Adventures in Saudi Arabia- part 1: It’s all about looking fab

As some of you may know, I relocated to Saudi Arabia nearly a year ago for work. It has been quite a ride and it has given me ample content for a not very insignificant number of posts. Saudi Arabia is a mystery to many who don’t have friends or family here. Sometimes I have been asked if it is in Dubai. No. We are a different country. We have our own king and crown prince, a whole different rule book, different surnames and very different past-times.

These months in Saudi pushed my limits and I am sure changed me.. but the most obvious change I’d say has been physical.

Saudi is a non-vegetarian’s paradise. It has welcomed Turkish, Lebanese, Indian and Pakistani people, who came and settled here bringing the best of their cuisines. It is the land of shawarmas and the best possible versions of your kebabs, hummus and falafels. And every single time I allow a mean Pakistani curry to consume me (instead of the other way around), I would weep for my foodie friends back home who may never get to taste something as heavenly, ever. With absolutely no effort on my part, my waistline has expanded quite embarrassingly. So now, instead of a gym membership, I have invested in abayas in a range of colours that allow me to eat guilt-free.

I also discovered make-up quite recently! I tried my hand at it a couple of times back home with very little success and had given up. The products would cake on my face, and literally none of my friends bothered with it. Make up is a way of life here, and is accessible and economical. The store girls in ALL the stores I have been in have been so very sweet , and honestly I’m enjoying the coverage it offers, because we are on the other side of 30.

Oh and did I tell you about the skin treatments here? Once again, very popular, accessible, and economical. Now I have laser-ed myself enough to put an end to the monthly parlour-pilgrimages that plagued me since college. Now that the efficacy of these treatments have been proven, we plan to slowly trial the other services in offer: plasma, fractionals, cold peelings and fillers.

As you can see, us women have enough to keep us busy. Life is good. 🙂

The desert hyacinth

Yesterday a friend and colleague from work sent me this picture of a desert hyacinth that he had come across when visiting an island off Abu Dhabi. It had bloomed after a full 5 years, because of the rains.

Many days of late, I have been feeling like a hyacinth buried under the sand, yearning hopelessly to bloom, needing a shower of love to end the constant, stifling darkness.

And they come- unexpected, unsolicited, like how showers always do.

It comes in the form of an invitation to lunch at home, or a box of home cooked food. A permanent place at a family’s dinner table. Someone knowing when I need a hug or a pair of socks and giving me one.

Sometimes it is a long phone call with a long-lost friend. Other times it is mindless laughter with colleagues at work. Or a gurgle from colleague’s baby in my lap, that reminds me of mine, far away back home.

Sometimes I wonder what I did to deserve the kindness of these (once) strangers. I feel empty, unable to give anything back, yet I keep receiving love, and that has kept me alive these few months.

I know I will be whole once my family comes here soon, but I will forever be grateful to each of you, for helping me keep my pieces when I was breaking into a thousand every other day.

PC:Jameel Chahal

Weaning

People I know would tell you that I have been a big proponent of breastfeeding. Between baby K and me, it was always our go-to activity every time she had meltdowns, owies, or changes that worried her. I started with the certainty that I’d exclusively feed until K was 6 months old, and then ‘we’ll see’. And over the past 2.5 years, “inga” became “anka”; and hunger cries transitioned to polite “mama, can I please have some sofa anka, now?”. What started as a biological need has since become something that was uniquely our time.

Honestly, I never expected to breastfeed for 2.5 years. That, some folks would tell you, is long.

Breastfeeding was our response to just about everything- sleeplessness, cuddles, growth spurts, new teeth. At some point it was exasperatingly tiresome, especially the multiple night feeds. Some other times, we had embarrassingly funny moments with K asking for boobies in the middle of parties.

What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t roses all the way: Ever since her first birthday, we’d been hearing things on the lines of “maybe it’s time to stop?” or “she wouldn’t eat any solids if she keeps reaching for the breast”. We went through extremely painful night weaning exercises. But something kept us going, because I’d decided that nobody except K gets to decide when she wanted to stop.

It looks like she decided to stop five days ago, and here I am, at a loss to understand how I am going to cope with this void in my heart. There is a lot of literature on how abrupt weaning affects babies, but nobody ever said how tough it can be on the mama!

