That First Year..

My dear friend send me a book for my birthday - titled Bringing Up Vasu - That First Year. It was written by an IIM grad and when the book was out there was enough marketing noise around it, but I never bought it...I am not sure how much of the fictional account in the book is autobiographical, but reading it made me think about my first year with my baby...

 

Given that I will be going through the whole drill very soon, it was good to look back and reflect...I did a quick browsing through my old posts to see whether I had written something after 1 year and couldn't find anything...Maybe there is a post which I am unable to trace now...Anyway, how I would have talked about that first year then and now is drastically different, so I can write about it again...

 

The book talks about stuff which I could hardly relate to...My experience was very different...The protagonist takes a break from her career to look after the baby and suffers huge guilt pangs every time she tries to get back to work or even as much as move away from the baby...I had no such problems - guilt was (and hopefully never will be) never a part of my parenting journey till date...

 

I went to work till the date of my delivery and went back to work on my 87th day...In fact to familiarize me with staying away from the baby, hubby dear took me out one day around when the baby was 60 days old and we promptly got stuck in a traffic jam...By the time we reached home, the baby was super hungry and I was super uncomfortable in an animalistic sort of way...but I never felt bad about going out - we had a marathon feeding session as soon as I was back and then both of us were happy...

 

The first year though was a struggle - juggling work and family was toughest in that one year ! and everytime we thought about a second child, we were hesitant about it, primarily because of that first one year...Depending on other adults is a tough choice and as my hubby says 'It was like two lions living in the same den'....

 

A lot of my working friends used to say that they felt upset when they went home and the baby refused to come to them and instead used to cling to the primary caregiver ( mom, mil or maid). I never felt that way either - he used to come to me when he felt like it, and I was happy about it...

 

Compared to the book, I had an easy child..I have seen parents struggle with a collicky baby and it is madness !!! My son also quickly learnt to sleep through the nite, and I used to wake him up for his feeds...He was also a no-fuss eater - his feeds used to rarely last beyond 5 minutes (the average duration is supposed to be 20 minutes)...everyone used to think that I wasn't feeding the baby enough, till he started drinking from the bottle - when he started emptying the bottle with great speed, people were releaved and said 'ok, he eats fast like his dad !!' :)  Altogether, the baby's general attitude towards life made it easier for me in the first year....I only had to deal with MY problems and not his...

 

They say every baby is different...I am wondering how the first year will be the second time around !!!