Adventures in Parenting - Chapter 3: Of the Mother and her Moods..

This post is intended for male readers only. Female readers, feel free to stop reading here.

So boys, consider this a heads up for the time when your better half is expecting. Pregnancy is a minefield. All the hormones flooding her body turns your wife into an emotional wreck and her moods swing more times than a pendulum in a grandfather clock.

You would think that everything is going fine and then one innocuous comment and BOOM.. everything blows up in your face. Like I said, a minefield. But each husband has to navigate the minefield on his own. The positions and triggers of the mines might vary from wife to wife. What I am jotting down here are just templates based on which you may try to develop your navigation strategy.

1.       Cravings: This is an inseparable part of pregnancy. You can never predict what she would crave and at what time. Old Malayalam movies have led us to believe that a pregnant woman would crave raw mangoes or tamarind. Let me tell you at least in my case, that is basically bollocks. So don’t go stocking up on raw mangoes once you get a positive pregnancy test. You are more likely to be hit with a “Ben & Jerry’s Rocky Road Ice cream” craving at 12 in the night like Preity Zinta has in “Salaam Namaste”. There are basically 3 ways to deal with such demands.

a.       The Absentee Husband: Make it clear from the get go that she need not expect anything from you. Basically as if you were not there at all. I would not recommend this option at all as this would lead to escalation of emotional states which you want to avoid during the pregnancy. If you are opting for the absentee husband route, make sure you are actually an absentee husband, like if you are geographically separated during the duration of the pregnancy. Otherwise, try this at your own risk

b.      The Tautologist: In logic, tautology is a formula which is true in every possible interpretation. This approach would involve saying “Yes” to all her demands, however outlandish or inconvenient they may be. This will keep you in the good books of your wife and prevent any emotional outbursts (atleast on this count). But the risk in running this approach is the ever escalating expectation threshold. With each outlandish demand you meet, chances are that the next one is even more outlandish. So be aware and know what is set to come your way when you want to be the Tautologist.

c.       The Middle Pather: This is an approach that requires a certain finesse. Your married life prior to the pregnancy should serve as your guide while walking the middle path. In this approach, you basically say yes to her cravings as long as they are doable without much inconvenience. This way, you stock some ammunition for the time when an inconvenient demand comes through. For e.g, you might just be thinking of putting your feet up and relaxing for a bit after a hectic day and a heavy dinner when she might suddenly want to have some ghee laddoos. That’s when you tell her no and to the inevitable complaint that you never meet her demands, you list down all the times you have said yes. Handled correctly, it will keep emotions from acting out and you would have expertly diffused a dangerous landmine.

2.       Temper Tantrums: With the hormone world cup going on in her body, she is bound to lose her temper at times. What you need to do is to ride it out without you losing your own. I admit I have been unsuccessful at it during the initial stages but after a couple of shout-a-thons, I learned how to control myself. The key is not not to lose your temper but not to lose it in front of her. Two lost tempers would resonate like sound waves and produce a whole that is more than sum of its parts. Listen to her with a smile on your face, offer some words of consolation, go to the other room, punch a hole in the wall and return to her with the same smile on your face. Your fists might hurt but believe me, that is a far better option than engaging in a shouting match. You not only aggravate the mother but it also affects the child in the womb.

3.       Sting in the tail: Finally the baby arrives and you breathe a sigh of relief. But beware of the nasty sting in the tail called antenatal depression. With the baby out of her body and the hormones still going hammer and tongs, some bouts of depression are bound to happen. Whether it be regarding her self-image, ability to take care of the baby or just control of day to day happenings, anything might throw her off. Your role to play at that time is of a cheerleader, agony aunt and a best friend. Reassure her that there is nothing wrong with her and the changes happening in her body are just temporary. Reiterate that nothing that is happening will ever change the way you feel towards her. Support her at times when she feels helpless and cheer her up when she is at the verge of tears.

The pregnancy is a roller coaster ride for the woman involved. Some part of the unpredictability, anxiety and frustration gets passed on to the husband too. How smooth the 9 months or so are depends on how you are equipped to handle the unexpected. With the above mentioned tips, I hope you are better off than starting from scratch. Whichever way you handle it, just make sure to be there for your better half come what may, because what you see in front of you is just the start of a journey that will change your life forever.

Adventures in Parenting - Chapter 2: Google-itis

Since Larry Page and Sergey Brin rolled out Google in 1998, the unknowns in the world have shrunk drastically. “Google”, which started as a noun has since then been promoted to a verb and the whole host of techies have taken to the verb in a way that a baby duck takes to swimming.

Google has become the omnipotent – provider of all. Whether it is pirated mp3s of the latest Bollywood flick, DVDrip of the latest Hollywood blockbuster or definitions of complex medical terms like bilateral renal pelvic displacia, google knows just where to find them.

What this has accomplished is that everyone with an access to an internet connection and working knowledge of any browser has turned into a self-taught doctor. Rather than what the actual doctor says, people have now started believing the links that Google dishes out.

The one ritual after we got each of the scan report was to come home and religiously google each of the terms in the report. Who cares that the Doctor told everything was normal? We wanted to have Google’s opinion of the same. First couple of times, this exercise went off without any red flags getting raised. Then came the anomaly scan report.

