Baby Loss Awareness Week

I read about Matilda Mae two years ago. Ever since, when people talk about babies, her face pops into my head. She is everything you'd imagine a baby to be. Gurgling, chubby, smiling. Full of life. Plump arms outstretched to embrace the world.

Not. Dead.

Baby Loss Awareness Week breaks my heart.

I read about the infants who should be here. Each one is etched into the hearts of those who knew them, but so few people get the chance to. It's unfair. It's cruel. I can't understand it.

I first encountered child mortality in a poem. And I thought - it isn't just the baby that dies. Hope does, too.

Over time, this cloud has circled closer to me, bearing down on people I care about. Friends have mourned, and fought to keep their marriages intact. They have battled depression, and moved on as best as they could. And through it all, despite the pain, no one talks about it.

Common wisdom says, "It will only make it worse."

Will it? Will it really make it worse to let it all out? Or does it just make it worse for those around the bereaved who don't know how they can help?

I don't know what to say. I can't begin to imagine the pain. But I do know this: a baby comes alive to its parents the minute they see two lines on a stick. Two months, six months, nine months after conception; one week, three weeks, three months after it's born. Some babies may not live among us for long. But we weave dreams of an entire lifetime for them the minute we know they exist. They can never be forgotten. Each was a person, full to the brim with possibilities and potential.

Light a candle for the Wave of Light this Wednesday. And remember the babies who should be among us, in more than just our memories.

Weeks 11 & 12: He, she, it

This isn't really a pregnancy update, because we're travelling at the moment - it's just a scheduled post about things we're thinking about.

After years of telling me how he wanted to be surprised post-delivery, R's first question when we found out I was pregnant was, "How soon can they tell if it's a boy or a girl?" So much for waiting to be surprised.

I've always wanted a daughter - blame it on Gilmore Girls, and the fact that I know R will absolutely be on tenterhooks for the rest of his life if we had a daughter. But throughout this pregnancy, I've had a feeling I'm carrying a boy, and ever since, I've really wanted one. I've been doodling little monsters and dinosaurs, and re-reading Tom Sawyer. Of course, now R wants a girl just as much. 

Let's be clear - even if this is a girl, she's going to be given an equal dose of Mark Twain and mythical creatures. I'm all for gender neutrality. I counted out the male & female characters in our nursery prints (I plan ahead, clearly) to make sure they were evenly balanced. Boy or girl, he or she will be wearing/looking at all the colours of the rainbow, not endless variations of pink or blue.

And yet, I've been pouring over the forums that say you can predict a baby's sex based on the angle of the dangle/skull shape and so on. Why is it suddenly important? Well, a couple of reasons. One, we're moving back to India, where it's illegal to find out, and that makes this a classic case of wanting what you can't have the minute you find out you can't have it. Two, gender neutrality can only be taken so far. What am I supposed to do, read 'She rocked *it* back & forth' instead of 'She rocked him back & forth' when I'm reading out Robert Munsch's Love You Forever? Obviously, it's a moot question, because we're leaving Canada at the end of week 15, which is still too soon to tell conclusively, but that doesn't stop me from wondering. 

I'm also considering Bump's first lullabies and books. R accuses me of trying to sneak in 'all that Tamil culture,' in vitro. Won't deny it, heh. We've discussed theism a fair bit - neither of us is particularly religious, but I think it's idyllic to imagine we can bring the baby up in a bubble. For one, we're not really in bubbles ourselves, being from fairly orthodox families. We always have a puja room in our house, and invariably head over there before we do anything important or leave on a journey. We know all the rituals and mythology, and I think it'd be a shame not to at least talk about all of that, particularly for the 'story' value of it all. We are not bringing our child up on Aesop's Fables & Mother Goose alone. And finally, Carnatic music! There's no way I'm not occasionally playing M.S., and I can't help it if she's invariably singing about God. 

I suspect we'll be having lovely hypothetical discussions like this while we're travelling. When we get back, it'll be time for the Nuchal Scan at 13 weeks, to check for Down's and a few other genetic deviations. That'll be our official go-ahead to tell the world - except that we still won't, because we want to do it in person when we go to India next month! Ah, the wait. Too much.

Buckle Up

R,

I've to give our parents/families/friends some serious props. In the last year or so, whenever we've said, "We've some news!" they've been expecting to hear what an average married couple may consider news. And instead, we've told them that.... I've quit my job.  I'm going to try writing a book. We've announced that I'm travelling for two months... solo.

And as of last week, we told them that we're moving back to India; that you're quitting your cushy day job (that makes two of us now!) to start your own business. You could audibly hear the sputters, and I understand why people may be confused, but I believe, from the bottom of my heart, that this is the best thing for you.

I've told you this before, but I'll say it again. You believe in me to the extent where I've no choice but to believe in myself. I hope you realize I'm similarly confident about your abilities. I'm excited to watch this leg play out. It's going to be a fun ride!

And in a couple of months, after we've finished travelling around Canada (because we can't just start a new job without a vacation!), we'll call them, and say, again, "We've some news."

They'll probably think we've decided to move to Nepal or something, at the rate at which we've been going. Little do they know... being predictable is the new being unpredictable :)

- A.

Angrez chale gaye...

R,

Pro travel tip - fly on a Tuesday night and you'll have a near-empty flight. I'd three free seats to my right (with an aisle), and one free to my left. Oho. So great. I sat down comfortably and watched ten movies back to back, only occasionally interrupted by a screaming baby. Every flight has at least one, even the ones that leave on a Tuesday night.

