eye contact, when they hold our fingers with their hand, when we have not slept for 30 hours, when we are asked why is the house a mess, why is our face a mess? when they call us "mumma", when they innocently look at us when we are getting irritated, when we are crazily in love with them, when they drive us crazy and so on.. As a working mom I found out there is another spectrum with a variety of ambitions, limitations, expectations, struggles, successes and failures.

There are many quotes about mothers being next to God and superheroes and to be honest I shared them on Mothers Day a lot for my mother, before becoming a mom myself. Then last year on mothers day I was nervous, perplexed and rather embarrassed, because I did not match those quotes, the movies or even my mother at all! I was hardly making my ends meet, in terms of my responsibilities, expectations and ambitions. I was a winner, a topper in my education and career fronts before I was a mother. After maternity leave when I joined, I could not recognize myself! The rules had changed, the 10/10 score at home and office, both places was to enact as if it was the only role you have to play. I am sure this has been the story of almost every other mother whether she is homemaker or working, so I am going to share a thought that changed my way to look at myself and at mothers.

May be the quotes are not wrong or exaggerated. May be it is the way we look at them, or ourselves for that matter. We look at ourselves too closely and evaluate ourselves on molecular levels. What if we step back and look at the bigger picture! Instead of looking at what I am not able to do as a mother, I decided to look at what I could do now. Being a mother sure made me vulnerable to more leaves and half days and calls disturbed by baby's crying, but it also made me capable of multitasking to unimaginable levels.. I could work, travel home, feed the baby, make her sleep, travel back within 1.5 hours, complete work (otherwise baby's time will be consumed), travel home, hug and comfort her, take calls, feed her and then give her all the time and love in this world for the rest of the evening. I have given my feature Demo to clients on conference call (audio obviously) while feeding my baby in one of her worst mood days so far. When you look closely, you might find flaws or limitations in a day but when you look at the bigger picture, I have pushed the horizons of my abilities far away from before, my kid will grow one day and these limitations will fade. But I will be much more capable than I was before.

Being a mother sure weakens our bodies and makes our backs hurt, but there won't be one day when our baby will stay hungry, uncleaned or sleep deprived. We do the same chores, wear the same smile on our faces, play every game demanded by the kid, whatsoever. Being a mother did not make me under confident. It made me go through situations I thought were impossible and in the end of day turned out to be possible, travelling alone, weekend testing, crowded Indian wedding, fighting for my rights, daring to let go of my job for my kids emotional security (which made me realize my worth in the organisation) and many more. Being a mother made us bit overweight but we wear the same confidence in our eyes and walk past all judging and gazing eyes, we might not wear the 6 inches heels but our respect for ourselves makes us high enough to overlook hundreds of years of stereotypes and restrictions. Being a mother didn't put a strain in our marriage, it made us realize how malleable and ductile our relationship is, and how we can keep every petty issue aside and team up together as parents!

So dear mommies, It is time to halt, step back and look at the bigger picture of our lives and identify and acknowledge this strength of ours. We are not super heroes, as we were neither struck by lightning nor any infinity stone, and that makes us more powerful than all the superheroes we have heard of. We are not Gods, because there is only one. But we are the ones God chose to bring a new life to the world, to love, care for and dream for him/her even before they are born. We are ordinary people who develop extra ordinary skills and strength, and transform to a newer and better version of ourselves. So never let anyone make you feel less capable, responsible or beautiful.

You have not changed, you have EVOLVED!

Happy Mothers Day to all.