In the anomaly scan report; there was a mention of mild bilateral renal pelvic displacia. During the scan, the Doc performing the scan had certified that everything looks good and there are no issues. But later, while taking a second opinion from Dr.Google, we found that the meaning of mild bilateral renal pelvic displacia is that the baby’s kidneys are larger than they should be. Cue Panic. On further consultation with other webpages referred to by Dr.Google, we came to know that the kidneys should be only around 4.5 mm while in our case it was 4.7 mm. one fifth of a millimeter was proving to be the cause of concern.

There comes another question. Who decides what is normal? In an age where we didn’t have machines which could measure a yet to be born baby’s kidney up to one tenth of a millimeter, didn’t people have babies? What if the baby has larger than average kidneys? The term average itself denotes that there has to be values more than the said number. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be the average. So who says a 4.7 mm kidney is abnormal while a 4.5 mm one is not? It seems to be with more knowledge man gains, instead of getting more answers; he is faced with more questions.

Anyways, this mild state of panic continued till the next scan, where it was certified that the kidneys are now of regulation length and are well within the “normal” range.

Fast forward 3-4 months. My wife spent her maternity leave at home, in Kerala, waiting for the young one to arrive. In Kerala, we had opted to consult Dr. Prameela Philip at Poyanil Hospital, Kozhencherry. During the first scan conducted there, my wife, with all the knowledge gained from Google, asked the doctor about the amniotic fluid level. With what could have been an amused smile, the doctor replied “ Aavashyathinu undu” meaning there is enough. The succinctly worded message within her response that I could decipher was, “Leave the medical worries to us doctors. You just do what we tell you to do”.

In the world where all kinds of information are available at a mere touch of your finger, if only that were possible.

Adventures in Parenting - Chapter 1: 2 Little lines.

2 Little lines. A “C” under one and a “T” under the other. That’s how it began. Initial jubilation turned into hesitation. What if it was a false positive? Another couple of rounds of “pee on the stick” put that doubt to rest. Yep. Definitely pregnant. First major decision. Which doctor do we consult? Most of the well-known gynecs in Bangalore have waiting times stretching above 2 hrs. And that is when you already have a confirmed appointment. Good luck trying to get through via a walk-in. Better bring your lunch with you.

One argument was that if everything went normal, we do not need an expert Gynecologist to see it through. My policy was, as the saying goes, “Better to have and want not rather than want and have not”. Thus we decided to go with the best in the business, Dr. Praveena Shenoi at Cloud 9, Old Airport Road. After a couple of walk in wait-a-thons, with my wife constantly reminding me that if we had gone with some other doctor, we could have reached back home by then, we succeeded in getting a confirmed appointment for the third visit. The trick was to book the next appointment as soon as you came out of your current consultation.

An array of tests and an ultra-sound scan later - nothing to report, which is actually good news when it comes to pregnancy.

Still, for the first 3 months, each bump in the road, each pothole that the car ran into, was a source of a minor heart attack. Every twinge of pain in the stomach/abdomen area raised the heartbeats. It is said that around 85% of miscarriages happen within the first trimester. And when you have already had one, the worry gets multiplied manifold the second time.

It doesn’t mean that once you cross three months, all worries are lifted and everything is hunky-dory. The cycle I found during this time is, Tension before the scanà No issues in the scan report à Jubilation and reliefà Tension before the next scan.

So basically, you are worried about a scan basically all the time, and you have an array of scans to go through too, Ultra Sound, NT, Anomaly, Interval Growth and so on. All you can do is keep calm and cross all your fingers and toes that nothing abnormal comes up in the scan reports. But even with all that, the worrying becomes an integral part of your wait for the baby. Or maybe life is just preparing you for the lifetime of worrying that lies ahead.

Adventures in Parenting - Chapter 0: Prelude

What does it mean to be a parent? How does it feel to have the responsibility of shaping a human life and by extension a part of society thrust upon someone’s shoulders? How many times should I think before I take a decision that concerns my child? All are questions that will need answers very soon.  While embarking on this exciting journey of parenthood, I plan to leave behind a journal cataloguing my adventures or misadventures in parenting.  This will be a father’s perspective into the exciting, scary new world that he steps into with the conception of his child. You might find these entries a bit male centric because that is the viewpoint from which the story is told. Stay tuned for the first entry in the next few days...

Back to Life..

3 Years.. It's been three long years since I have written something in this blog. The reasons for this extended period of absence were multiple - Lack of time, other commitments, writer's block.. let's not get into all that.

Since I have left this part of the blogosphere, world has changed quite a bit and so has my life. When the last entry was made, I was still working in Chennai, still an HCLite. Since then, I have relocated to the Garden City of Bangalore and after a short stint with the "High Performance. Delivered" guys, I am currently "Applying Thought". 

From being a newly married guy when the last entry was made, I am now post the 3rd marriage anniversary getting know the ups and downs of married life.

This is my first blog entry in the world where Sachin Tendulkar no longer plays cricket.

My world is set to change further. That particular change provides me fodder for a series of blog entries that I would be making in the coming days. Hopefully, I would be able to find some time to keep this going. With that optimistic thought, let me sign off for now.. But watch this space.. Lots more to come here.