The Genesis
By: Sudha Chandrasekaran
Pregnancy is an interesting voyage for parents-to-be; a synthesis of several incidents; feelings and emotions. One of the most wonderful and intense experiences imaginable is that of bringing another human being into this world. This is one of the most difficult and emotional moments in a woman’s life yet it is full of limitless joy! It’s something that creates an entire range of new inceptions and is a chapter that concludes happily with the arrival of the new-born. Life is never what it was and a brand new expedition begins. Women, for time immemorial, have carried their young ones and it is for this reason alone, they deserve a big applause. “Congratulations guys. It’s a baby girl,” said the ultrasound technician in the Boston, as we focused our eyes on the screen to look at what he pointed to us! Trying to decode what an ultrasound appears like is similar to reading Robin Cook’s novel handwritten by a doctor with illegible handwriting! Black and white images bounce up and down the screen and you look at whatever the technician wants you to see. Finally, it all dawned – the tiny hands, little feet, the spinal cord, the lub-dub sound of the pumping of little heart – approaching close to 150 beats per minute that stood out as a gentle reminder of a resolute life in the formative stage. We see the glow surrounding pregnancy.
Through the various trips to the doctor, you realize that there’s a small lifetime spent before a lifetime in the world begins. The parents-to-be, especially the first time entrants into this club, experience a gamut of emotions along the path – there’s the anxiety of expectation or surprise as confirmed by some parents, the excitement accompanying the confirmation of the good news, a mixed bag of feelings of the journey ahead, the bonding that happens over the fast surfacing future and the subconscious preparation for a job which is totally new. You furrow through the months. New medical terms that sound completely foreign are hurled at you. You frequently patronize the coffee shop close to the gynecologist’s office and get confused when things are not going well. Congratulatory messages pour in from various quarters when you break the news to your dear and near ones. Simultaneously many family members get promoted – yes great grandparents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts and all gloat over this wonderful news. However, if this is the second child, nothing takes over the promotion that the elder sibling is in for.
If you do not reside in India, your curiosity to know the sex of the unborn child is soon satisfied which allows enough time for selecting some exotic names on the Internet. So Sahasra is in, but Sulekha is not! Vahin makes the cut, but Vijay does not. This means that an entire generation of kids will be raised with fairly complex names! It is amazing how functions related to pregnancy are all named after the baby even though the main focus is the parents. We have the baby moon, the last vacation one probably gets before a baby becomes a constant companion of the parents; and then again there is the baby shower, a modern take on an age-old tradition of honouring and pampering the mother to be, yes ‘Godh Barai’. At the end of all these fun-filled rituals, you realize that while you anxiously wait for the arrival of the new family member, you have hardly readied the stage for the new arrival- I have not yet set up the room; OMG, yet to select the colours, the toys, and the clothes. Am I ready? This appears to be the conversations with the yet to be born angel! We Indians believe in this concept of the baby listening to the mother’s voice from within the womb. If you are mythologically inclined, you’ll go that extra mile to make sure that you keep talking about whatever it is that you intend to convey to your baby.
When I walked into the atrium at the hospital, I was excited. I’ve always found hospitals exciting, even though terribly sad things do happen there. After all, there are places where beautiful and happy do take place, and I knew that sooner or later, I’d be there to deliver my baby. After nine months of stooping down like a duck day and night, the time arrives – on time for most, early for others, agonizing late for some, and spot on the appointed time if a planned Caesarean is in your destiny. After filling out a lot of paperwork, I was sent to the triage room on the labour and delivery floor and hooked up to a blood pressure monitor. My parents and brother’s family are already here hanging around in the corridor but nothing much is happening My husband arrives after half an hour, and we just talk for some time with the pain rising and falling every now and then.
You find yourself at the hospital with a bag in tow, with an expectation that this won’t really be that long and a realization that the long haul awaits you. You soon will realize that this was just the first instance that your child was at the helm and that you meekly followed your child! The time the baby takes to come out maybe directly proportional to the loss of gentility of the most courteous and attractive mothers-to-be! Doctors come and supervise; nurses empathize, the grandmothers-to-be start chanting prayers and the husband moves around restlessly, trying to maintain a calm exterior. The final moment is in and it then happens.
There is this flurry of activity around the room; highly strung tension floats everywhere as the baby makes its arrival into this world. Gradually, that tiny life that you have been preparing for during the past few months comes out from the safe enclosure of his home to a courageous new world. A whirl of wiggling limbs precedes a grouchy cry. This may be about the only time when the parents will feel happy about hearing it! It is perhaps one of those unusual gifts one receives in life –the birth of their own flesh and blood. My daughter’s birth made me ecstatic I fell in love with her and my own self. There is this bundle of joy and I experience all the overwhelming love that accompanies it. It is all over now-A passage of a lifetime preparing the preceding lifetime!
The first day just flew away and the baby slept throughout and the excitement of having given birth to my daughter kept my spirits up. Things change the next day and I get ready for the ‘baby blues’ to pitch in. Insufficient milk keeps the little one constantly hungry and wailing. Being a novice, I could not make my little one latch on properly. My mother advised me to keep the faith and maintain patience as things would ease out with every passing day. Anyhow, at the end of the day, your joy knows no bounds when your baby smiles and coos at you!
