Travelling with a Baby - Part 2

D was wearing a baby carrier, had a backpack on his back, a diaper bag slung around his shoulders and two groaning suitcases in each hand. He was taking the steps two at a time. I was right behind, running with a puzzled Bobo in my hips and my handbag swinging behind me. We stopped on top of the stairs and took a quick look around the railway station and spotted Platform 3. Then it was back to running.  We reached Platform 3 and jogged alongside the sedately parked train, dodging the crowd scattered along the train.

I am never ever late for trains or flights.

So, how did we get here?

It all began when we had to go to Andhra Pradesh for a wedding and it involved a car and train trip while going and a train journey on the way back.

Bobo did the first leg in the car quite well, alternatively sleeping and alternatively looking out. We did our scheduled stop at D’s uncle’s house and set off to the station as planned. Except as we left, D’s uncle looked worried and told us that the train would leave earlier than what we had assumed.

Thus all the huffing and puffing. This turned out to be useless exertion since the train left at exactly the time we had thought it.

Once we had recovered our breath and shoved away our luggage into various nooks and crannies, we decided we needed plenty of sustenance to get over this traumatic experience (and ignored the fact that had we been fitter, we would have not cut such sorry figures). So began the gastronomic journey into Indian Railway’s culinary offerings, starting with hot and peppery tomato soup.

Bobo, meanwhile began to attract attention.

Indians love kids. Everyone wanted to make faces at Bobo and play with him. (I also think that Bobo is really cute with his silky hair and big eyes. But that is probably just smitten-mom-speak).  In return, Bobo put up quite a show, shooting dazzling smiles at perfect strangers. Before I knew it, one of our co-passengers grabbed him and started showing him a movie on her giant phone. I am ok with strangers making faces at Bobo but not really holding him. Besides, I could not think of a polite way of telling her that we thought he was too young to be watching TV, let alone the crap she was showing him. Finally I took him away and informed her that it was time for his dinner.

It was indeed and he ate his packed food. The station rolled in a little later and we had done quite ok. Hopefully Bobo shares my love for train journeys in India.

For the return leg, we reached the station 45 minutes ahead of schedule to take into account both the actual timing and the guestimates provided by various relatives.

However, there is such a thing as reaching too early with a baby who can’t walk yet. D walked around with Bobo. Then I walked around, holding Bobo in my baby carrier.

If I had been moonwalking, I could not have attracted more unabashed, open-mouthed attention. Everyone in the station paused to watch the baby carrier. And to think, I had specially remembered to pack proper Indian clothes to make sure I did not attract any attention.

Finally the train came, our coach stopped three coaches away from where it was supposed to stop and we repeated the running episode all over again.

We reached our seats and the first thing I spotted was a cockroach. One of things I wanted to do with this trip was to give Bobo a chance to build immunity and get used to Indian conditions. We were clearly getting more than we had bargained for.

I immediately cleared up all the food junk left behind by co-passengers and then cleaned the entire area with wet wipes. Then we spread out a blanket on the seat for Bobo and let him play and watched in resignation as he lovingly licked the blue chrome seat covers.

Yup, we were going to be building lots of immunity…

Travelling with a Baby - Part I

When we made plans to go to India for Bobo’s first visit home, we consciously decided to book night flights both ways. Google had told us that the best approach would be to travel during the baby’s usual sleep time so that the baby would just sleep through the flight

So there we were at the airport for an 8.20 p.m. flight to Chennai. Bobo was fed and changed in the airport and we boarded the flight.

I nursed Bobo at take-off. Bobo slept off without a protest. D opened a can of beer and began to sip it. I put on my headphones and settled down to get my dose of mindless Bollywood. All that was remaining was for the steward to fix our bassinet. Bobo would move from my arms to the bassinet and we would relax for the rest of the flight.

The steward came to fix the bassinet. It was a contraption that required D to move out, much grunting and straining by the steward and a final couple of loud knocks.  D’s beer began to leak down my arm, I hissed at him loudly and the third passenger in our row watched stoically as his knee was subject to much damage by the bassinet.

Bobo began to stir in all the noise. We looked at each other, panicked.

In a moment of startling stupidity, instead of patting him back to sleep, I hurriedly dropped him into the bassinet. The tight fitting bassinet space was the wakeup call he needed.

Bobo opened his eyes, looked around and decided that it was too fine a party for him to miss.

And so began a four-hour flight trying to entertain a baby who was sleepy but would not sleep. D played with him. I played with him. I sang songs to him. D rocked him. We had a game of ‘Bobo touches the video screen to turn it on’ and ‘Mummy leaps forward to turn it off in line with policy of no TV for Bobo’. Our stoic co-passenger played with Bobo for a wee bit and then slept off. D and I took turns to eat our meals. I nursed Bobo again. Bobo played with the toys we had got for him, all of which were dropped in quick succession. 

