1 Pee, Poop and Privacy

1^st July 2019

I love my mother.

We all do. After all, our mothers brought us up with great love and care(not denying that), she knew what was best for us (most of the time), and knew exactly what she needed to do to make us the who we are (or so we believe).

However it is only after we have our own children that we realize, our entire childhood, we have been just her lab rats. She probably had no clue of what she was doing. It was all trial and error, experimenting on what makes us behave well, eat well and stay alive. We as children, never notice a mother's vacillation.

Being a mother of two children, a 9 year old boy and a 3 year old girl, (my first one was born when I was just 22), staying in a nuclear family in places which were always new to me, so was the local language, and working part-time keeping the kids in daycare, I had a perfect recipe for failure, or so I thought. To top it up to my husband belongs to a different region of India, coming from a culturally different state, having a different mother tongue. Among other issues, we had to decide which language our kids should learn first and finally settled it by choosing English over the regional ones.

I had no clue about what it takes to be a mother, but I wanted to be the best one anyway. I believe I have managed to find a way through it or maybe to find a way around the shit it involves, and do a fairly decent job at bringing up my two lovely kids.

So here I am, presenting you all with“ Motherhood Tales”, a series about everything that goes on inside a mother’s head. It is about the emotions and thoughts, the vulnerability, the overwhelming situations that mothers face, and how they learn to adapt to the ever-changing behaviour of their baby through different phases of its life. 

If you are looking for parenting advice, let me tell you, this is definitely not the place. Here I shall talk about the mother, her challenges, fears and struggles. There will be stories of battles won by me against the tiny warriors at home, or I might share with you a few moments when my kids made me feel very proud and of course, of hundred others which compete to be 'the greatest embarrassing moment' in my life. Like every other woman, I will talk about my endless wish lists…no, not that ‘travel around the world’ kind of mundane stuff! I mean the interesting things, like; need sleep, need waxing, need a finish the book I started reading a year ago etc.

I hope that I can manage to make you laugh, (or cry) after reading this. Consolation would be that at least it helps you to doze off (we all know mothers are always sleep deprived). Lastly, I hope that you find yourself in one or many tales here.

                             1   Pee, Poop and Privacy

Children, babies, in particular, are the masters of timing. They know exactly when to pee and poop…yes…the moment you sit down to eat or drink something. No mother escapes this. If we are using regular diapers then we are constantly changing them and feeling guilty that it is not very environment-friendly. If we are for cloth diapers, we have it worse. We have to change them frequently and wash the smelly load, which is, believe me, only for the bravest. Either way, we have been peed and pooped upon, even on our best dresses.

Slowly we master the baby’s bowel routine timetable and that is no longer a worry. As we wean them after days of struggle and introduce solid food, it brings us the next learning. We start researching, analyzing and fretting over the baby’s poop. Is it bright yellow, mustard yellow or dark green? Is it too runny or is the baby constipated? Visits to the doctor become frequent and we do things we never imagined. We discuss the poop colour, smells and texture everywhere, with everyone, and all the time. If it’s a lunch with your other ‘mommy’ friends, then the discussion can go on till you pay the bill. If your friends are not mummies yet they start calling you as crazy for even bringing up the topic.

As babies grow, so do our challenges. We enter a phase where when we are at a restaurant, we always take the table which everyone else avoids. The one closest to the restroom. If we are at the airport, we pray that the baby doesn’t poop till you have reached your destination. But it always happens right before you board, and you have to carry that stinky bundle, get seated, wait for the seat belt sign to go off, so you can finally clean up the mess in that cramped toilet. We take the toddlers to the loo before and after any car journey, yet our planning fails. They always have to pee when we are stuck in traffic and cannot pull over.  Our kids tend to squat on the floor in the middle of a shopping mall and declare 'emergency’, they probably enjoy giving out false alarms, making us go through the drill when we are trying to get them potty trained.

If that’s not enough, we have add-on problems. Like my friend’s daughter who wanted to pee like her elder brother (who never closes the bathroom door and probably let his sister observe and learn). He said," the way I stand and do it, that’s the right way", and she agreed. My friend spent days helping her daughter ‘unlearn’ the new learning but that lead to another issue; an anatomical one, where she had to explain both the kids what is what and why. This opened Pandora’s Box and questions were thrown at my poor friend who didn’t have age appropriate answers ready in her mind. The discussion ended as she promised a star-shaped sticker to both of them if they pee as she had taught them, in different ways, every day. How easy was that!?

Sometimes children hog the limelight when you have guests. They declare loudly in front of the visitors that they have successfully taken a dump or need to take one badly. All you can do is excuse yourself and get to work.

You clean them up nicely and get back to that coffee which is now lukewarm, heat it up again and as you take a sip, they want to go again.

“But you just did ”, you say assertively.

“No mummy, I am not done. You know little potty is…”

Before they start giving you any gross details about why you have the honour of wiping their butt again, you say, “it’s okay, let’s go”.

While the children’s bowel routine is hot news, we adults like to keep ours like a national secret. Nobody wants others to know that they missed someone’s phone call because they were doing their business in the bathroom. But there are traitors at home. You teach your kids not to answer your phone when you are in the loo, but they will. You teach them to say mummy is busy in the kitchen but they will always say," mummy is in the bathroom”. This makes you wrap up whatever you are doing inside and run to the door.

 Once you have kids, privacy is not a ‘need’ anymore. It becomes a ‘want’. You will never take a dump in peace or shower without the kids banging on the door, asking you the most random questions or begging to let them in. Their favourite questions are the ones you hate to answer.

“What are you doing?”

“How long will it take?”

Well, how do you answer that really? Do you say that you are just peeing, or do you tell them the entire truth? That you are browsing on your phone, or shaving your legs and sometimes even crying because you are having a tough day, thanks to them.

Honestly, bathrooms breaks mean much more to mothers, especially those who have toddlers, or preschoolers. The children keep asking to be carried around, even when your arms ache, they are clingy and messy. You are cleaning up after them every minute. They are loud and cranky, you don’t know why they are crying and why they won’t stop. They are like leeches, they want to be next to you all the time when you cook, do the dishes when you are trying to drive. They are irrational and illogical, none of your answers will ever satisfy them. You are clueless at times, not knowing what's bothering them really and need a break from them. You cannot convince them to listen nor can you yell at them, that will give them another reason to cry louder. You won’t hit them, that’s not going to help and you are against it. So, what do you do?

That’s when you lock yourself inside the bathroom and breathe. Just breathe and let the moment pass. Those few minutes of the pee break are precious. Finally, you are alone, you can massage your arms a bit, look in the mirror and find that patience and strength again. Once you open that door, the little ones hug and welcome you as though you have been away for days. Just then you remember, that you forgot to pee. No way are the kids letting you go in again.

That has to wait now, hold it in!