Thank you Acho

A New Chapter

When people knew that I had been married for 4 years and did not have a child, they expressed surprise and wanted to know why I wasn’t a mother yet. (By last year end, I am married for exactly 5 years.) I told them that I wasn’t so keen on giving birth. I was not. No, wait. I think I wasn’t very sure about it. I didn’t know what kind of mother I would be and I didn’t even know if I wanted to raise a child. But now that I am a mother, I think I have waited for the gift too long. No regrets, but I feel becoming a mother sooner would not have hampered anything in my life. It surely would not have killed any of my dreams like I feared. Right now, looking at the angelic face of my daughter is like nothing in the world. I love the way she smiles – an infant does smile in a day or two after the delivery – I’m told they are being teased in their dreams (by the gods).

I dreamed of giving birth to a son. By the time I had given birth, I had already dreamed four times giving birth to a baby boy. I dreamed that my labor wasn’t so difficult. True to it, it did not take long. Nurses thought it was quick – but of course the pain, though the duration was short was too, too painful. I thought my lower abdomen was surely going to get off from my body. Surprising how you cry out for your mother when you are truly in pain. And when you are undergoing labor, there is no better comfort than holding your husband’s hands. I’m glad my husband was next to me all through it. We were starting a new life – and I feel it is only right that he was beside me. But I’m not saying he should be obligated to be there.

When you have just given birth, people tell you to be ready to have sleepless nights of breastfeeding and changing diapers. I am glad my baby doesn’t keep me awake whole night. I do have to wake up at least once to change her or feed her. But that is nothing much. And I thank her that she is a very understanding baby. A friend came to see me and the baby and she said, three months of maternity leave flies off – you have no time to get bored. She said, ‘waktsa rang goth chhumo man cha. Ngar ne la ngar ba lek pa. Gep ne le gepha lek pa…’ It is true really. Even if you had more than 24 hours, I think you wouldn’t know how you spent it with your baby. It flies off and you can’t help falling in love with the different odd expressions baby makes in their sleep. I am waiting for her to talk back to me. I sing to her different strange phrases of love and affection and I feel she understands me.

This new chapter is going to take me off for a long, long happy ride in my life. And I’m glad, it happened to me. I’m glad I got a chance to be called a mother.