Here's the weird thing - I didn't hear a single Indian parent on the flight talk to their kid in any language other than English. How did that happen? I get that the kid lives in Canada/Britain since it was a Toronto-London flight, but can English really be the language you talk to them and your spouse in ALL the time? It's kind of depressing, and all kinds of limiting. English doesn't have plum descriptions like 'tu baingain hai ki anda hai re' or 'podaaaanga' or 'plum,' for that matter. How can you ever fully express yourself?

It just feels like you'd instinctively respond in your mother tongue when surprised/angry... like in that Birbal story where the priest who speaks 14 languages with the fluency of a native screams out in Telugu when woken suddenly in the night with thorns (it may have been a Tenali Raman story, and it may have been some other language, but the point's the same)... but nope, even when a kid threw his spoon of food at his mum, she just said, "We don't do that, sweetie." 

!!!

Whaaaaat?

She didn't say it with the distinctive twang of someone who'd grown up abroad either. Is it just more socially acceptable to talk English in public, especially when you're outside India? Should that even matter one way or the other? 

I worry that could be us - not because we don't speak our mother tongues without caring who's listening, but because we have different native languages. Maybe I'll talk to our kid in Tamil, and you can talk to him in Kannada, and we'll both toss in some Hindi and some Telugu and a bucketload of English. It may confuse the poor thing (especially given my Telugu sucks), but I think it'd be preferable to only speaking English.

A.

Me Time

R,

Our generation prides itself on being super-duper progressive and open minded. Commenting about caste is enough to set off most Indian Elders’ gaskets, but we’re a lot harder to shock (I always anticipated our kids having to work really hard at it). Apparently, we’ve found the one thing that’ll do the trick.

When we talk about my plans for the summer, there’s dead silence from our friends, followed by hearty well wishes, interspersed with some bafflement. Why would I want to be away from you for so many weeks? They know my plan is to travel through Europe, but really, is everything okay with the two of us? 

Of course, last year when you went on a ‘boys’ trip’ to Africa, we didn’t hear any objections. If I had to paraphrase common wisdom, it’d probably go something like this: Boys will be boys, but as for girls… well, shouldn’t they just be girls? If I’d been single, I imagine this trip would have been perceived as free spirited and adventurous. Given I’m married, however, it becomes *ominous tones* Free-Spirited, not to mention Adventurous. 

There’s no doubt in my mind that I’d rather do this trip with you than alone. However, I saved up money for the last few years so I could eventually take time off and do my own thing. Not everyone has that luxury – you still have your 9 to 5 job and you can’t drop it to come traipsing through Europe with me. Should that mean I don’t go, or wait till you can come along, or settle for an eight day trip instead of the month long itinerary I had in mind? 

Honestly, we’re both givers in this relationship. It takes us a ridiculous amount of time to settle on anything because we’re busy trying to please the other person. I’d figure out a compromise on this trip if I had any hint at all that you wanted me to. You, on the other hand, don’t want me to compromise on anything; which is a feeling I fully reciprocate. I love how this barely needed a discussion, because it’s just not a big deal. I especially love how our parents see it the same way. They’re a lot cooler than we give them credit for, sometimes.

Putting this in perspective, it’s a month away when we’ve a lifetime together. It’s the same reason I don’t take you to my book club meetings and you go and play squash on your own. Yes, we’re one unit, and we choose to be together - but that doesn’t mean we stop being individuals. 

Happily,

A.

Me & you, but mostly me

R,

When we moved to Canada last summer, I was like a kid let loose in a candy store. There were festivals and fun events everywhere I looked! I didn’t have a job yet, which meant I’d all the free time in the world to check out plays and food markets. I used to play a game when I made the inevitable small talk with strangers (Canadians are so polite!) – how many sentences could I get out before bringing up the fact that I was married? 

“So, what do you do?”

“Nothing yet, I moved here last week.”

“Oh, fun! Why Canada?”

… One sentence was all I usually got before having to say, “Well, my husband’s job transferred him, so we moved here.”

I don’t mind saying I’m married, obviously, or I wouldn’t have tattooed a ring on my finger. I’m just not used to marriage being the thing that defines me. 

I had a pact with a colleague, back when we were trading witticisms about wedding photos taking over Facebook (it was like a plague!). We solemnly agreed to never inflict couple-love photos as our profile pictures, or put up lovey dovey status messages, or basically act like the world revolved around coupledom.

I stuck to that vow, because said status messages make me puke a little, and want to tell the perpetrators to get offline pronto. And because I’ve about four hundred unnecessarily tech-savvy relatives on Facebook, who are progressive enough to get how the world wide web works, but not yet modern enough to think a husband and wife should display affection on a public forum. (“She ‘likes’ everything he posts! Chee, no shame!” Direct quote.)

I also find myself rolling my eyes when strangers instantly bring up their spouse/partner and then pepper the conversation with references to them in every sentence – that was mandatory at 14, still cute at 18, but really needing you to grow-up-and-find-yourself-please at 25. So I think what I hated about my new-to-Canada intro was the fact that I could be mistaken for one of those people.

When I make small talk with strangers now, I have a glib “I’m the x-y-z at ABC company,” to the “What do you do?” question. That’s clearly my new identity elevator pitch, but it’s no closer to defining me than the line I used before. It’s an even toss-up whether I’d rather be defined by you or by my job. Nearly three years into our marriage, I may even feel affectionate enough to make one my profile picture (I noticed afore mentioned colleague has liberally sprinkled her feed with wedding photos, and I shudder to think of the year ahead). 

- A.