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Yes! I love my son but I have earned this feeling. I couldn't feel this love on the day he was born, because I was consumed by my own pain & discomfort.
Yes! I love my son but I have earned this feeling. I couldn’t feel this love on the day he was born, because I was consumed by my own pain & discomfort.
It was not easy for me to become a mother. My bosom was oozing milk after the very minute I delivered him but ‘motherly feelings’ didn’t touch me. I was frustrated by the very fact that people were smiling around me, and no-one had a thought that I was in pain.
I didn’t like feeding him. The first night with him was not less than a nightmare for me. After every two hours, he used to cry and I had to rock him in pain. The women and men of my family expected me to mother him like an expert mom. According to the people around me, the sleepless nights, the hungry stomach, painful stitches, never-ending menstruation, tasteless food, and hard chest was less painful in comparison to my crying child.
I needed someone to understand my pain. I needed someone who understood that by just giving birth I don’t become a mother. That someone was my MOM! My mom first hugged me and then Aarav. She cared for my sleep and rocked him many nights.
She quenched my thirst for love and attention. She fed me with food of my choice, and my sister filled my days and night with laughter, childhood talk & gossip. With all this TLC, I was slowly healing inside. They were not judgemental and didn’t advise me to do this or do that. My mom just modeled out how to become one.
One afternoon, I was reading a book and Aarav was sleeping beside me. He was one month old. He twisted and turned and gave a little cry. I bent towards him and stroked my nose on his cheeks. I didn’t know when I cuddled him and he slept again. My stitches were healed. My stomach was full. My pain was replaced with bubbles of love and excitement.
That day I opened his small fist and touched his small curled fingers. I smelled milk on his cheeks and the baby powder around his neck. His oily scalp with little hair and broad hairy forehead made me realise “Oh he needs massage with besan”. My mom who was standing near the door realized that I no more needed her…
From that day to this day – each day I just observe him growing, and fall in love with him all over again. Yes! I love my son and I have earned this feeling.
Image source: shutterstock
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I huffed, puffed and panted up the hill, taking many rest breaks along the way. My calf muscles pained, my heart protested, and my breathing became heavy at one stage.
“Let’s turn back,” my husband remarked. We stood at the foot of Shravanbelagola – one of the most revered Jain pilgrimage centres. “We will not climb the hill,” he continued.
My husband and I were vacationing in Karnataka. It was the month of May, and even at the early hour of 8 am in the morning, the sun scorched our backs. After visiting Bangalore and Mysore, we had made a planned stop at this holy site in the Southern part of the state en route to Hosur. Even while planning our vacation, my husband was very excited at the prospect of visiting this place and the 18 m high statue of Lord Gometeshwara, considered one of the world’s tallest free-standing monolithic statues.
What we hadn’t bargained for was there would be 1001 granite steps that needed to be climbed to have a close-up view of this colossal magic three thousand feet above sea level on a hilltop. It would be an understatement to term it as an arduous climb.
Why is the Social Media trend of young mothers of boys captioning their parenting video “Dear future Daughter-in-Law, you are welcome” deeply problematic and disturbing to me as a young mother of a girl?
I have recently come across a trend on social media started by young mothers of boys who share videos where they teach their sons to be sensitive and understanding and also make them actively participate in household chores.
However, the problematic part of this trend is that such reels or videos are almost always captioned, “To my future daughter-in-law, you are welcome.” I know your intentions are positive, but I would like to point out how you are failing the very purpose you wanted to accomplish by captioning the videos like this.
I know you are hurt—perhaps by a domestic household that lacks empathy, by a partner who either is emotionally unavailable, is a man-child adding to your burden of parenting instead of sharing it, or who is simply backed by overprotective and abusive in-laws who do not understand the tiring journey of a working woman left without any rest as doing the household chores timely is her responsibility only.
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