You must be making 7 course meals everyday! - Things you should never say to a Stay At Home Mom

Life has its own way of getting back at you. It bites you in the bum when you least expect it. Things that you thought of, plans that you made,  all of those go out the window when you least expect them.

Motherhood wasn't how I imagined it to be. I KNEW that it's not exactly a smooth journey, I knew that no two days are alike, and I certainly knew that it takes a lot of patience to be a mom.

If things were to go according to my plan, I would have been a hot yummy mummy right from the start. But, the reason this blog exists because, I AIN'T ONE! At this point, I have managed to knock off all of my pregnancy weight, but I am hoping to make the best of this spree and lose some more.

In my world, I would also have been a working mommy. But, here I am, changing my status on Facebook and other social networking sites and telling the world that I am a stay at home mom. To make it appear cooler, let's call me a SAHM.

As a SAHM, there's whole lot of things I COULD DO. HELL, I WANT TO DO! But, the 'M' in the SAHM means that I have no time for myself, because all of my living energy is spent running behind and taking care of little P. Of course, this is true of all moms, whether they work, or stay at home. Call me lazy, but I do like to use this as an excuse for a lot of things!

But, what gets my goat is the fact that a lot of people tend to think that just because I am a SAHM, I have all the time in the world to potter around and generally do things that I would like to do.

I've come across so many random and unwanted comments about my SAHM status, I am thinking, "let me tell everybody I've got a job that pays me shit loads of money and that from now on, I am going to work everyday and little P can grow up with me on the weekends!"

I would like to see how these very comments take on all judgy pants proportions and these same people would then talk about how well dressed I am and how my little boy is so royally ignored just because I spend all my time playing dress up!

Lesson learnt: THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER SAY TO A SAHM

1) Oh wow! I am sure you get lots of time to make food from scratch, even 7-course meals everyday!

REALITY: I do have lots of time, although, I do wish I had some more. And then, some more. And more. 

REALITY: I do make food from scratch, where scratch means, 2 left over loaves of bread and leftover curry. 

REALITY: I could make 7-course meals, I probably even know how to. Except that it would take me SEVEN MONTHS to put that meal on the table for you to eat. Would you?

REALITY: The only meal(s) I do manage to make are the ones that little P eats, that too is possible with me trying to work with one free hand, the other trying to balance him on my hip, where he's glued all day everyday. Otherwise, I get him to sit on the kitchen floor and hand him an assortment of pots and pans, and then take 20 minutes to beg him to hand me something that I can use to cook.

2) Oh wow, you look fabulous! You are lucky you have so much time at home to look after yourself.

REALITY: Remember the hair?! It stays as a bun atop my head all day, in one place. It dare not budge, and I think that's because all the grease and the food that's thrown at me has decided to act as  glue for that bun of mine. Who wants hair mousse and hair spray?!

That wonderful smell I am giving out is also most probably stale food. Who needs YSL and Hugo Boss, eh?! There's little boss with his wiped off milk moustache on my tee to give off that nasal hair-burning stench.

3) At least you can sleep during the day...(while I work my butt off at work and get paid for it)

uhuh? Yathink?! So, here's what happened today: Managed to get little p to sleep at a time that I like, post lunch, you know, full tummy? Can't keep his eyes open anymore. I am actually smiling thinking of my award-winning achievement!

Anyhoo...

I had work to do, serious work, not the browsing kinds, on the phone, because I am too lazy to take out the laptop. zzzzz!

Before I realised, I had fallen asleep right next to him. 

Which is okay, but, the thing with breastfeeding babies/toddlers, is that they can smell you. Yup, which means, that when they wake up, for whatever reason, and if you are within breathing distance, they expect you to do your job of feeding them back to sleep, and not bother rocking them or singing a lullaby to get them back to sleep.

They are like, "Why are you even pretending that this is going to work and I will fall back asleep?! Just do your job, woman!"

Which is also fine, but, and here, breastfeeding mommies will agree, babies tend to wake up THE SECOND you fall asleep!

So, going back to your assumption, I would like to sleep during the day, and the night. But, I don't. Now, let's talk about how much money you make, poor you!

4) At least you don't have to buy expensive clothes!

Right. I do know lots of other people who would LOVE to be in PJs all day, and look like they haven't hit the shower in a million years. They are probably all me, in my gazillion avatars and are all called moms.

5) Your house must be so clean (I could see my face in those shiny floor tiles)

Yes, yes, yes. Everything shines at my place. The linen, the cutlery, the hardware, my face. Everything, okay? I am Cinderella and I have loads of time and inclination to go about scrubbing the floors and the china till you can see your face in it, all shiny, in your expensive clothes and lush perfume.

