via Daily Prompt: Baby
Baby

Life changes the moment the news is confirmed that you are going to enter the next stage of life i.e. Parenthood. Your mind becomes a battlefield of opposite thoughts. If you are the gonna-be-mother, then even your body becomes strange to you. You feel happy as well as quirky. The thought that somebody is inside your body and that is not going to stop there as it will soon start moving and kicking inside you scares you. When you are hungry, you can’t eat; when you eat you want to puke. If you are the gonna-be-father you feel even worse. The first thought comes to your mind is: Will you be able to pick up the baby in your arms without hurting it; and uncomfortable, sleepless nights is the other thought that troubles you. As the times passes, you wonder, though you don’t want to, whether your spouse/girlfriend would ever be in the same perfect ten shape again.

Finally the bundle of joy arrives after lots of screaming, bloodshed and anxiety. If I dare to speak the truth: the truth is that for first few days you really don’t know what you should do with this bundle of joy. It’s not that you don’t love your baby but because you feel that your baby is totally unpredictable ( in fact it means that your baby is quite normal). Somehow days become weeks and weeks become months. You don’t even change the page of the calendar on the side table. Sometimes you can’t even see it as its hidden somewhere under the heap of the nappies and diapers. Already as a couple you have had a few serious fights and sweet patch-ups as you know that the new mother is experiencing the postpartam depression (though it is not grave) and the new father, though he is trying to play the Knight in the shining Armour, is entirely clueless what to do.

One evening when the baby is around three months old, the still-new-father hears a loud shriek while he is enjoying his evening snack trying to understand the dialogues spoken by the hero of his favourite action movie (No. He has not become deaf after the child-birth. In fact, the volume of the T V is very low as the baby is sleeping in the other room). He runs to the bedroom thinking that something has happened to the baby; but sees that baby is sleeping and the still-new-mother is standing in front of the mirror staring at her reflection and crying.  The still-new-father holds the still-new-mother in his arms tightly and try to console her and tells her that she would get her figure, hair and swollen eyes back to normal again. The wife smiles after a few minutes and they remember the time when they met each other for the first time. They realize that life will not be the same again as it is going to be a more beautiful and thrilling roller-coaster ride with the baby held tightly in their arms right there where the heart beats. They have heard their hearts beating together and now as parents they can hear their hearts singing in unison, wishing ‘the wonder they created together’ a happy life. Suddenly, they come out of their sweet moment as they feel that their is a foul smell lurking in the air and they know that it is time to change the diaper. First they look at each other and then at the baby and laugh loudly (their first laugh together in last one year) and they wonder again at the capabilities of the little Game Changer.

“Child Is the Father of Man”: wrote Wordsworth centuries ago, but it holds true even today as some truths never change.His implications were philosophical. However, even in today’s scenario a baby changes the game of life altogether as it gives new meanings to the life of the parents and teaches the mankind the true meaning of pain, patience and happiness.