Blogathon : Day 07 of 9 Days of Womanhood

It brings me immense pleasure to share that I, along with 24 other bloggers are celebrating #9daysofwomanhood throughout Navratri. I thank Jinal Gada for introducing me. I loved her blog on the prompt for today - check it out on www.foreversassymommy.com

Prompt for the Day : First Year With The Baby

A year with my son - seems like an eternity passed in that one year, but at the same time, it feels like, it got over way too soon...

Once I found out that I was pregnant, I dropped out of campus placements. My next decision was to take a break for three years and start once Shlok starts school - although my husband convinced me not to take that long a break but utilise the period to do another masters - but that's a story for another time. In the end, I spent one whole year, doing nothing but being with my baby.

I started logging his milestones right from the hospital itself - because I was recording his journey everyday from being on that ventilator to coming to me.

But once he was in my arms and back home with his family - there were even more happier milestones and celebrations - I recorded the day he started cooing, socially smiling, turning, crawling and everything that a Mom does.

There were so many firsts to record - his celebration of festivals, his birthday, his mundan even his first sickness - how I cried and screamed at God, asking him - hadn't he give enough trouble to this little soul. It was most definitely an eventful year where I savoured every moment of his.

But what I most dearly remember is how he made sure I get to enjoy what I love doing the most - Read!

Being an avid reader and being at home during the last trimester of my pregnancy, I did nothing but read - and read a lot of books and made quiet a dent in my TBR pile. I knew, things would change once the baby will be here - I knew there will be sleepless nights and every minute I get, I would only want to sleep and do nothing else. I am not sure if I was saddened with this realisation before the baby came, but I know for a fact that once Shlok was born, I didn't have a minute to think about it.

First few days after coming home went exactly as I had envisaged them - sleepless, tired and overwhelmed with my love for this tiny soul - I thought of nothing else. But soon the scene started changing.

Shlok would feed and sleep off in my arms, I would put him down, he would sleep for an hour and then wake up crying. Then as I would settle down to take him in my lap again and feed him, he would fall asleep within a few minutes. Slowly and gradually that one hour on the bed, further reduced to forty-five minutes to thirty minutes to fifteen and then to none.

He simply refused to sleep anywhere but my lap - no not on his papa's lap, not on anyone's lap - only mumma's lap. And once in my, he didn't much care about the position he was sleeping in, now he needed as many in between feeds as before - he was in his own comfortable world and he was happy.

Initially it impacted me negatively for i was more irritable and worn out most days thanks to the sleeplessness. Until one day, or rather one night, I picked up a book lying on my side table - thinking, why not, since I am already not sleeping at night, why not use the time to catch up on my reading.

And so it started, initially with a book in dim light. Following a scolding from mom, it shifted to ebooks on my phone which obviously strained me more and reduced my reading speed. And finally come November and our 3rd anniversary, the husband gifted me a kindle.

Then there was no stopping me - it used to be me, my son on my lap and my kindle in the night and I was once again making that dent in my TBR pile.

So, the son got me back on track with my readings because this continued not for a month or two but for half a year before he was finally okay with sleeping on the bed again.

Yes, there were better things to talk about here, but this memory stays with me because it amazed me to see how a newborn baby sensed what his mumma loved and needed and how he devised a plan to give her what she needs - it was like his gift to me for my birthday albiet a slightly delayed one.

And in that one year and then till today, not one day goes by when I don't look at his face and wonder - what would my life be without him - well it wouldn't have been this beautiful, this lovely and this magical.

Don't forget to check out Penelope Braganza who blogs at www.pennyponders.com - do check out her blog for today's prompt.

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