Finally when it all became too much, I began to walk up and down the aisle holding Bobo.

And there was that moment I was dreading – Being watched by a bunch of strangers whose expressions varied from ‘poor woman’ to ‘poor baby’ to ‘thank God it is not me’ to ‘I am in TV heaven and I don’t care about the rest of the world’ to ‘what a useless mom’

This last expression is something I have used in the past. I wearily resigned myself to getting those looks. One needs to acknowledge when Karma decides to bite you in the bum.

After my hands and legs got weary, I finally went and quietly sat in my seat and Bobo, by some miracle, went into a long and peaceful slumber.

Bobo slept through the landing, slept through the noisy immigration queue, slept through the noisy airport exit, his grandparents’ exuberant greetings and the horn-filled ride home.

Oh, did he sleep like a baby or what!

Book updates

Of late I have noticed that I don’t have much time to read. This is rather surprising because no matter what, I used to have a lot of time to read but apparently having a baby ensures your time goes down a black hole (an elaborate post on that some other time).

Not to mention sometimes, the baby-related reading you have to do just to make sure that you are not screwing up big time itself takes up time. Before Bobo started solids, I had to quickly read Gill Rapely’s Baby Led Weaning. My child guru N explained the concept, gave me the book and all I had to do was to actually read and implement. Unfortunately right around that time I also laid my hands on The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. I seriously contemplated postponing starting solids so I could finish Oscar Wao but luckily for Bobo, things did not turn out to be so dire and I managed to read enough Gill Rapely to figure out how to feed him his carrots at exactly six months.

Oscar Wao is not exactly hero material. He is fat and dorkish and while he loves women, he is never loved by them, atleast not in the romantic sense. Coupled with the fact that he belongs to the Dominican Republican community where the men and women are apparently going at it all the time, Oscar is not exactly in a happy place. But boy does he try! There is also a thread that takes us back in time to a story that shows the worst of the Trujillo regime. Gripping and well told, the book was an excellent insight into what life was back then and how it goes now for people of Dominican Republic. While the book is meant to be narrated in the voices of different people, at times they sound the same. That is a minor quibble though and the voice itself speaks such a charming, colloquial lingo that you don’t mind too much.

Keeping with the mood, I decided to plunge into A Feast of the Goat by Maria Vargos Llosa. A friend of a friend had recommended it and it lay awaiting its day in my book shelf. This one again takes us between the past and the present of Dominican Republic. The past recounts the last few weeks of the Trujillo regime, especially the preparations for Trujillo’s assassination. I am not sure how many authors could have successfully pulled off telling us about the personal motives and foibles of the assassins and how the aftermath evolves. You get a cold reality check on how politics plays its role the entire way. In the present, Urania Cabral comes from the U.S. to Santo Domingo after a self-imposed life-long exile and tries to come to terms with her past. While Junot is good, Llosa is brilliant. The latter did win the Nobel prize after all!

Both these books bring to light how a dictatorship works and how people survive in one and the price they pay for it. Suffice to say it is horrid. They also told me the history of a nation whose existence I was not particularly concerned with. But it is a history worth knowing just so we are reminded again why one man should not be given too much power. 

I managed to read a bit of non-fiction, something I usually don’t do. Bringing up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman tells us how the French bring up their children. Druckerman quits her successful career as a journalist, marries a Briton and moves to Paris. She has two kids during her stay and documents her perspectives on the French method of parenting. It is an interesting enough book and provides insights into how the French are sane about the role of children in their lives. Unlike the Americans, they apparently do not change their lives to revolve around their kids. Instead they fit their kids into their lives. This seemed sensible to me. Especially the parts about it being ok to put children in day care, giving them a variety of foods and permitting them some leeway to do mischief. Except Druckerman seems to think that the French can do no wrong. She gently wonders why most of them don’t breast feed for a longer time despite evidence that breastfeeding is good. She is quite ok with French women having lower expectations from their husbands when it comes to child rearing and household work, since that maintains the peace in the house (Thank you for taking us back to the dark ages!). I think this book would have been better had it taken a more balanced approach but it is still a decent read. Especially if you are a mother whose life does not revolve around her kid/s 24/7 and wants to hear about a culture which is ok with this behaviour.

Then it was onto Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, a book that seems to have got more bad press than really necessary. Taken as another voice to the debate on how to help women make progress in the professional world, it has a few points to make. The book focusses mostly on what women can do to help their own cause. I agree with a lot of her points. I have seen women be less ambitious and aggressive than men. I have seen women not ask for the same degree of pay hike and promotions. I have seen women who view their output more poorly than men even if they have done better. I had a conversation with my mentee last year, who did well at work, went to B-School and did well there as well and then told me that she wanted to take a job that would help her achieve a balance in life. I completely agree one needs balance in life but I also strongly think that there can be no preconceptions of how that balance will work for any particular individual. Women cut themselves short thinking of establishing a balance even before they have figured out what their potential is and how ambitious they are. Whereas men just start off ambitious and then cut back as they figure out where they fit.

