Bringing up mom

Unlike most other jobs, becoming a mom requires no prior educational or vocational qualifications. And like in most jobs, we don't always get it right. We learn as we go along.

Close to a quarter century of hits and misses, bungling and fumbling as a parent has not made me wise and adept at what I consider my primary reason for existence. But I'm sure by now my child has grown accustomed to my style. For all you know, he may even hold it up to the next generation as the ‘correct' way to do things.

Most of us are blase about our education. By the time we're graduates and post graduates, we think we pretty much know everything. We take those fresher courses, then refresher courses, and we get by admirably. It's the other job — that business of mothering and parenting — that has some of us stumped. Not one class in all those years we spent studying taught us how to handle babies - how to hold them and feed them and change them and discipline them and so much more.

Looking back now, I'm convinced that I would have been judged a thoroughly unfit mother by the yardsticks used in most other countries and my infant would have been confiscated like a bundle of some restricted substance and sent off to be housed elsewhere!

Despite being on a prolonged post partum ‘high' because of the miracle of life that had happened, for months I was terrified to lift my newborn vertically. I'd never handled an infant before. (With my many nieces and nephews I had been just the gofer — I'd go running for help when they needed anything!) So my own unfortunate child was placed on a pillow, then the pillow went on my lap and then I got down to the business of feeding him! He was okay with it and so was I — since neither of us knew any better — and eventually he gave me the confidence to lift him up on one arm, and then I went on to that feat that comes so naturally to most mothers, doing all kinds of the other stuff with the free arm!

Cleaning up

Changing and bathing were two major hurdles of my day as a new mom. Both were done on a large double bed so that even if the baby magically learnt to turn over and roll before he could hold up his head, there was enough place to do that without falling onto the floor!

Of course, I'd have been happy not to bathe him at all until he could do a hip-hop under the shower on his own, but bath time was necessary and once a day, basins of warm water were readied, rubber sheet and towels were spread out, baby soap and lotion and powder were lined up — and I'd start the business of getting him washed and cleaned up.

Naturally, since he could probably sense my unease through the procedure, he would howl his lungs out; luckily for me, Big Brother and state social workers were not within earshot, only our German shepherd looking over my shoulder to check what I was doing at every step!

There were so many other seemingly inappropriate things I did later: solid food meant hand-feeding, schoolwork meant spoon-feeding - it was all a part of the bringing up process.

Bringing up mom to the stage when she could finally stand on tiptoe and peck the ‘child' on his cheek and say he had done a good job in educating her! After all, he gets all the credit for raising a mother. If he hadn't been there, I wouldn't have learned what this whole business was about, would I?

Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.