Sunday 13 October 2013

The Balance Sheet


So, little Coco has celebrated his first birthday last month and is now a big boy. His mummy too, celebrated her own birthday and a year of her 'Mummyhood'. It has been a great year for me, a year of great learnings, shocking new discoveries(!), life changing (and nappy changing) experiences. A year full of Irritation and tiredness so heavy, I would find it hard to get up in the mornings, and happiness that would make me feel lighter than air, a calm so sweet that would make me sleep like a baby, though the baby himself never slept like one! 

Coco, who began his life with somewhat difficulty and spent his entire first week in the neonatal ICU, has now become a little brat who is loved for his charming smile and feared for his tantrums with equal fervour. As soon as he fully recovered from all the issues related to his premature birth and started to look like an infant, rather than a foetus, our lives changed. Anyone, including doctors, who looked at him would say 'Ooh' rather than the earlier 'Tch, Oh!'. His blue eyes and sweet smile would attract family as well as strangers alike. I never knew people could be so friendly before I had Coco. Randomly, anyone would come and request to take a picture of him, to which, I could never muster up courage enough to say 'No'. So, right now, hundreds of his pictures are being seen across India, a few in the cellphones of Delhi Policewomen, some with the little girl who was at Mahakaleshwar Temple, Ujjain, a couple of pictures with the saleswomen at a shop in Gorakhpur, you get the drift! 'Send him on TV, he looks like J&J/Pampers baby' are the common words I keep hearing. 


 As I see him growing taller, I see myself growing wiser too! Of late, I am happy mostly about reduced use of breast-milk (from main course to snacks), a diminishing belly and vanishing stretch marks. Looking at him, even my concerns turn into something radiant, my worries become my treasures, in which I swim like Uncle Scrooge McDuck does in his wealth!