The Bumbling Mum Diary – II

Continued from Bumbling Mum Diary - I

It is one of the first things your family and friends enquire about, when your baby is born. Years later, when you are recounting baby tales - you are saddled with the same query. And sooner than you realize, by Gosh! You are asking the same profound question!!!! How much did your baby weigh?

For most first time Moms, their baby’s weight is akin to a scorecard for their motherly performance. Quite similar to Indirank, which we bloggers wait for, with bated breath every month. For me, each visit to the pediatrician was fraught with anxiety. Chewing my non-existent nails, I would wait for the verdict – two kilos in just a month...yessss! 

My baby girl was born underweight at a mere 2.6 kgs. I was aghast, a little shame-faced that I had managed far from a bonny baby. Maybe, I should have listened to my Mum and had those ghee laden laddoos... I should have been less bothered about my burgeoning weight...Should have slept more, hogged more...I was constantly plagued with these concerns.

But like most underweight babies, Tee managed to catch up really fast. I was jubilant – so what if I was cranky, depressed. At least I was doing a fine job as a Mum. Sadly, despite her piling on pounds, my baby was not exactly chubby. I would wistfully look at roly-poly babies sleeping contentedly in their mother’s arms, stare at their sumo wrestler frames and wonder why my baby preferred a size zero frame. Ahh...the cruel irony of fate. 

Oh, I toiled hard - tried a clever diet of mashed fruits, pureed cereals, freshly squeezed juice, experimented with all varieties of Cerelac, but my baby refused to plump up. The stubborn thing that she was, she would clamp her mouth shut and gave a firm thumbs down to all my path-breaking initiatives. Even if I did manage to coax some of it down her gullet, she would promptly puke it out and preferably on her unsuspecting mother. I even made husband click pics, so that later in life I could furnish photographic evidence of the systematic torture in her tiny hands.

My Maa would make it worse with her edition of motherhood horror stories. You think this is bad? Wait till you hear mine. I was a skinny baby and continued to be so despite her herculean efforts. Not the type to give up easily, like King Bruce she tried and tried until she was tired. My dad had to resort to clownish gyrations to keep me amused during my feeding ritual. I was subjected to endless experimentations – stinky goat’s milk diet (yuck, yuck, yuck), eggy diet (no wonder I couldn’t stand the smell of eggs for the longest), visits to the new, happening Russian specialist, oh she tried it all. It was only at the age of 17, after attending a music camp at Aurobindo Ashram in Nainital , did I start eating properly. The food was so bad there it made me realize the goodness of home food. I returned skinnier but wiser.



And like my Maa, a few months of toil later, I reconciled myself to “the fault lies in the genes” logic. Plus my baby photographed well and appeared much plumper in the pics. At least later in life I could always fool myself into thinking that she was actually chubby. When she turned one, she loyally stuck to a certain weight and no amount of effort would make it go northwards. Quite similar to my current Indirank, that I’ve been stuck with for the last three months. But it was from then onwards, like any seasoned mum I started following Krishna’s philosophy. Perform your karma but sans expectations.

Years later, as I leaf through her pics in the album, a gentle smile plays on my lips and my heart turns to mush. She looks so adorable in those pics, her eyes sparkling with mischief, smiling a toothless smile. Was I too busy trying to be the perfect Mum that I missed out on the joys of motherhood? My reverie is broken by an anguished howl from my daughter. Maaaaaaa.... I’ve put on a kilo! Do I look fat? Gosh, I look like a cow now. No more chocolates for me Maa and from now on just one chapatti for dinner. Me, I just shake my head, let out a resigned sigh and with practised ease I say No sweetheart, you are far from fat. But don’t you think you should start exercising now?