{"id":154,"date":"2007-07-20T10:52:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-20T10:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2007\/07\/cult-of-bad-mama-part-1.html"},"modified":"2011-06-30T20:13:26","modified_gmt":"2011-06-30T20:13:26","slug":"cult-of-bad-mama-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/2007\/07\/cult-of-bad-mama-part-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Cult of Bad Mama – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m laughing out loud reading this<\/a> post, because it\u2019s what I\u2019ve always thought reading and hearing these tales of the sacrificing mother. What perfect rant material ! I mean, let\u2019s face it – I\u2019m no Nirupa Roy. Anyone remember her ? The white-sari clad, ever suffering, bent over a choolah, self-sacrificing mom there ever was (in Bollywood). Think of the most motherly mother you know, and Nirupa Roy could motherly mother her by a ton ! I mean, I\u2019m not dissing her or anything. She\u2019s got her choolah, I have my microwave – and what can one do about advancing technology ? <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not an earth mother types either. But the earth mother variety bothers me the least What worries is the abundance and the growth in the numbers of the \u201cSuperwoman and Mother\u201d – the kind who\u2019s driving hard negotiations with an important customer in Germany on the phone, wiping screaming baby\u2019s bottom with one hand, and cooking a 7 course meal with the other. And smiling. And seriously this phenomenon wouldn\u2019t bother me in the least if these women were located geographically halfway across he world. No, they happen to be neighbors, friends, close associates who come and extol their accomplishments before yours truly and in the same breath manage to praise their mothers-in-law and worry about the little time hubby dearest gets to devote to cricket watching. You can imagine my angst.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a SuperMom – I\u2019m a plain old Mom, and as cheesy as it sounds, I am the 100% unadulterated love-incarnate types. As you are. And you. And you too. Aren\u2019t all moms ? Let\u2019s not sell ourselves short. I don\u2019t have to blog about milk and poo-poo and pee-pee worries (am I glad my kids are potty trained now, whew !) but that doesn\u2019t mean I didn\u2019t worry about it. You would too, if you were the one doing the washing-up.<\/p>\n

\"\"And while we are fessing up, let\u2019s break a few myths. Cliched but true – Motherhood is hard (fatherhood is too). There are no easy routes to it – and that\u2019s from me, who\u2019s barely started her journey. I mean, labor is hard. If you listen to desi women (women like my Mom, mom-in-law, sister-in-laws, friends) who almost all delivered without epidurals, labor is labor – it\u2019s painful but it\u2019s pain you gotta take. I haven\u2019t actually received any reasonable replies about why it makes sense to avoid pain if you can. Apparently in India nobody ever thinks of an epidural (What woman – can\u2019t take a day or two of pain that\u2019ll totally rip you apart ? You wimp !) whereas in the US it\u2019s the norm – they will routinely ask whether you want an epidural, and no aspersions cast on your wimpishness. <\/p>\n

I mean, you\u2019re going to have a baby – you\u2019ve gone through 9 months of carrying around baby in your tummy, probably endured morning-bloody-sickness (how well put, Ammani !), gone through various tests which involve sticking a sundry number of needles in your arms and god knows where else, you\u2019ve gotten into the dreaded OBGYN\u2019s stirrups about a hazaar times, and now you\u2019re lying on the triage table with your legs way up and about half the ward peering up your vagina. Plus you face the prospect of painful labor, complications at birth, and if all that goes well, a scrawny little infant (trust me they all look scrawny at the time – all except mine) who\u2019ll be bawling for milk every hour regardless of night or day, and silvery stretch marks on your body which won\u2019t go way no matter what they say on TV, and a body which looks like it\u2019s still pregnant and won\u2019t fit into those pre-pregnancy clothes. You can\u2019t be a wimp now, can you ?<\/p>\n

\"\"That\u2019s why it amazes me when I meet a woman who wants to go un-medicated during labor. There can be many reasons, the woman wishes to go \u201corganic\u201d (prospective earth-mother ?), or the reason which nauseates me – that the husband or mom-in-law wish her to remain without a pain-saving device. Then there is martyrdom – are there less painful ways to be a martyr -I\u2018ll take them. It would make sense to me, if my writhing in pain would make the baby more beautiful\/handsome, ensure a high IQ, or even make the baby potty-trained at birth. It won\u2019t. And believe me, by the time you reach labor\u2019s crescendo, and the contractions are way up there, how you\u2019ll wish that you had taken something to shut out the pain. After my first experience, I made sure I got the epidural the second time around. It\u2019s actually quite miraculous, one moment you see and feel, and scream out the contraction – there was a little graphing device attached to the bed, which mapped out the intensity of the contraction – it\u2019s like the top-half of a sine curve, and quite interesting to see if you aren\u2019t otherwise engaged – and the next you still see the contraction on the graph, but you don\u2019t feel a thing. I\u2019m like – WOW ! Then, I was ready to write paeans and odes in praise of the epidural. (Disclaimer – this doesn\u2019t mean an epidural is right for you – consult with your doctor, etc.)<\/p>\n

The two days I spent in the hospital post-labor, was made better by the fact that the baby looked and slept like an angel, the hospital food included delicious pizza (catered from a nearby, extremely well-known hotel), I was finally able to go back to caffeinated drinks like Diet Coke, and could actually sleep on my tummy.<\/p>\n

Cult of Bad Mama – Part 2, here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m laughing out loud reading this post, because it\u2019s what I\u2019ve always thought reading and hearing these tales of the sacrificing mother. What perfect rant material ! I mean, let\u2019s face it – I\u2019m no Nirupa Roy. Anyone remember her ? The white-sari clad, ever suffering, bent over a choolah, self-sacrificing mom there ever was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_17000648_17000648":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,50,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-and-society","category-series","category-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"sow-carousel-default":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"amodini","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":2,"uagb_excerpt":"I\u2019m laughing out loud reading this post, because it\u2019s what I\u2019ve always thought reading and hearing these tales of the sacrificing mother. What perfect rant material ! I mean, let\u2019s face it – I\u2019m no Nirupa Roy. Anyone remember her ? The white-sari clad, ever suffering, bent over a choolah, self-sacrificing mom there ever was…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":739,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154\/revisions\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fridaynirvana.com\/fiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}