My Pregnancy

The day I got married, I had the  pressure of delivering a baby from everyone, especially from my mom.

I didn’t want a child in my life as I felt that I was still a baby and needed to grow up😆, but just because I now had the legal right to have sex, everyone kept pressurising me to bring a nanha munna in the family.🧒

And finally, when I got the news that I was pregnant I couldn’t even share that with my family🤷‍♀️, as they were passing through a very stressful phase.

When I needed my mother’s advice the most, she was busy managing her health and her own family issues. My mother-in-law was bedridden so I had no chance of expecting any help or advice from her.

I could only tell my parents about my pregnancy after the completion of my first trimester (which is considered as the most crucial phase of any pregnancy)

Well, let me take you back with a flashback.🙃

I come from a family of boys—yeah almost no girls. My grandfather had 4 brothers and they prayed for a sister. God heard them and after 27 years they had a girl delivered. My grand Bua. 👵

Then came my dad’s generation. They are three brothers. Dad prayed for a sister, there entered my Bua, after 27 years of my Grand Bua. 👩‍🦳

And after 27 years of arrival by my Bua, I entered this world.😍

My grand father distributed sweets to every house in our village and also touched the feet of all the elders saying. “mere ghar fir baraat aayegi” (sorry Baba I didn’t give you that chance to enjoy. I married in a  temple in broad daylight). 

Then after I turned 27, my chacha (uncle) was blessed with a baby girl.👨‍👧‍👦  So there is some connection with girl child and the number 27 in our family.

Well this was still good. But the real problem is that these two girls of our family (grand bua and Bua) could not deliver a child.

Here comes the tricky part, now I had to prove to the world that the girls of this family can produce babies and I am not a baanjh  (Someone who is infertile and is unable to produce babies)

To make matter worse, my husband’s family or khandaan have no girl child too. So I had this pressure to deliver a girl child. (quite strange given the typical Indian mindset of having a boy)

Trust me those few years before I conceived were torture because every talk was only about babies. I was fed up. My mom used to check with me every month whether I missed my period or not and whether there is any good news.🤦‍♀️

So finally after 3 years of continuous pressure and due to lack of any further excuse, I had to give up to their demands.

Other than proving my fertility to the world, there were two more reasons to conceive.

Firstly, I hate periods so I will be free from them for 9 months and secondly I wanted to see whom my child’s face resembled (of course I wanted her to be like me and say those first words…mumma)

Also I had heard that when we breast feed a baby, the periods get delayed for many months so that was a bonus for me.

How wrong I was. Expectations are bad. 🙁

I bled before pregnancy, during pregnancy, post delivery.🥴 (after 62 days of continuous bleeding) I had to take medicines to stop the blood flow and I got my periods damn on time.

To make matter worse, my daughter didn’t resemble me at all and her first word was Papa, that too on her first mother’s day….can you imagine my disappointment in life.😃

Well, all ended well. I did produce a healthy baby in December 2015 and I feel blessed to have her. Sometimes though I still feel that I wish I could have delayed it for few years , but as they say there is no end of desires. With swami jis grace I have started to believe whatever happens , happens for the best.

But with my hubby’s support, I was able to overcome all that and face it strongly and never let it affect me further.

Here, the point I wanted to highlight was the pressure of becoming a parent and how society cleverly plays this card- if a relationship is suffering- have a baby. If couples are not able to spend time together-have a baby, grandparents are getting bored- have a baby for them.

I mean for every problem in an Indian marriage, baby is the solution.

Parenting in today’s world is a big task and it’s expensive too. Most new couples have jitters when they plan for a baby or when they are starting a family. Many couples plan for a baby because of the pressure from their families, I was no exception. The moment you get married, people start asking you about babies.

Now after the third birthday of my daughter my mom started asking me to give her a sibling again…I bluntly rejected any suggestion and said I proved my fertility and I won’t get into this trap again. She tried to convince me for almost 7-8 months. Now she has given up. I am stubborn you see.😂

I feel that having a baby should be a personal choice and not one made under any pressure. One should be strong enough and make up their mind and not get affected by the constant comments of people or their conditioned advice.

Image by RitaE from Pixabay