6) You should have gone back to your job when the time was right...

...because, now nobody will hire you.

Umm, because I would suck as a great employee?

Life is a bit** out for a vendetta against you

Time was finally flying by. I had miraculously completed two trimesters, or six months, of my pregnancy.

The bump was now happily replying to our nudging and rubbing, much to our delight. This was super cool, this feeling of being kicked the crap out of you, from inside you!

The extra-curricular and unwomanly activities had been passed on to the correct gender. I was no longer the man of the house!

There's nothing like pregnancy and labour to rob a woman of all her dignity, and I don't mean this in a demeaning and sexist manner. It's the most beautiful and natural thing in this world, but man! does it rid you of BLADDER CONTROL! I mean, whoa! It's worse than guzzling litres of water in a non-pregnant avatar for an ultrasound.

I found myself constantly rushing to the loo, half the time checking behind me if I had left a trail of pee. Whoops!

Anyway..!

The thing with luck is that it's good until it turns bad. Ditto with people, they are great, until they grow horns and flash 666 on their foreheads.

At work, my review was due and I was excited, because I had really been working my ass off in the condition that I was in. I was kicked about getting great reviews, but was somewhere concerned that my WFH status might go against me.

I had earned a number of detractors at work, who were, needless to say, quite envious of the fact that I was WFH. I quite doubt whether they knew what it was like to grow a person inside you, not knowing the exact status. There was no guarantee of this pregnancy and we were categorically told the same. We were literally taking each moment and each day as it came.

The day of the review arrived. I was all prepped up with my own performance review. What would happen next would probably be classified as intimidation, to put it nicely.

To cut a long story short, I was mildly asked to "take leave and rest".

You mean, resign? Errrm, no. We can't say that, you see? Take leave...

Okay, then!!! This was whambam thank you, ma'am!!

I don't think I was so mad even when I heard the news of an ex getting married.

What a load of ball-less a**holes, these folks! They needed to grow a pair.

I sent out bye bye emails to those who mattered and asked my stuff to be sent back.

I was done.

Looking like Nigella Lawson in an X-Men movie

Being pregnant is a bit like being in an X-Men movie. You get weird abnormal powers and they disappear as soon as the pregnancy is over.

Just like any other pregnant woman, I suppose, I had developed this habit of rubbing my bump and talking to it. Every time I saw something new and exciting, I would say, "Oh look! There's blah and blah!"

Same with eating anything mouth-watering. I would explain to the bump what I was eating as if I was taking it on a culinary ride. The only difference was that I didn't exactly look like Nigella Lawson. Okay, not even a bit like her.

Fine, not even REMOTELY! OKAY! I GET IT! I DEFINITELY WILL NOT LOOK LIKE HER IN A MILLION YEARS!

Moving on...!

So this X-Men-like quality took on epic proportions everytime I felt sick or unwell. Considering that the current scenario spelt disaster, I looked a bit possessed rubbing my by-now-fairly-visible belly and talking to it.

I was quickly admitted and we graciously allowed them to do so without any exchange of question and answer.

This wasn't just a normal admission in a hospital room on a normal bed.

This was me, remember?! My penchant for weird luck was back again.

Because of the extremely low-lying placenta, called Placenta Praevia in medical terms, my pregnancy was at a severe risk of terminating itself given the blood loss.

Thus, my quick-thinking doctor decided to LITERALLY keep me almost upside down for two nights and days chained to the hospital bed. The head of the bed was moved lower, or rather, my legs and back were at a 45 degree higher than the rest of my body.

This is exactly how I lay for more than 48 hours.

Here comes the fun part: ALERT!! GRAPHIC TOILET HUMOUR COMING UP!

This is how I pissed as well. YUP. With a bed pan under my gigantic bottom, I did the small job. Of course it wasn't pretty. The whole damn thing would run down my back and in other weird places.

But, I somehow managed to maintain  a bit of my dignity AND REFUSED TO GO FOR THE BIG JOB IN THIS FASHION. OH NONONO! That wasn't happening. Sure, I had oodles of love for the baby, but no way was I doing this.

Luckily, the nurse relented and I was allowed to stand up and look DOWN at my feet for a change. PHEW!

The reports weren't what we were expecting. I hadn't even completed 3 months, or 1 trimester, of pregnancy, and it wasn't looking viable in the given condition.

I spent the next 3-4 months working from home. And this wasn't the usual WFH. This was, literally, back breaking shit loads of work, sometime exceeding 14 hours a day. And weekends too, at times.

