All about Playtime is a new series on the blog on kids’ playtime. Please join me in. Let’s understand the power of play; facilitate our children’s playtime and allow them to savor what their childhood deserves.
The more our four-year-old boy is learning to express his emotions and thoughts, the more I can relate it all to either the father’s or mine. One day, when I heard him shout for something silly, it pricked me, for I saw me in him. It was a reminder that I need to slow down, get to the ground and supervise my temper. The more I see him mirror one or both of us, the more I understand parenting. That parenting isn’t just the interaction between the parents and the children; but beyond, on a deeper note, parenting is the integration of the family as a whole.
As it’s the mother who is always given attention soon after the baby, the silent struggles that a dad undergoes often go unnoticed. And the fact that fathers either do not know to express their emotional struggles or perhaps do not want to, can leave them irritable or in an emotional confinement. Yes, not known to many, Paternal PostPartum Depression (PPPD) does exist!
Before my babies were about to land on Earth, I made sure to create unique nurseries for them; yes of course, to welcome them in a cozy, colourful ambiance though I know they are not going to remember it 🙄 I am sharing here, one of the colourful decors I had made before my baby girl was born. I love butterflies and I know many does. A bunch of colourful butterflies hanging on a string from your wall does give a serene sight, perhaps even to babies. And the fact that it takes just a few minutes to get this done in a few easy steps adds more serenity to it.
I didn’t attend a class on how to change the dressings when he wets bed. I haven’t got trained in how to look after him when he is sick. No one has ever reminded me that it’s time to feed him. No one has ever taught me how to maintain the home child proof. Yet, I’ve been there through all and I’ve done all that. It is unconditional! I am not to answer anyone if I don’t feed him a meal but I do it because I have no reason to it and I can take no excuses, no weekend offs or no public holidays in this matter. It is a fact that mothers become one overnight. Until the previous night he was born, I wasn’t as alive as I am now. As I write this post now, I feel loved of all the moms in the world. Perhaps, being unconditional is the greatest trait that the bond from umbilical cord has dictated upon us!
The first few years of motherhood is a phase of heightened emotions. It is exactly the phase when women become anxious about their career. It is exactly the phase when they are learning parenting. It is exactly the phase when they want to show love toward their parents. It is exactly the phase when they want to set smooth their relationship with their husband. It is exactly the phase when they want to rush to do everything that life had had in store all along! That’s why this phase turns out to be an overwhelming period of life, for most mothers. Having become overwhelmed of writing about motherhood for fourteen days in a row, I am going to do this post quickly tonight 😆 (Hopefully!)
I wish my children to grow fast as much as I wish them to grow slow. I wish my children to become independent as much as I yearn them to be my dependents. I wish my children to fly far to explore life a much as I want them with me forever. Regardless of what I wish, the sure truth is that they will fly away from this cocooned home one day. And this feeling of sadness that’s awaiting me, is a hard reality. Melancholy – is perhaps the most heart-wrenching emotion of motherhood
My blog turns 7 today, My son turns 4 today, My daughter completes 6 months today, And it has been a liberating feeling having raised the three this far! That’s the irony! In spite of the many little confinements motherhood imposes on me, I feel liberated after all!
Yes, it’s frustrating sometimes, embarrassing sometimes, tiring sometimes. But if you ask me if I want to exchange this experience with anything else in the world, I would have nothing as beautiful as motherhood. Especially, being privileged to be at home with my children for their everything gives a fulfilling feeling. Karma is indeed blissful!
All of us experience continuous flow of thoughts in our heads, don’t we? When this thought process is intermitted by a phone call or a door bell, we might come back to the same line of thoughts or pick up a new one. With either, the continuity of the flow of thoughts is reclaimed. However, when attending to babies or looking after little children, especially those who are talkative, our thought process gets disturbed frequently leading to a miserable discontinuation of the flow. The demand to catch up on more than one activity at the same time, in addition to the suspended thought flow can sometimes make a mom confused (atleast, if ‘disoriented’ sounds exaggerated). Hence, when moms say that they are busy, they actually mean they are multi-tasking. When they say they don’t have time for themselves, they mean that it has been a while since they got lost in thoughts. Here’s a 10-minute example of what happened today morning.