I keep trying to remember the last time we breastfed and hold the memory tight- but I guess the tighter you try to hold something, the easier it slips away. Instead, I suppose, I ought to try to remember the other beautiful times we had. How we’d fed when K was just about as long as my forearm. How she’d respond to my questions, teat in mouth, with “umm”. How at one point, her most spoken words in a day were “other side”.

So here I have gained some more time, and have earned a new wardrobe 😊 But the sense of losing something as cherished as this simply doesn’t balance it- and I suspect it never will.

No

This post makes reference to a few of articles that I had been reading before K came along. It is also one of the promises that I had made to myself about how I would be as a mother. This post is all about saying “no” to the child.

A UCLA survey from a few years ago reported that the average one year old child hears the word “No!” more than 400 times a day! I was sure this was an exaggeration until I counted it myself- rather counted the times I said it and the times I almost said it. And then I also counted the number of times my mother said it, and my husband, and the maid. Sometimes its just “no”. Other times, for instance, when she wants to put her face inside the commode, it’s “No, no, NO!”  Truth is, the child really does hear NO a lot many times than it needs to, in English, and the other languages that we speak at home.

One of the alarming theories I came across was that children who are told “no” continuously, begin to doubt their abilities and eventually may respond with defiance or act ignorant of authority. One of our goals is to raise an independent child, and the last thing I wanted was a child who needed to be reassured all the time. Having said that, it certainly is an arduous task to NOT say “no” to a toddler.

I’m just sharing a couple of scenarios for brevity’s sake:

K wakes up in the morning dreaming of my brother’s badminton racket. My brother has hidden this away from her sight because she has a habit of slamming this on the floor. K wakes up, and the first word she utters after she finds my brother is “bat”. And in my brother’s words, there was nothing she could be distracted with, nothing that would pacify her for the next two hours, other than having that racket handed over to her. I am pretty sure she was told “no” to, 400 times, in just those 2 hours.

K, her play school told us, enjoys painting. So every other day, we all have a 15- 20 minute respite once she is handed her painting kit. Recently, she has taken to smearing paint on herself (“No, no, no, baby- no painting on your clothes!”- 4 times already) And this one day, decided to paint her lips and toes as well.

Two years into the job, I think its a question of my sanity versus a supposedly independent child. I think the former needs more safeguarding, thank you.

Maternity Leave

I feel blessed that I had my baby in India because working mothers get six whole months of paid maternity leave!

I have known girl friends who had no choice but to leave 12- week old babies at day care to keep their careers, or who were so guilt-ridden they decided to forsake their careers for the sake of their babies.

I also feel blessed to have such an amazing support system at home, and to be able to afford a nanny, but more than all of that, I am particularly blessed to have had extremely understanding managers and colleagues through this journey,

Six months is an awfully long time to stay away from work, and by the end of month three, i was itching to get back. My business head and manager were okay for me to work a couple of hours every day (part time) for the remaining 3 months of my ML, and gradually increase the number of hours I worked for the next 3 months post my ML. Thus I was able to gradually and seamlessly start working full-time, instead of suddenly being away from the baby. I will always be indebted to this employer of mine for this reason.

ML was also a time for recouping and getting back in shape. Yesterday, while speaking to a friend, N mentioned that I “swam like a mad-woman, day after day”. I may not agree to the mad-woman part, but the hourly swimming routine really helped. I couldn’t keep it up after joining work full time, but I really hope to start again!

This was also when I tried to learn to crochet, but crocheting needs long, uninterrupted hours- and with a baby, something like that is elusive.

I do not recall doing anything other than these,  but the point I am trying to drive home here is that Maternity leaves are such a blessing, and I am so glad I had a good one.

 

 

Lullaby

Singing lullabies is an art that is passed down through the generations. It skipped my mum’s and as a result, I did not know any for my daughter. Briefly, my mum’s aunt stayed with us, and she would sing these songs in her quivering voice, and my 3 month old daughter would instantly fall asleep. I have recorded these, but have never been able to sing them myself.

But nothing stops us from coming up with our own sings, right?

