People often describe the joys of motherhood and of how fulfilling the experience can be. Yet, it also brings out postpartum depression for some, while other mothers struggle to connect with their offspring. Writer-filmmaker Tahira Kashyap addresses precisely this as she speaks to TOI of her own journey with her first born.
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Tahira says, “When the baby came out after 12 hours of intense labour, the doctor was just looking at me like, ‘Yeh lo apna bachcha.’ And I refused to open my arms. All those feelings that I had read about in the books, also heard from my mother and grandmother, all the tales of mother’s love, kuch aaya hi nahi. And I just didn’t want to be pretentious about it.”
She elaborates, “So then, I had two sets of eyes staring at me. Nowadays, kids are born with open eyes, as you would know. My son and my doctor, both of them are just staring at me. And the maximum I could do was, I just wriggled my nose against his and I was like, ‘Now you can take him to his family.’
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“And the doctor was mortified. ‘What do you mean, his family?’ I was like, ‘Baaki ki family’,” she recalls, with a chuckle.
Ayushmann’s wife also recalls an incident from the couple’s mini honeymoon in Bangkok. At the time, Tahira was pumping breast milk for her infant son to consume later. However, she found the bottles almost empty.
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She says, “My boy (Ayushmann) was relaxing in the bedroom having his protein shake. I asked him about the curious case of the missing breast milk and he smirked while chugging his shake and wiping his milk moustache. His only response was that it had the perfect temperature, was highly nutritious and blended perfectly with his protein shake.”
She recounts being alarmed as her husband had accidentally consumed her breast milk. “Now each time I had to express during the trip, I hid the bottle from the gym-going, protein shake-drinking, breast milk-stealing freak,” she added.
Such are the joys and quirky incidents that make parenthood a journey to cherish indeed!