Column | A New Version Of Me: Aditi Narayani Paswan On How Motherhood Changes Your Whole World

At 4:30 on the morning of May 22, my body began to tell me that my daughter was ready to enter the world. I did not believe it immediately. Perhaps because three days earlier, I had rushed to the hospital from my office in what I thought was labour, only to be sent home a few hours later. So, when the pain began again, I waited. I told myself it might pass. But by 11 that morning, there was no mistaking it. The pain had become immense. When I went to the hospital, the doctors examined me and told me I was in latent labour and that it could still take several hours. There are moments when time becomes a physical thing. It is no longer measured in minutes or with clocks, but in how much more pain the body can endure.

I knew I could not endure any more and so I decided on a C-section. I walked into the operating theatre carrying two things with me: fear and a prayer. Please let my baby be safe. That was all I could think about.

For nine months, she had been the most precious part of my life and yet, someone I had never seen. I had carried her close to my heart, felt her movements, spoken to her, imagined her face and created a relationship with a person who existed within me. And now, I had to surrender both of us to a room full of strangers and trust that they would bring her safely into the world. The spinal injection they gave me was one of the most painful moments of the surgery. I remember the fear more than the pain itself—lying in bed, awake but feeling a strange numbness, with the gleaming hope of the most divine part of my life being unfolded.

The child I had carried for nine months was no longer inside me. She was here. I remember kissing her. I looked at this impossibly small human being and thought: you came out of me. But I did not yet understand that another person had been born that day, too—me.

Your whole world changes. You are no longer what you used to be. Your world gets centred around one little heart and all this happens within a few hours; your priorities and your life decisions change, your financial decisions change. You change as a person and evolve as a human being.

We celebrate the baby’s arrival. We rarely talk about the woman who had to be rebuilt afterwards. A C-section is sometimes spoken of as though it were simply another route to childbirth. It is not. It is an incision into a woman’s body who, moments later, is expected to stand up, feed a newborn, learn to hold her correctly, learn to latch to feed her, understand her cries and somehow become competent at a job she has never done before.

I still remember my body trembling when I took my first steps after the surgery. I remember the pain. I remember her first feed being painful and how long latching took. I remember the exhaustion of recovering physically while simultaneously being introduced to the most demanding emotional responsibility of my life. And yet, somewhere within those first 24 hours, the cosmos prepares you for this human. There is something divine about it because this baby considers herself an extension of you. She doesn’t know she is a little human outside her mother’s womb. Perhaps, for a while, babies believe that the mother’s heartbeat is still their heartbeat, that the mother’s arms are still the walls of the world they know.

The Toll of Motherhood

Motherhood takes a toll on one’s body and senses. My body seems to be permanently on alert mode. A soft coo at two in the night can wake me. A different cry can make my heart race. I can be fast asleep and still know that my daughter has stirred. There is an intimacy in motherhood as one navigates to learn another human being through sound, touch, smell and rhythm. Amidst all this, I have discovered a self I did not know existed. A version of me who can be selfless and giving despite being totally exhausted. Maybe this is a new strength I discovered which made me feel weak and vulnerable, though there is some sort of satiation in this vulnerability.

My daughter has cow’s milk protein allergy and we have had to navigate combination feeding—breast milk and formula. Motherhood comes with a handbook as to who is a “good mother”. Breastfeeding is one of them. We are told, correctly, that breast milk is precious. But in that conversation, we sometimes forget the woman producing it. Nobody tells a mother that every drop of milk is also a demand on her body. Nobody tells her about the aching back, the crackling bones and the nights when the body seems to have forgotten what rest feels like. Nobody tells her that she may stay up late wondering whether she has produced enough milk. Or that she may feel guilty for something over which she has only partial control.

What motherhood has made me understand most deeply is the extraordinary amount of invisible labour contained in the word “mother”. There is the physical labour of pregnancy and childbirth. There is feeding, healing, waking, remembering, anticipating, nurturing and then the emotional labour coupled with the hormonal crashes. 

Another extremely important thing is that I have begun to understand my own mother differently. I am blessed to have a battery of people to look after me and my baby but what about my mother? How did she manage with limited resources? How many nights was she awake or how many tears did she shed? How many sacrifices did she make that she never announced or complained about. She has been here with me since Vindhya was born. As I write this piece, she is holding my baby and planning her life and career according to my needs so that I don’t feel overburdened. The standard she has set as a mother is incredibly high. I don’t think I will be able to be as selfless as her.

Despite motherhood being so consuming, I decided to remain myself. I went to work just to stay relevant, haun­ted by the fear that people might forget me, the fear that might not be able to return to work again. I wanted to write. I still want to be ambitious. The question which haunts me: am I being a selfish mother for trying to balance my career and motherhood? I don’t love my daughter any less. But I want her to grow up seeing a woman who loved her deeply without abandoning herself.

(Views expressed are personal)

Aditi Narayani Paswan is a writer whose work focuses on social justice, caste, gender & constitutional equity