The Incidental Anger of a Reluctant Super-Mom
by Chidambarakumari Ponnambalam
[box]What really does a mother go through with the arrival of her child or children? Is it all happiness and celebration? It’s that and something else too. Chidambarakumari Ponnambalam, mother of two, shares her experiences in a heartfelt piece.[/box]When I first held my little girl Maya a good four years ago, I felt all the reactions the million baby guides told me I should feel – ecstatic, tired, proud and afraid. But above all I felt an immense love for that tiny human being in my arms, a tidal wave which slowly filled my every sinew, every nerve, and every thought and soon pulled me into a realm far away from my comfort zone.
I wanted to be everything to her – the mom who baked cookies because it was a Tuesday, the mom who would lie down and count grass with her toddler all afternoon because that was precisely what was marked in the To-Do list, the mom who would be around 24/7 to chase monsters and build fairy gardens. Yet after a few months of doing just that I started to tire of this gig. So when Maya turned 18 months I took the first job that came my way.
The night before I attended the interview, I sat in her room and wrote a long tear-stained letter asking her forgiveness. I cried the first day I dropped her at daycare, a little more than she did. Handling a job and a child is easy when you have family helping you. Appa flew in immediately to help with childcare on the days Maya didn’t go to daycare. Working away from home invigorated my mind and soul that I barely noticed the tired limbs when I reached home. I cooked new recipes, took Maya out for walks, read new stories. In short, my life couldn’t be happier.
I was wrong.
A year later in our new home, my darling adorable little son Arya arrived with much fanfare. The thing with parenting is everyone who has ever spent couple of hours in the vicinity of kids deems it as life’s important mission to teach you how to raise kids. So from the nurse, to my grandmother and her neighbour, Maya’s daycare provider – everyone told me how older siblings will react to the arrival of another baby and what I could do to ease the transition. Every lesson sounded valuable but I couldn’t do all of it.
With Maya, my husband fell in love with me a second time because I gave him the best gift he could ever ask for – a beautiful daughter. My parents doted on their darling first grandchild and the daughter who brought her home. To know Maya is to love her. There is simply no other way. So when Arya joined our family, everyone did their best to make Maya still feel loved. Amma who had come down to help us with the new baby and the new house spent all her moments with her granddaughter; cooking her favourite dishes, running in the backyard and weaving stories of trains and goddesses, all in the same breath. Somu, my husband, disappeared for long stretches of time to entertain his daughter and to let her know that her Dad will always be around while I lay alone in the hospital room making sense of a newborn’s cries.
At home, I sat bundled up with my son in an upstairs bedroom while the rest of the family ran through the sprinklers in the backyard. I changed poopy diapers and gave baths to a newborn all by myself while Amma and Maya ate icecream in the backyard. Gusty summer breezes carried Maya’s tinkling laughter to my wail-ridden bathroom walls. It was not that they ignored me but to my tear-filled eyes, the picture was always blurred. Amma brought me food upstairs, Maya toddled in to sing songs to her new best buddy Arya; yet to me, nothing seemed enough.
I hated the huge house. I hated having to go through a second C-section that made me sit in one place to heal while the rest of the world had fun. I loathed the fact that my husband felt Maya needed more attention than I did. I loved my kids. But I hated Motherhood.
“PPD is a figment of the Western world’s imagination. Indian mothers do not get it. Indian mothers always love their children and would sacrifice everything for their well-being.” How I wish this was true. It took a Herculean effort everyday just to smile. My mood swings were very extreme and every argument left me more vulnerable. I wanted to kill myself but since I felt my husband was a no-good father, I wanted to kill him instead. Finally I asked for help. I told Somuand my doctor. I was prescribed ‘happy drugs’ and lots of love and attention.
Somu and I worked on getting me back to my normal self, whatever that was. He took one afternoon off every week and took me out for lunch. He listened to my rants and however silly they may have sounded, he never judged me. Maya was sent to a daycare for five days and with my mother-in-law around to help with the baby, I slowly got back to working part-time. It wasn’t easy. But the distraction that work provided really helped. I went on dates with Maya to reconnect; we made pizzas at home, we baked more and we painted a lot. I worked real hard to make her understand her mom was still there for her. I worked harder to believe in love itself.
I felt alone. To be fair I never told anyone but my mom. Amma still won’t really talk about it. Or maybe that’s her way of dealing with change. I really can’t tell. I couldn’t talk to my friends. Somehow I got the feeling everyone only wants to talk about happy mothers. Tired mothers who want to crib about their spouses, well maybe, but not sad mothers filled with murderous rage. What do you tell such a mom? So I kept to myself, faked happy smiles every time I forced myself out and bottled it all up. I felt ashamed. I, who had always wanted kids, to be depressed, meant I was a bad mother.
Six months later, I was off the meds and got a clean chit of mental happiness. I felt light.
The baby is now a running, climbing, falling toddler and older sister is in a typical four-year old ‘why ?’ phase, both adding to more confusion to my already overrun plate. I transitioned to a work-from-home status with occasional runs to office when my family gets under my skin. Our couple-only lunches have slowly disappeared and replaced with homemade pizza evenings and screams of ‘Maya! Don’t you dare drop that plate on his head’.
I am not completely at peace with Motherhood, this constant nagging demand of moms to sacrifice perfectly shaped eyebrows, of careers, of night outs with girl friends, of quiet evenings in book shops. I hate we don’t ask much of the Dads. We are euphoric when the bloody man changes diapers and loads the dishwasher twice a week. We sing paeans of the ‘hands-on Dad’ when he puts the baby down for naps or builds mammoth swing sets in the backyard. Err…who cooked and fed and bathed the kids while someone was hammering away till kingdom come?
*Sigh*
At the end of this long and arduous journey I have learnt one thing – I love my kids. But to love myself equally is not a sin.
Chidambarakumari Ponnambalam calls herself the girl who refused to grow up. Then Life intervened and now she is mom to a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. When not dreaming up stories, chasing butterflies, scaring away monsters, and writing letters to fairies, she takes her fault-finding streak to a whole new level as a software QA Engineer. She also blogs occasionally at http://odetolunacy.blogspot.com
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