12. Advice Advice!

First time parents find themselves short of time, space, sleep and sex. But there is one thing they won’t find themselves short of – advice. 

From the aaya in the hospital, to the stranger in the road, to your over-paid maid; everyone will have at-least one advice for you. Luckily you can easily ignore their advice. It is the advice from your close friends and families that you will find hard to ignore. And you know what is worse? Two mother-in-laws together, with totally opposite advice. Yes, you are trapped, you have reached the limit of your temper, and you are about to burst. Your ego might make you want to shout, ‘It is our child, you have had your share of parenting, let us have ours’. That's exactly how we felt.

Take a deep breath, relax, and ask yourself; what is more important, your ego or your child? 

Anger never helps; respecting your parents is a way of ensuring that your child learns to respect you. The day your parents stop advising you is the day they have given up on you and may be even stopped caring.

Moreover, some of their advice are really worth listening, for others there is a simple trick. This is where your doctor comes to rescue.  Tell them that the doctor told you not to do it. It always works! Sometimes a lie is worth a thousand truth.

Listen to all advice and cleverly use your veto power to rule out the horrible ones. At the end, it is your instincts that matter, even more than your logic.

Earlier, I wished if babies came with instruction manual. The truth is, they do. It is already implanted in the brains of the parents. Listen to it and believe it even more than the doctor’s advice, because doctor’s advice change with time, space and society.

During the feminist movements doctors advised bottle and formula feeding. Now with the green movements and movements to go back to nature, breastfeeding is back on agenda. There was a time when doctors advised to let the babies sleep on their tummies so that they don’t choke, now they advise that they must sleep on their back. There was a time when oil message was mandatory for babies, now they advise to avoid it. You see what I mean?

There's a compelling evolutionary reason for the significance of advice. Observe newborns: compared to other animal babies, human infants are remarkably immature. They cannot walk, talk, or survive alone. This prolonged period of dependency necessitated extended caregiving. Not only did parents collaborate, but grandparents, with their wealth of experience, also played a vital role. In some cases, the entire tribe came together to nurture the young. And all of them came with advice.

Humans are not only born immature; we also experience a lengthy childhood. No other species enjoys such an extended period of development. These adaptations were driven by the demands of our larger brains, which, despite their advantages, also posed challenges. However, the gamble paid off.

The extended caregiving period allowed human children to spend more time observing and learning from their elders. This facilitated cultural transmission, enabling rapid adaptation to changing environments. Our neocortex, the part of the brain responsible for higher-order thinking, doesn't fully mature until around age 25. This makes us particularly susceptible to cultural influences, shaping our character and beliefs.

While our prolonged infancy may seem like a disadvantage, it has ultimately contributed to our success as a species. The benefits of cultural inheritance far outweigh the drawbacks of a longer developmental period, enabling us to create and maintain complex societies and technological advancements.

Every baby is different; everyone grows at their own pace. Different advice works for different babies. Listen to yourself and find the one that suites your baby best. Here is the end of my advice. Use your veto power to over-rule it if you like.

11. New Member

After nine months baby is finally here. The battle is won, but the war has just begun.

When we first saw her during USG she looked so cute and we wondered when we are going to hold her. Now she is here, and she looks prettier, but she looks fragile too. 

Unlike our new washing machine, here was no ‘handle with care’ or ‘this side up’ sign attached to her! She did not come with any instruction manual.

I was afraid to hold her the first time. But I soon got better of my fear and there she was, in my arms. My first lesson – babies don’t break easily.

To start with, there was a big communication gap. While she looked like a human, she spoke like an alien. The language in which this cute little alien spoke is called: Crying.

Hungry-cry…potty-cry…piss-cry, pissed off-cry. If not an instruction manual, what about a Crying to English dictionary?

But soon we started to understand that language. We could differentiate between the cry that meant she is hungry, the cry that meant change my nappy, the cry that meant I have a stomach ache, or the room is either too hot or freezing cold, and the one that simple meant hold me. I liked the fact that this language had no grammar, I hate grammars. Lesson 2 – crying is babies first language. Know it and the baby is going to speak to you.

But no father even evolved to understand the Crying-language better than mothers, thanks to the port pregnancy brain growth (pruning).

Parentese Language and Child-Directed Speech are essential components in a mother's interaction with her child, that helps the baby learn human language. These specialized forms of speech are designed to make communication easier for the baby.

Parentese Language is characterized by a higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, and slower speech rate. These features make it easier for babies to hear and understand the spoken words.

Child-Directed Speech on the other hand involves simplified vocabulary, shorter sentences, and repetition. It helps the baby grasp the meaning of words and phrases.

