You know nothing, Gina F

August was a significant month: World Breastfeeding Week, followed by Mother’s Day in Thailand. Two things that I thought would come naturally to me when I gave birth seventeen months ago, in spite of people telling me repeatedly what a challenge it can be to be a first time mother. Until it happens though, it is difficult to imagine; the sleep deprivation, recovery from surgery, and a bawling infant depending directly on your body for sustenance, combined with the fears that you don’t know what you are doing, that nothing you do is good enough, becomes…. ….not the picture I had envisioned. You see, when I was in the glowing stages of a pretty easy pregnancy, I had pictured my future as a magazine mama. I was going to sit in my rocking chair, in white, while my baby cooed on the white rug in front of me. Note that I don’t own a single piece of white furniture. Obviously, reality  resembled this: me sitting on the floor, hysterically laughing, while the baby looked at me curiously, both of us, and the floor and curtains covered in poop. He had decided that the day to have an explosive case was the day his father finished paternity leave and we were home alone for the first time. Baby and me. And poop. I found breastfeeding very challenging, although I was hell bent on it. I couldn’t hold the baby properly, the little bugger would not latch for three whole weeks, I pumped so that I would not have to give in to one drop of formula, which I was convinced would poison my baby, to the point that I was about to drop from the sheer fatigue, and more often than not, was crying louder than the baby. I convinced myself that the baby had silent reflux, was lactose intolerant, and I was not producing enough, because he fed every 45 minutes, and the books had told me a well fed baby should go three hours. Whenever I was not feeding, I was reading up on feeding, and as my husband likes to joke fenugreek supplies in Bangkok had run out, because I was stuffing myself with tea, powder and tablets. There are so many misconceptions surrounding breastfeeding, and some amount of reading help dispel some of the myths, but the rest don’t. My favourite among these is the Gina Ford book, How to Train Your Baby to be a Robot. No, that’s not the real name of the book, but it could be. The routine goes something like this, “Your one month old will wake up at 7:14:56 am, take 3.4 ounce of milk from one breast. Then he will change himself, while you pump the other breast, to get exactly 3.8 ounces. At exactly 9 he will fall into deep slumber, and then you, magazine mama, can paint your toes, or the many things mama has the luxury of doing, before the next feed.” Ok, so this is not what she really says, but you get the drift. It is so regimental, and so precise, that no human baby can possibly achieve this. Or a human mother. As new mothers, there is so much pressure that society puts on you, overshadowed only by the expectations that you put on yourself, that it is a constant struggle. Post partum depression is a serious issue, and is not helped at all by people saying there is only one way to do things, when new mothers already feel so inadequate. Seventeen months on, I am still not the magazine mama, no coiffed hair or impeccable whites. The baby doesn’t coo. But he is one boisterous, gleeful little monkey. And I am the kind of mother that I always wanted to be: casual. Does my baby eat sugar? Yes, at times (I can hear the collective gasp), but he also eats his vegetables like a champ. Does he have a routine? Roughly, but we have a lot of flex for fun times. Did I ever end up feeding him formula? I did, although I breastfed for as long as he wanted to. Are we the perfect mother-son duo? Not by a long shot. But we love it. To read more from the author, visit: https://gupisworld.wordpress.com