"Ma'am you are positive" the new year sun was shining brilliantly in golden hue. I got the most unexpected and one of the happiest news of my life. I was expecting. The trimesters rolled by in preparations-extensive,intensive and thorough. The neighbors were requested not to smoke in the patio,car seat,stroller,bath tub,decked crib,toys were all settled in place. To make my delivery pleasant I prepared a collage of pictures-a picture of breathtaking bright red rose, a cute baby swaddled in a pink floral blanket sleeping calmly and a wide stretch of green grass with the word "Tranquillity" written on it.Leaving no stone unturned I had Celine Dion's CD and RAT RACE DVD packed.So when my water broke we rushed to the hospital.On the way,my husband and I stopped by to buy the latest ELLE magazine. When the contractions came hurting like a dagger,sending shivers down my spine I groaned and moaned. The magazine was thrown away,the DVD and CD were forgotten. A nurse looked at the picture of the baby and asked my husband if that was our first baby? "Wow, the meadows filled with flowers look lovely,did you take this picture?" another nurse grinned.I was grinding my teeth with agony,frustration and felt like tearing all the pictures. Another nurse hummed to the music as she waited for my contractions to come more frequently. When I held my newborn,kissed his tiny hands and looked at the angelic face I felt I could go through it all over again for him. The pain faded past me,I saw the tiny bud of innocence and tenderness and held him close listening to his heart beat next to mine.
       

Betty, a friend of mine is close to her due date. We go for walks together and I share with her my experience as she waits to follow suit.I told her there is much more she needs than just baby clothes,baby lotions and crib. You need to be brimming with energy.You will be extremely overmatched,your kid will have the energy of Superman and you poor thing would be churned out in the life's grinding mill. So fluff up your pillow,snuggle under your quilt,get nourishing sleep of six hours like normal people.Watch all your favorite movies,go to the theatre,eat the popcorns one at a time.We watch movies as TV soaps in small fractions of episodes or not at all. Go for a romantic dine out with your hubby,relishing each morsal down the throat. Take leisure time to have a bath or rub your favorite lotions and pamper your skin.I've had a couple of occasions when I had to rub the shampoo on my hair and its remnant on the face with no time to flip open the face wash tube. The other day the body lotion was not getting rubbed in. The harder I tried, the more frothy it became. I checked the label,it was an Amaranth conditioner. So I told my friend not to put diaper rash cream close to the toothpaste tube.
   

We thought that the way to get a baby to sleep is to lay him down in the crib and switch on American Idol. Experience says,you need to be perfect in the art of leaving the room. Hold your sneeze,if you can't the deal is off. Don't step on any musical toy or bump into the wall in dark. Escape like a SpiderMan or woman by making a wide silent swing into the safe zone of the living room. If your baby catches you escaping he will cry, wail and thrash around.You will be punished for disturbing him.We circled around the neighborhood in the car to lull him to sleep.We were lucky of never being reported for suspicious activity so I tell my friend to drive far off. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the colic,teething, 3a.m.feedings and diaper change will keep her up whole night. We were staggering through the day with black circles under our eyes walking stooped-over,as though permanently pushing a stroller. Working from home wasn't a bed of roses either.I had the luxury of waking up at my sweet will but I wrote my columns with my 6-week-old baby strapped to the front of me.It was hard to remember the day of the week.         

She could consider investing her time learning skills a mom must have, I tell Betty. So that she and her husband can occasionally enjoy a private conversation in their own home. She could learn breathing techniques.How to hold on your breath for 20 seconds while changing a diaper. Inhaling in the oxygen,filling your lungs to the utmost capacity with patience and exhaling out the stress when your kid stomps his feet insisting on eating chips instead of pasta. The skill to catch a siesta on the couch while watching TV, dozing off for few minutes at the back seat of the car while you reach for baby's routine check-ups at the hospital. She could go to a shopping spree and get gifts for her friends and family a year or two in advance. Just as we reached the mall our baby would wake up crying. Shopping had to take a backseat and the quiet lunch at Sizzlers had to wait.We rushed to the family room,changed his diaper. Then I gave him the bottle,while my husband sat flipping the pages of Parenting magazine.   

Our relatives and friends called us couple of times and we were told that its always our 2 year old answering the phone. I checked that he had recorded his gibberish in the answering machine's greeting. Talking on the phone might be difficult when your kid wants to do all the talking. I have to lock myself in the washroom with the phone,to get through the conversation.Phone,Coins, medicines, cell phones, all sharp objects, keys, important papers, choking small objects, rental DVDs,chemicals- everything has to be kept out of toddler's reach.It is a good idea to have an elevated control room, I mean a pulpit to keep your things or make yourself a sanctuary, I tell her. I once had my cell phone beeping inside the woofer so I had to open that up.In a wild search for the cell phone, I found my house keys under the refrigerator. Rental DVDs were mostly discovered underneath the TV. Look for the most unusual places when you go all out for hunting misplaced stuff.There is nothing wrong in fixing a day of the week for this task. I prefer Friday as its backed by weekend respite.Keeping your computer and movie in demand password protected is a sane idea. Once I went to the washroom and by that time "jhsndcjnscj" message had been sent to my editor as a reply to my final version of edited article.We had to watch "Meet the Robinsons" on demand again because my 2 year old had ordered it by repeatedly clicking the On Demand button on the remote. Our 2 year old runs the home,rules the roost and controls all our trips.We go to Disney land for the third time and skip out on Las Vegas Casinos or camping at Mount Shasta. I told her to buy earplugs.My ears are always ringing with my kids demands and phone calls from friends and work. So while I'm in the shower wishing for a sanctuary which is always out of reach, my toddler is banging on the door,the cordless is ringing on the basin and my ear drums are ringing with yet another imaginary voices of doorbell for the Fedex mostly arrives during my quickie shower.   

Never assess your efficiency and productivity in a day after you become a parent, I tell her. There is a Do-Undo project you shall start working on. My kid keeps throwing the laundry ,I fold it back, he spreads things all on the floor I put them back in the closet, he spreads tiny shreds of paper on the carpet and I  vaccuum again and yet again. But the feeling of holding my baby in my arms,the joy of bathing him, cuddling him at night with the snug warmth of my love surpasses it all. When my kid holds my hand and looks up to me with a cherubic smile, I feel I have the whole world in the palm of my hand.
                                                                                                                                             
Meenu Gupta is a member,contributor of Mothering Heights.Her works can be found at www.motheringheights.net. She is a member of Epic India an Arts and Culture Magazine.Her articles can be reached online at http://www.epicindia.com/magazine/Culture/roots
Some of her articles and feature stories can be reached at:
www.indiacurrents.com,
http://www.seattlewritergrrls.org/archive/2002i4_beginning.html,
www.ohlone.edu/org/monitor/20050415/page4-5.pdf
She is thankful to the editors Christine Fugate, Richard Marcus (Epic India), Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan(India Currents) for giving valuable feedback.
She is thankful to her husband for listening to her unedited work, to all her friends for taking out the time to read the articles. And above all to her 2 year old for always providing inspiration to write.