Nothing quite like motherhood

Satjit Singh

I was reading a sentimental outpouring by a dear one in my family: ‘A first time mother like many others, I have started looking into the mirror more often. I have pigmentation, a few blemishes. My body never looked like this, never felt like this — heavy, tired, exhausted, swollen, achy, weak. There are a million reasons to not like myself right now. But one reason that outgrows all these emotions: I am the first home to my baby. A woman can dislike her body, can she dislike her baby’s abode? Therefore, I love the way it’s swelling. It gives my baby’s tiny arms and legs more space. I love the way it’s pigmenting, it gives my baby better protection from the sun. I love the way it’s exhausted, it prioritises the baby’s nutritional requirements over mine. And I would love all the stretch marks too. That’s my baby’s nameplate, of the first home.’

This made me reflect. What ecstasy I experienced when I held my newborn for the first time. Three decades later, my daughter-in-law smilingly put in my cautious hands a nanhi pari, hours after her birth. It was heavenly. I could never confess my fantasy of having the firsthand experience of a life taking form inside the body. Perhaps it was the fear of being called a pervert. 

Today, being a father of grownup boys and playing with my granddaughter, talking childishly about almost anything under the sun, I can confess this too.

One of the most common questions growing children ask is ‘how was I born?’ A doctor-niece laughs when she tells how, as a child, she used to look for a reservoir in a gurdwara, where ‘Babaji gave the sweetest child’ to her parents!

A gynaecologist friend says that even after handling more than a thousand deliveries, she still finds every childbirth a miracle.

Being someone who creates new relations in the family and society by bringing a child into the world is an honour with no parallel recognition. Nevertheless, this status comes at a price — physically, mentally and emotionally; the physical demands on a women in the process of childbirth and child-rearing can only be imagined. Youngsters are now openly discussing the sublime experience — the little one kicking and turning over; enjoying her own little world in the womb and responding to the sounds outside. The warmth, the sensation and feelings are beyond words.

‘Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant adventure not available to men. It is a woman’s crowning creative experience of a lifetime.” 

I am reminded of a get-together of friends at my place. The hot topic was women’s liberation and travails of child-bearing. A friend playing with my year-old son abruptly spoke: ‘I also want liberation; liberation from dependence on a woman to have a child.’

‘No chance in this life,’ his newly-wedded wife quipped; and everyone laughed. For this, and many other experiences, one life is certainly not enough.