Most of this happens at entry levels and I guess those women who stay in the race usually become more aware of these follies and start taking a conscious effort to do better. But this journey of self-discovery takes time and it is handy to have a book like this to remind women that they can indeed do better.

Sandberg however addresses the systemic issues that women face in a very peripheral manner and that is indeed a shortcoming of the book. Especially considering her clout she could have spent some more pages on this topic. But seriously, I would recommend this as reading to women who work. If you are putting in those eight or ten hours, then you may as well figure out how to make the most out of it.

Then there was the random book I picked up in the airport. David Nicholls' One Day which came with a blurb heaping high praise on it. The book tells us the story of Dexter and Emma over a period of twenty years, from the time they are undergrads. It describes beautifully both of their evolutions from their college persona. Dexter, charming and clever, is all set to be a big success. Feminist and a bit of a commie, Emma is constantly viewing success as a threat to her core principles. As the years pass, they both grow up and learn a lot about life. You can clearly see how well suited they are to each other and can also empathise with why they are never in the same phase of life. The dialogues are interesting and the warmth of their friendship comes out nicely. You can see a bit of yourself or your friends in the phases they go through. The ending is a bit dramatic though and I thought was rather an anti-climax to an otherwise realistic story. A good holiday read. 

Incidentally Bobo seems to be developing an interest in books. Right now his love for devouring them is mostly conveyed by him literally devouring them. Most of the expensive books we bought for him are already well chewed and may not last to the point where he actually enjoys books for what they are and not merely as teething tools. The other day however, he sat on my lap and patiently listened while I read The Hungry Caterpillar. No grabbing and putting it straight into his mouth. Either he was very sleepy or he may actually be developing an interest in story telling. I suspect it is the former but I will take what we get

Lunching with a baby

Check the profile of the other guests.

If single/couple with no kids and likely to write bitchy blog posts like this, then hire a baby sitter and leave baby behind. Everyone has adult conversations and a good time.

If parents and bringing along their toddler, then by all means take your baby along.

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Sit down and exchange pleasantries.

Baby gets antsy

Look totally in control and announce to the others that you are just going to rock your baby to nap and then toss him into his stroller where he will sleep uninterrupted till the end of the meal. Base your analysis on the previous lunch outing when baby did exactly that

Recollect steps from last time and proceed to follow them exactly.

Step one - Take baby outside

Step two - Walk around a bit with him.

Step three - Baby to start putting his head on your shoulder. Notice baby not doing his bit. Notice baby swirling his head left and right, fascinated by the events on the road

Give up. Bring baby back inside.

Try to get back into conversation.

Baby gets antsy.

Continue conversation and pretend that you are not standing in your place, rocking an increasingly loud baby and are hovering over the heads of other guests.

Eagerly hand over baby to a grandparent who is willing to rock him to sleep.

Five minutes later grandparent brings back sleeping baby.

Look totally in control and take baby

Put baby in stroller

Baby wakes up and gets antsy

Rock baby back to sleep

Put baby in stroller

Baby wakes up and gets antsy

Repeat

And again

And again

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Decide to hold the baby in your hand and let him sleep there

Watch food come.

Watch everyone else tuck into yummy looking mutton sukka, prawns, masala puris and fish biriyani

Start dribbling worse than the baby

Hand over baby to baby’s dad and tuck in.

Dad passes baby back and tucks in

Repeat

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Baby wide awake and starts dribbling looking at the food

Produce a box of steamed carrots for baby to chew. Proudly wait for other guests to 

remark how astonishing that a seven month old can eat by himself.

Notice other guests are uninterested in your baby feeding himself

Baby helpfully tosses half the carrots on the floor and most of the rest into his clothes

Try to attract attention of other guests when baby chews one tiny piece

Notice other guests are still uninterested

Force other guests to watch a ‘really interesting’ video of your baby eating prunes. (Maybe they prefer a video to the live version?)

In return be forced to watch photos of fancy dress party of their toddler

Call truce

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Baby and toddler eye each other. Take multiple snaps of them together

Watch toddler show off her ability to open and close doors

Notice other patrons in restaurant are not impressed by your baby’s antsy wails, his carrots tossed on the floor, the toddler blocking up the doorway, the constant walks everyone at your table takes while accompanying a child outside

Notice that you have started talking in 30-second slots the way you did when you used to watch TV and there were ad breaks.

Notice you did not have a single complete conversation.

Notice that you don’t really care and are just glad to be outside eating a good meal, sitting with your family and friends.

Notice how times change.