By GAYATRI UNSWORTH (http://thehappymummy.blogspot.com/)

So if you read my last article (Having the 'perfect' pregnancy), you would know that I aimed for the perfect pregnancy and delivery only to find out that morning sickness could go on for 24 hours 7 days a week for 5 months and that despite what movies and advertisements tell you, it is impossible to come out of labour without having bad hair.

It’s a good thing that newborns have blurry vision when they’re first born because if mine had seen me, I’m sure she would have requested for an exchange or, in horror, tried to crawl back in.

Anyway despite lying there droopily and feeling as if I’d run a marathon (not that I would know really – the most I do is brisk walks and that’s usually to the fridge in mouth-watering anticipation of the chocolate bars that await), the moment they handed my baby to me, it dawned upon me in utmost clarity that my life had well and truly changed forever.

A lot of people imagine what having a baby would be like, but until you’re holding a tiny, fragile precious being in your arms, it’s virtually impossible to comprehend the level of responsibility and, along with that, the concern that comes with being a mother. And it’s instant. No one really gives you time to adjust, assuming that you’ve had 9 months to come to terms with the impending reality.

I was most certainly in love – a kind of indescribable, beyond-anything-I’ve-ever-known kind of love, but I was also so immensely overwhelmed.

Jasmin was handed to me minutes after her birth by a nurse who looked at me and said, “You want to try breastfeeding” before leaving the room. I got the feeling that she was instructing rather than asking so I decided to try my best.

Let me just say at this point that when you’re still numb in most places from the epidural, it’s hard enough trying to keep yourself propped up so you don’t slide off the bed, without having the added stress of being handed a 3.1kg baby who doesn’t have any neck support and whose busily chomping mouth resembles a great white shark about to go in for a kill.

My husband was off sorting out all the paperwork and I wasn’t comfortable asking anyone else for help, so it was just me and one very hungry baby.

I’ve read that this period is called “bonding time”. Personally, I’d like to rename it feeding time at the zoo because I’m sure to on-lookers that is what it would have appeared as.

Jaz knew exactly where the dairy farm was located and she was wasting no time heading straight for it. I used one arm to support myself, one arm to support Jaz and the rest of my upper body to guide her mouth in the right direction. When she finally latched (seized) on, I waited for the magical moment to happen – I always expected that I would instantly be filled with warm fuzzy feelings and she would have a satisfied gummy smile complete with a milk moustache.

Nothing! No picture perfect mother-baby breastfeeding shots like you see in the magazines. Instead, I found myself slowly and unceremoniously slipping off the bed. Colostrum looked nothing like milk and my arm was steadily giving way because I was just too weak to hold her. In my head, that moment was filed away under the spanking new mental mummy folder as “Guilty Episode No. 1”.

Soon after, a different nurse popped her head in to see how I was doing and realising that it wasn’t a Kodak moment, proceeded to take Jaz off me and told me to have a nap. I didn’t need to be told twice; I was out like a light bulb. Before I knew it, I was awoken, moved to a different stretcher, which by the way, is no walk in the park with stitches, and wheeled off to my room.

When they brought Jaz to me later, I was a little more prepared. I was actually capable of taking her in this time – her big eyes, the squashy nose and tiny fingers. She was beautiful, absolutely perfect and so delicate.

I was no longer who I used to be.

From that moment onwards, I was – had to be and wanted to be – someone else; someone whose entire life now had to be re-oriented towards this little being.

I didn’t get to ponder on such poetic notions for too long as before I knew it, my family, their extended family and friends from various quarters descended upon us generously bearing gifts and well-wishes.

Of course, everyone wanted to offer their opinion on who Jaz resembled and more than once, I wanted to politely point out that despite my love for the baby, I really hoped that my husband and I did not have squinty puffy eyes, squashed noses or wrinkly, hairy foreheads.

The facial recognition experts were also co-incidentally labour-recovery experts so I was lovingly given a variety of interesting recommendations including being told not to wash my hair for a month to not walking for at least 3 days to not touching my baby’s head.

I was a willing, considerate and polite participant in this information sharing session. I waited until they left before walking to the bathroom to have a shower which included a good scalp scrub, after which I gave Jaz a cuddle that most definitely encompassed her head. Unfortunately, I’m not very good with unsolicited advice.

My 71-year-old grandmother (bless her) was the most opinionated of the lot. When she arrived and saw me eating an ice-cream sundae and pizza, which my husband had gotten for our celebration dinner, she looked positively mortified. And to make matters worse, I had committed the ultimate sin, I wasn’t even wearing socks.

I wanted to tell her that it was 34 degrees outside but I suddenly remembered her giving me a good whopping from time to time as a child, and decided that despite her age, she wouldn’t hesitate to give an encore, so I obligingly put socks on.

You can just about imagine my horror when she proceeded to announce that she was moving in for a month to help with my confinement. Now for those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of confinement, for me, it’s pretty much as unpleasant as the term suggests. It’s enforced upon unsuspecting first-time mothers in Asian societies by their mothers, grandmothers or trained confinement ladies and involves between one to two months of very rigid practices and rituals.

I must point out here that many women embrace it, and I have no doubt that some even enjoy it, but I certainly couldn’t wait to get it over with and therefore, it did not last very long.

I ate special confinement food for the first day I was back from hospital before convincing my mother to sneak me some real food. This was no easy feat as my usually petite, docile looking grandmother was guarding me like a most-wanted terrorist from Guantanamo Bay.

She wouldn’t even let me have a glass of cold water which she claimed would enter my body, remain cold and come out as refrigerated milk. It constantly baffles me that she has not yet won a Nobel Prize in Science.

In balmy, humid tropical weather, her rules were torture but it was easy enough to nip to the fridge when she was occupied with terrorising other occupants in the house. I also walked everywhere and in hindsight, went upstairs and downstairs numerous times during the day just to make a point. My grandmother countered such actions with gruesome tales of what awaited my reproductive system in my older years.

By the end of the first week of confinement, I was sitting in Delicious in Bangsar, tucking into a cheeseburger with Jaz sleeping peacefully in her capsule next to me. My grandmother bemoaned the fact that I was inviting all types of evil predicaments to come my way, which she had to offset with various rituals. I let her.

For what it’s worth, my grandmother loves me to death and she was only doing what she knew as best for a new mother and that fact made it somewhat easier to deal with the whole thing. Also she is mother to four children (all natural births) and at 71, looks amazing, so I knew there was something to be learnt from everything she was telling me; I just didn’t want her to know it.

Gayatri Unsworth is a 29-year-old mother, academic and writer who is learning more and more about herself, and the world at-large from her 1-year-old toddler. She can be contacted at gayatri.unsworth@gmail.com.