During the first three months, a baby is primarily focused on understanding sounds. They are developing their auditory skills and learning to distinguish different sounds in their environment. In the subsequent three months, they begin to grasp a few commands and experiment with babbling sounds. This marks the initial stages of language development.

By the age of one, a baby may have acquired a small vocabulary and be able to speak a few words. The mother's use of parentese and child-directed speech plays a crucial role in this early language acquisition process. But that was still far away.

We were concerned parents in the beginning. We worried about everything that we could possibly worry about. Is the room temperature right? Is the baby feeding well? What will happen to her in Diwali with all that noise? Why is her tongue always out? Why is she having hiccups for so long? Is she burping properly? How to hold her extra flexible soft neck? Is she having enough sleep? Why is she spitting so much? Most of the time, like for men, a pair of caring arms, or a pair of breasts calms a baby down. 

Only once was she very cranky and cried a lot. We called the doctor and he recommended some colic drops. 6 drops and she was fine. 

With time we also calmed down as parents and started enjoying this new phase. We realized spitting isn’t a health problem; it is more of a laundry problem. We realized that as long as she is passing urine more than 7 times a day she is feeding well.

Doctor provided us with child development graphs and she was growing perfectly. Lesson 3 - There is nothing to worry, let things flow naturally.

One good thing about Hridhima is that she doesn’t cry much. She is the happiest baby in town…and she smiles a lot. I am sure it is not gas all the time, most of the time it is because she feels comfortable. And the best part, she loves to sleep through the night. She needs a feed only once in the middle of the night, rest of the time she lets us sleep. Who said babies gives sleepless nights? She is such a sweetheart. 

10. The D-Day!

My wife got admitted on the night of 4th October when we went for a regular checkup, ten days before the due date. We stayed overnight in the delivery suite. Next day morning our parents joined us.

She was having strong contractions. The doctor ordered us to take a seat in the sofa, and closed the curtains. I wonder why in India they still don’t allow the husband to be with his wife during normal delivery.

As we waited tensions were rising. I could hear the doctor shout, “Don’t push yet, take deep breath” a couple of times. After few minutes I heard them again. This time they shouted, “Push! Push! Push!”… Then there was silence. Then again “Push! Push! Push!”… and again silence. “Push! Push! Push!”…silence….“Push! Push! Push!”…silence….“Push! Push! Push!”… and then we heard the baby cry! I could see tears rolling down the cheeks of both our moms. My eyes? They were dry, so was my throat. She chose the auspicious day of Navami to come out!

Mommy was doing well. She is a girl who doesn't take a single moment to cry while watching movies, or because she unknowingly hurt someone. She is also a girl who went through the entire labor without shedding a single drop of tear. I overheard one of the Bengali aaya saying to another one from Madras with pride, "See? Have you ever seen anyone not shouting, crying, and making a scene while normal delivery? That is a Bengali girl! We are strong."

We are Indians, we love our state boundaries more than our country boundary. I whispered in my mind, she is strong not because she was born in a particular corner of India, but because she is SHE. Many times have her courage inspired me, and this was one such occasion. 

They showed us the baby. It was a princess…and she looked so cute…and then they took her away to the nursery. Guess we have to wait a bit longer.

She was an active baby weighing 2.94kgs with APGAR (five-point score of baby’s health) score of 9/10 within first 1min. Baby was also doing well.

This was the first day of the rest of her life.

We moved to our booked room. After a couple of hours my wife was transferred to the room, and after few more long hours, Hridhima. All of us were together, our family looked complete. There was another girl born few rooms from us. Apart from that there were 8 boys born on that day. I wondered why the sex ratio was so skewed. What happened to the other six girls who were never born? But it was not the right time to think about that, it was time to enjoy with our family.

Since everything went smoothly, my wife was discharged the next day. 

But then we had our first scare. Within 48hours Hridhima was admitted to the nursery again with jaundice. It was minor and we learnt that it is very common in babies. 

Bilirubin is a yellow substance produced by the body when red blood cells break down. It passes through the liver and is then excreted from the body. Before the baby is born, mom’s liver does the job of removing the bilirubin through the placenta. Once the baby is born and the placenta is disconnected, baby’s liver must take over. The handover takes couple of days. So, the first few days the bilirubin may spike up and baby turn yellow. Nothing to worry about, we are told. 24 hours of photo-treatment and she was back to her active healthy state. 

I had another interesting observation that day. Not a single delivery happened on that day as all rooms were empty. Puja was over; everyone chose an auspicious time to have their child, so what if it was not normal delivery? That’s India. But again, not the right time to think about it, Hridhima was healthy, and we were happy!