Children are angels and they look divine when they sleep, but what if these angels refuse to let you experience their divinity? Well, the answer is a night full of plight and true to the words; it’s all quite evident in your dark circled eyes and the yawns the next day.

It was ten thirty in the morning and I was ten hours into labor, with my baby taking his own sweet time to come out. I saw the nurses and hospital helps pass by me, occasionally giving me a sympathetic look and often asking me to wait a bit more, as according to them the pains had not set in yet. “Not set in yet?” I thought, “Then what is this that I am experiencing”, I felt like yelling. Nevertheless, all thanks to the deep breathing exercises that I was doing, they did not have the slightest clue.

It is quite surprising how; motherhood brings with it a swarm of new friends along with the many add-ons that come. Suddenly you start to associate yourself with the many others around you and many of those around, associate you as one of them. Motherhood makes strangers become acquaintances and acquaintances as friends. Though it might also revert the whole sequence, quite unpredictable as it is and makes us too.

By virtue of being constantly present with the kids all the time and their fathers being absent from the scene more often than not, it becomes the proud privilege of us mothers to automatically fit into the first place in our children’s most preferred list. However, it comes as a big and many a times difficult to digest shock when children choose to change priority or for that matter even show signs of it, to start turning for small little things from Mommy dear to Daddy dearest.

‘Teething troubles’ is a phrase I find quite apt, as both the literal and symbolic senses of it gel with ‘motherhood’ so well, just the hand in glove way. ‘ Amin right from the day your baby comes in your life , with every step of the way where you get stuck, the words, “oh…these are just teething troubles darling..” are thrown in your face by whosoever finds you stuck and whosoever is or is not able to help.

Like every year, Mother’s day is here again. Like every year I went to buy a card for my mother and like always I spent an hour in the card shop and also in the one next to it, going through every mommy card they had, to (very unlike the past years!) finally come out with one. Needless to say that I found it absolutely inappropriate from the moment I stepped out of the shop. And needless also to say, that I thought of not sending it at all. Until my small little wonder taught me a lesson I’ll cherish throughout.

Each one of us on this earth has urges to which one is susceptible. An urge, which no matter how much we try to restrict and refrain, does manage to surface every now and then, whenever tempted. Someone has an urge to smoke, someone an urge to shop, someone might have an urge to eat chocolates and Moms in general have an urge to correct.

Life is a strange journey that brings you full circle, soon enough to realize mistakes, smile and say, “Oh! now I understand”. As a teenager, I was very rebellious. Set norms and patterns always bothered me. Moreover, not only was I too unreasonable in my demands at times, I was also too vocal about my likes and dislikes, my mother often becoming the soft target of all my frustrations. One thing I vowed was to never bring up my kids on the same mundane laid down patterns and made sure my Mom got to hear what I had to say about it.

Motherhood is a blessing, true enough, but more blessed I feel are those who are able to sail smoothly through the initial formative years of parenting. In our side of the world the common belief is that, in giving birth to a child a woman is born again. And really, after having two kids of my own today, I completely stand by this belief.