Wednesday, April 14, 2010

A Milestone Year




After almost a year of being away from active blogging, I finally forced myself to post something on what has been a milestone year in my life during the past months.

A lot has happened and I wonder where to begin. The biggest and life changing event was that I had a baby during the summer last year. A baby boy! His entry into my life, just like any other mother's, has been wonderful, rewarding and a lot of work. I stopped working for a while and life became a rhythmic routine of feedings, diaper changes and sleepless nights. The parental/in-laws coverage and help lasted for the initial months and time took a new dimension afterwards.

The monotony of the daily chores and the worries of not being able to find a suitable position in an economy where the unemployment rate was over 10%, had me job hunting during the times when I should have either caught up on sleep or spent more time enjoying my lil K. Nevertheless, I ended up finding a job within the same field. If life was busy with an infant before, it got crazier, it still is. Most days it feels like the Kamal song in Avvai Shanmughi, one man donning several roles and doing multiple things and going to bed at 3 am. What with a new job that was demanding and with the parents returning to India, we ended up sending lil K to daycare. As simple as it sounds, trying to summarize all this in a sentence only dimishes the days and nights of emotional turmoil that most working women go through, the decisions about what could be the best possible childcare arrangement and the feelings of guilt that accompany the decision, no matter what.

Well,I guess that is the update for one post. With so many things happening so fast in life, every day during the past year, I've wanted to write, but just couldn't get to it, mainly due to lack of time. Want to start a separate blog on motherhood and babies (nothing unique there), want to write about all the milestones, the joys, fears, Q&As about babies etc. Maybe, I will get to it someday in the near future. Want to write about working moms, non working moms, spouses who help and who don't, about babies and their evolving selves, about a generation of parents living in India who are caught between taking care of their older parents versus helping out their sons and daughters with their kids here in the US, about the biggest decision that every Desi living in the US faces at some point in their life- whether to go back to India or settle down here etc. and a million other topics that whiz past me in the day to day living. Until then, I hope to use this blog to express myself. Finally, want to thank all the blogger pals who have dropped into this space with your comments and still make enquiries about my whereabouts. I will catch up on my blog reads whenever possible.

Hasn't 2009 been a milestone year and 2010 seems to be flying more quickly.

Happy Tamil New Year!

9 comments:

Priya said...

Congrats being a Mother and enjoy it...

Cham said...

Hehe Congrats :) Not an easy task jungling between kid and job but well done to catching up with a new job!
Inniya puttandu vazthukkal :)

mitr_bayarea said...

Priya and Cham-
Thanks and its so nice to hear from you both.

Jayashree said...

YAY!!! You are back. Congratulations on mommyhood. I know what you mean about decisions being really tough to make and fraught with guilt. Went through that myself.

Me too said...

Hearty Congratulations and very happy new year to you all too!

na_an said...

nice post :-) welcome back!!

Shruthi said...

Congrats :)

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Unknown said...

love this post.