So N came up with one that goes like this:

“Sweet baby, sweet baby, fall asleep in nana’s arms, (2)

The grass is green, the water is pure, the skies are blue, and they’re all for you (2)”

The second part is where I used to snort (not too loudly) with laughter until the song actually made my daughter sleep.

Then one day, when baby K was particularly cranky,  I decided to sing it to her.

“Sweet baby, sweet baby, fall asleep in mama’s arms..”

And in between sobs and hiccups, she actually stopped me to say, “Nana ams, no mama ams”

N had the last laugh, as usual.

Kavya

(AtoZ 2018- we aren’t giving up yet!)

Kavya. I never would have thought I’d be naming her Kavya.

Because I was so sure I was carrying a boy, I’d listen to Vishnu Sahasranama every day for most part of the pregnancy and try to pick favourites from the 1000 names of Lord Vishnu that are chanted in the song. We never did zero on a name though.

And then she came along, a girl. I was thoroughly unprepared for a girl.

I was more unprepared for family insisting that we name her something that started with Ka/Ki/Ko because she was born under a star that would favour her if we named her this way.

The last straw was the hospital telling us they’d give us 24 hours to come up with a name, in which case the birth certificate formalities would be borne by the hospital. Else, we’d have to do that ourselves. The last thing we wanted was carrying our fatigued selves to dingy government offices to get this done, so we succumbed.

Kavya, we half-heartedly decided, because we did not have time or creativity to come up with something else.

Kavya, because, we told ourselves and others, Gita means song, and Kavya means poetry.

Kavya, because, it’s two syllables- that’s all a name needs.

Kavya, because, does every name need a story?

Mamma’s sorry, Kavya, because you wont have an interesting story when you’re asked, “Why did your folks name you that?”.

You’ll have to make do with something on the lines of “My parents were just too lazy to think something up!”

 

Just another day

(AtoZ 2018, we have not given up yet!)

It was the best kind of week. The weekend followed by Monday (when I planned worked from home) and then a holiday on Tuesday. I was looking forward to this long break ever since I saw the annual holiday list and was excited beyond measure, not because I had anything planned, but because I could put my feet up and relax. Or so I thought.

I’ll tell you how just one of those days went by.

8 am: “It is a holiday, let’s sleep some more.” Baby attacks boob viciously for her morning drink. Notices mama falling asleep and plants her palm on mama’s face with unbelievable force, inversely proportional to her body size. Belches loudly and proceeds to crawl over me to the edge of the bed and almost topples down head first. Good bye sleep.

9 am: After marching around the house, tearing the newspaper to shreds while nobody was watching and managing to spill water over herself, baby sits down  for breakfast. After a few half-hearted attempts at making her eat bits of roti by herself, I turn on the tablet and play some tamil and hindi movie songs. Baby shakes her bum as food slides down her throat.

10 am: We decide to give her an early bath. Baby has managed to enter the bathroom and stick her hand under the hot water tap. After some pacifying, she’s alright. I bring her to the bed to dry her and she decides to pee on the bed. “Such a cutie pie she’s clapping away. Okay where did all that water come. NO BABY DON’T TAP THE WET MATTRESS!”

11 am: After some more marching, video-calling grandparents, and chewing the telephone wire, baby makes sleepy signs and nurses to sleep. FINALLY! Mama washes her hair, reads the newspaper for a bit and spends the rest of the time responding to whatsapp messages and buying things she doesn’t need on amazon.

1 pm: Baby wakes up deciding to be fussy and not have lunch. A whole hour goes cajoling the baby to eat as she spits food and goes from room to room as if she can escape it.

2 pm: We don’t know if the baby is more tired or if mama is more tired. Mama right now just wants to lay down and sleep. Baby brings a book and hands it with an “unn” asking to be read to. “The cow says moo. The sheep says baa. Three singing pigs say la-la-la..” Baby points her finger mimicking mama when mama says “No no, that isn’t right. The pigs say oink oink all day and night!” Mama goes into hormonal over drive.. “Oh my god baby you learned to point! Come let’s take a photo of you pointing.. please point for the photo, come on now..”

3pm: Baby falls asleep and mama thanks all the gods in the universe and manages to get some sleep.