The 45 degree nuisance was, of course, there to stay. On the doctor's orders, the husband went and bought SEVEN pillows, which were stacked under my legs, and I would lay this the whole time when I wasn't working. I would even lay back and eat, the orders were that strict!

Of course,  I would wait for the customary ONE BIG BURP to suggest the food had been digested, and go back to my LOVELY SEVEN PILLOWS.

Considering that I wasn't even allowed to stand for more a couple of minutes, I took great advantage and managed to get some otherwise unachievable work done ;)

The husband learnt how to cook, for one! I was the queen of his world, and man! Was I enjoying it?!

The saying "eating like a pig" was written with me in mind, in my pregnant avatar. I remember I once ate upwards of FOUR SAMOSAS!!! I felt a bit of a bully, or maybe I didn't! Who cares?!

At this point, I feel a bit like Lindsay Lohan in that movie where there's always bad luck in store for her.

This time, some really shitty news. The good part? It wasn't about the pregnancy.

They would rather have me sleep with Sherlock Holmes

The way things were progressing, it seemed like a million years had passed us. In fact, it seems longer now, in hindsight.

However, I was STILL in my 2nd month of pregnancy, and as per the doctor's orders, was taking it easy and was off work.

The husband was travelling, and that was a good thing, because by now, my farts were the talk of town! Or at least, they sure felt like it.

My mother, who has been a victim of these bomb attacks ever since I can recall, was at her wits end. On the one hand were her daughter's pregnancy and her emotions; on the other, her nasal hair were seriously taking a beating!

I was off work and thoroughly enjoying the break. Entertainment was limited to watching Carrie and her friends have sex in 'Sex And The City'. Well, at least somebody was getting some, even if it was in reel life.

That's all I did all day. I mean, watch SATC... guffaw!! :D But for some inexplicable reason, that only pregnant women might understand, I had this weird fear that if I watched too much of all this canoodling and banging of bodies, my child would be a sex addict and I would be blamed forever!

And for this, I blame the friendly gyaan aka advice I received from some not-so-young women I knew who 'caught' me reading Sherlock Holmes one day. I don't think they would have been so shocked if I was canoodling the detective himself! But goodness gracious! Reading detective stories whilst pregnant is worse than sleeping with the protagonist, because horror of all horrors, your child will be born with snooping abilities and will view everyone he meets in life with a magnifying glass! :o

Any hoo, remember the superstitious me?! I thought, why take such a risk? So SATC was conveniently replaced with 'Grey's Anatomy'! If indeed the baby had to really get inspired, might as well become a doctor and then have sex, right?!

The baby, yes! S/he seemed to be growing fine. My system had somewhat settled, and there weren't any fainting spells a la filmy style. The ONLY thing(s) that bothered me were smells of egg and onion. AND PEOPLE. No, not their smells, although that is a non-pregnancy pet peeve, but people bothered me.

I would cry and bawl at the drop of a hat. I would cry if someone was sad, I would cry if the food was too hot. Too cold also left me in tears. Underwear doesn't fit, cue, me crying. Mom didn't make my favourite lunch, again, hysterics. You get the general idea, I suppose!

I had by now taken permission to work from home and had just about spent two odd days doing so, when the scary blood spots were back.

We literally ran out pantless, we were that scared. By the time we had reached the doctor, who was almost an hour away, I was shitting in my pants because I felt something wasn't right.

And sure as hell, was I right?!

As I stood in front of the doctor, she saw me looking down. And there it was, my 'gut feeling'. Blood was literally dripping down my legs and I was shaking as if I was in cold storage.

BEWARE! THIS WOMAN IS A FART MACHINE!

In my head, I had already decided and dreamt of going through pregnancy looking like Jessica Alba. My body, of course, had a mind of its own. To say that I was ballooning, was of course, coating it with sugar and honey!

I only have half-Sindhi genes, but they suddenly took over my body like there was no tomorrow. Hello, double chin and fat ankles!

It had only been 3 odd days since I had taken the pregnancy test and visited our BFF doctor, so I was only a month, give or take a few days, into the pregnancy.

Every morning, I was woken up to the smell of "ONE BOILED EGG", which I would literally stuff down my throat and follow with a litre of water to get over the damn smell.

People at my work place were giving me suspicious looks, one, because of the igloo padding I would wear; and two, because my lunch box suddenly took on epic proportions! Very diligently packed by mom, of course. And even more diligently chewed, licked and swallowed by idiotic forever-hungry male colleagues!! OOOOOH!!!! SPROUT SALAD! AND FRUITS! grrrr! :s

To make matters worst, I had turned into this friggin' giant BURP AND FART MACHINE! I mean, seriosuly, at one point, it was difficult to make out which end the Enfield-like noise came from! The husband was fed up of me, to say the least. This was, after all, male territory, and how dare I, a pregnant woman, burp and fart so damn loud, that even a sleeping dog would get scared shitless!

