by Parth Pandya
[box]Pregnancy is an interesting journey for parents-to-be, an amalgamation of so many incidents, emotions and feelings. It’s something that spawns an entire range of new beginnings and is a phase that ends happily with the arrival of the new-born. With a child, life is never the same again and a brand new journey begins. Parth Pandya captures the happy beginnings and happy endings of this phase in an interesting piece.[/box]“Congratulations. It is a boy,” said the ultrasound technician to us, as we strained our eyes at the screen, wondering where the source of the excitement was. Trying to decipher what an ultrasound looks like is like trying to read a James Joyce novel hand written by a doctor with bad handwriting. Black and white images bob up and down the screen and you see whatever the technician wants you to see. Nonetheless, it all came together – the little feet, the spinal cord, the tiny hands.., the pumping of that little heart – furiously going at close to 150 beats per minute stood out as a gentle reminder of a resolute life in the making.
Through the various trips to the doctor, you realise 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 way – there’s the anxiety of expectation (or surprise as some parents have reported), the ecstasy of confirmation, the nervous excitement of the voyage ahead, the bonding over a rapidly emerging future and the subconscious preparation for a new job.
You plow through the months. New medical terms that sound completely alien are thrown at you. You patronize the coffee shop close to the obstetrician/gynecologist’s office with amazing regularity. You question your luck when things are not going well. You question your luck when things are going well. You break the news to your friends and family – congratulatory wishes pour in. In one fell swoop, everyone gets a promotion – grandparents, great grandparents, uncles, aunts all feel an indescribable sense of joy. However, if this isn’t the first child, nothing beats the promotion that the elder sibling is going to get.
If you are outside India and aren’t the kind who want to cling to the suspense right till the end, you’ll know whether it is going to be a girl or a boy. That allows for a few months of searching for good names on the Internet. Yes, the Internet has more resources than one can handle when it comes to naming babies. As is the norm, the modern day parent leans towards the more exotic names. So Rehaan is in, but Rahul is not. Vihaan makes the cut, but Vinay does not. An entire generation of kids will be brought up with fairly complex and regularly repeated names. I can see how a Sachin or a Ram will be the odd one out in a group in a couple of decades.
It is remarkable how events in the pregnancy are all named after the baby even though they are purely focused on the parents. There’s the babymoon, the last vacation one typically gets before a car seat becomes a constant accompaniment. There’s the baby shower, a modern take on an age-old tradition of feting the mother to be.
As the end of festivities near, you realise that while you anxiously wait for the new arrival, you have barely set the stage for him or her. What about the room, you ask? What about the colours, the clothes, the toys? What about the car seat? Are you really ready? You say this aloud in your many conversations with the new born. Of all cultures, Indians have a leg in to this concept of the baby listening in from within the womb. If you are mythological-ly inclined, you’ll go that extra mile to make sure that you complete talking about whatever it is that you intend to tell your baby and also make sure that your wife does not go to sleep unlike Subhadra who thought it a good idea to take a little nap when Arjun was discussing the ‘Chakravyuh’ with her.
And then 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. You find yourself at the hospital with a bag in tow, with an expectation that this won’t really be that long and a realisation that you are in it for the long haul. Parent proposes, baby disposes. You’ll realise in time that this was simply the first instance that your child called the shots and you meekly followed. The time the baby takes to come out may be directly proportional to the loss of genteelness of the most comely mothers-to-be. Doctors come and supervise, nurses come and empathise, the grandmothers-to-be start chanting prayers and the husband moves around clueless, trying to appear in complete control. And then it happens. The action around the room intensifies, nervous tension floats in the air as the baby makes its way through. Bit by bit, that little life you were preparing for in the past few months emerges from the safe confines of his home to a brave new world. A flurry of wiggling limbs precedes a grouchy wail – about the only time the parents will feel happy on hearing it. It is one of those rare gifts one is afforded in life – the chance to watch the miracle of birth.
And just like that – it is over. A journey of a lifetime, before a lifetime. The birth certificate has a prosaic way of reporting the event. Names, places, people. It will rarely do justice to the many births that happen with that one arrival, rarely capture the scale of the new beginnings. More importantly, it rarely alerts one to the journey ahead. Nowhere on the certificate amidst the beginnings is there a little section that gently warns the parents of an ending – the end of life as they knew it.
Parth Pandya is a passionate Tendulkar fan, diligent minion of the ‘evil empire’, persistent writer at http://parthp.blogspot.com, self-confessed Hindi movie geek, avid quizzer, awesome husband (for lack of a humbler adjective) and a thrilled father of a precocious three-year-old boy. He grew up in Mumbai and spent the last eleven years really growing up in the U.S. and is always looking to brighten up his day through good coffee and great puns.
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