5 pm: Mama and baby go downstairs for a walk. Baby plays “love me-love me not”with flowers from the bushes and puts her finger into tiny crevices that are not visible to the normal human eye but somehow magnified and inviting to babies. Mama scowls at the other baby that runs inside her house with her toys as she sees our baby approaching and mentally makes a note of the toy to buy it for baby later.

6 pm: We bid the crows, the other kids and the pup in the flat good bye and come back home. Baby eats a slice of cheese and has another feed. She then proceeds to play with her toys for a while as mama decides what to cook for dinner. In between baby going potty and biting a tomato, somehow dinner is made.

7 pm: Baby wants to play with the semiya. She proceeds to pick it and fling it around her. Mama keeps repeating, “Engaging with food is the first step towards self feeding”until it doesn’t help with the hyperventilation anymore. Baby proceeds to pick food from the floor and offer it to mama with sweet smiles and cooing noises. In the next hour the food is pushed down baby’s throat using various means and distractions.

8 pm: Baby has discarded all her toys and wants to play with the ladle and stainless steel plates. She proceeds to create very annoying sounds but mama is like “maybe there’s a drummer in her somewhere!” We read some more, and then have a hot water bath as we prepare for bed.

9 pm: Baby has been changed into fresh clothes, and is being nursed, hoping she’ll fall asleep. Baby of course has other plans. Baby proceeds to slide out of bed to go back to the hall, and play “watch me climb the sofa and jump off it”or “let me make your heart stop by tilting this chair that I’m standing on”.

10 pm: baby has been forcibly nursed because mama doesn’t know what else she can do to get baby to sleep. Baby has put her fingers inside the ac vent, bends and smiles at mama from between her legs, and topples over pillows and laughs at the joke.

11 pm: Baby makes sleep cues and is being rocked to sleep. After she dozes, mama feels like superwoman. It’s done. And now mama has the rest of the day to herself. Only, where is the rest of the day?

 

 

 

Instagram

There are various ways to document the baby’s development- you could write a journal, or keep a photo-journal. Baby K is so lucky that way- look at me for instance. There is a photo of 5 day old me, and the next photo of my infancy was shot when I was 2 years old.

Baby K had around 500 photos clicked by various people by the time she was 5 days old.

So anyway, I figured I’d keep a photo journal, because this blog is proof enough of how successful I would have been with writing a journal about every day of her life. And on a whim, I decided to put her photos up on Instagram. Off I went to create myself an account (Later I realised I could have created something on the lines of “Adventures of Kuttoos” or “Diabolical K” or something like that instead of my usual gitanjalinaidu) and soon I was posting cute, filtered photos that were titled aptly and wittily.

Then the barrage started.

“She’s not been going potty because someone saw those cute photos and cast an evil eye!”
“Using your baby to get instagram likes- eeks.”
“Stop making EVERYTHING public!”

Needless to say, that update also stopped and now I post something only when I feel like it.

Nonetheless, there is a phone full of photos and videos (of butt cracks, messy faces, diaper rash, finger nail scratches, among other things) that will be used to embarrass her once she grows older and tries to act smart with me. Heh.

Hairfall

During a normal hair cycle, about 90% of your hair is growing at any given time, while the other 10% is in a resting phase. Every few months the resting hair falls out, allowing new hair to grow in its place.

This however, changes while you’re pregnant:  The happy pregnancy hormones keep you from losing your hair. But – after delivery – your hormones return to normal levels, so ALL the extra hair you gained over the past TEN months during pregnancy falls out.

You can imagine how terrifying this can be. Every time I washed my hair, palms full of hair would literally spill from my head. For a while, I took to refusing to wash my hair, eventually realizing that it made no difference.

My hair was EVERYWHERE. I would find it in the most unlikeliest of places- like the baby’s butt crack. How it managed to get there I have no idea.

This was normal- there was nothing I could do but wait.

Around the sixth month post partum, I noticed hairfall slowly starting to reduce. I am unsure if it was because my body realised there wasn’t any more hair that it could afford to lose, or if it was because one or all of these products worked:

1. Mama Earth Argan Hair Mask
2. Indulekha Bringha Hair oil
3. Mamacare Shampoo for babies (I had run out of shampoo and on a whim decided to give this a try)

All products are available on nykaa.com

I am only grateful that i don’t have hair clogging my drains and need to go break those coconuts that I promised Pillairappa now.