Luckily for me, I had a cabin to myself at work. This doesn't imply that I was printing money. It was just an admin decision to give me one, AND NO, IT WASN'T BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE COMPLAINING ABOUT MY FARTING CAPABILITIES!!!

But, Boy! Was the cabin useful?! I only went to work for 4-odd days during my entire pregnancy, but oh man! I made full use of the cabin for my extra-curricular activities ;)

I think it was around the 5th day or so, that I noticed an alarming sign. I was, of course, too worried itself, and the blood spots didn't help. I was lucky enough to have been given a chauffer-driven car by office folks, and was quickly driven down to  my gynaecologist.

It's the damn tiger aka polyp, I kept thinking all the way. My superstitious beliefs weren't far behind, needless to say. So, the ipod was quickly brought out and the playlist double fast-forwarded to some devotional songs. On a serious note, I was battling tears, and was talking to the bump by then, telling it that everything will be all right.

Some quick scans were done, and I was explained that I had an extremely low-lying placenta, the organ that provides nourishment, oxygen and blood to the foetus during pregnancy.

I was told to take it easy, be on bed rest and take leave from work. This wasn't going the way we thought it would and the next couple of months gave us extremely worrying news.

Goo Goo Dolls give way to Gita, Ganpati and Gyaan

So, there I was, pregnant, albeit along with the damn polyp taking a free ride inside my uterus and possibly squeezing the life out of our rapidly multiplying group of cells, whom we were fondly referring to as "baby".

We had no idea where we were headed. Sure, our strong-headed combination of Tamil (also lovingly referred to as Madrasi by our lovely North Indian citizens of this country) spermatozoa and psuedo-intellectual Bengali ovum had managed to scare the crap out of the darn tiger.  But, the fact remained, that the polyp was weighing heavy on our minds.

The lovely specialised doctors we had earlier met suggested the big A word, but this was our moment, and we weren't ready to let some money-making knife-yielding coat-wearing robot take that away from us.

Phone calls were made to some friends and family alike, and we were nudged in the direction of a doctor who was to become our BFF for the next 9 months.

This new doctor was the miracle we were looking for and her words were the answers to our stream of questions and worried looks. To say that she was God-send remains an understatement.

Any how, mush and sob stories aside! Pregnancy completely changed me, or rather my personality. At this point in time, only our parents knew and 1 colleague and my boss knew.

Gone was the cool, suave girl/woman that I knew myself to be. I took to superstition like a moth to a flame. I started believing in jinxes, started covering up my stomach because I was scared evil looks would harm me and our baby.

Shocker of all shockers, gone was my itunes play list too!! bye bye Hoobastank and Goo Goo Dolls. Hello, devotional songs and audio podcasts of religious texts!

What was happening to me?! This was me, guzzler of tequila shots combined with pints and pints of beer! Driver of a super cool, green-coloured Chevrolet Spark, who only knew the 5th gear!

Coolness quotient be damned! I wasn't barren, I was pregnant, my husband would be mine till the divorce papers are not signed! Who cares about my  newly improved playlist. This was me, Version 2.0!

I should smugly add here that right before this point in time, I had managed to LOSE WEIGHT! Yes, me, whale of all whales, thanks to my adipose tissue-loving half-Sindhi genes, had lost 15 (IN WORDS, LEST THE IMPORTANCE BE LOST, FIFTEEN) kilos! chumbawumba! I was thin, you could finally see that I too had a waist and size 28 jeans could finally be bought!!! MOTHER OF GOD, I AM GETTING GOOSEBUMPS WRITING THIS!

Of course, good things and weight loss don't last forever. The Sindhi genomes were back with a vengeance and my bottom ( I won't say a**, since I am all chic and refined now :p) and other unmentionable body parts were growing at breakneck speed.

Gone were my days of eating frugally. My dear mother had moved base to our city then, and of course, in true Bollywood style, came to the rescue of her pregnant daughter's health. Rates of eggs and carrots were rapidly climbing in our neighborhood, thanks to the speed at which mother dear was buying them.

The baby seemed to be growing fine. Nothing untoward happened. How could it? Considering that I was walking at snail's pace and covering myself up like I was living in a bloody igloo, even though it was sweating hot here.

But knowing my passion for weird luck, there was some pretty scary news in store for us...