Reinhabiting time as a new mother

Wednesday night began to feel like a breakthrough moment when for the first time, in under 30 minutes, he seemed full, and I didn’t feel the need to supplement his meal with pumped milk from a bottle. Representation pic

The knowledge that I, at long last, had at least a kilo of jaggery sitting in my pantry, impressed itself in my consciousness. Since my final trimester I had nursed a longing for til ladoo - not the harder variety, but the softer, melt-in-your-mouth kind. My tryst with gestational diabetes meant I had to defer this craving, put it off until it could be viably indulged. This present postpartum moment of seemingly insatiable hunger felt like fortuitous timing. All the ingredients were at hand in our kitchen. So, yesterday, in the early evening, during a wave of calm while our child was asleep, I put water to boil to make an adrak-saunf chai and on the other stove began roasting sesame. I had crumbled a large rock of jaggery and placed it in a processor along with peanuts. In retrospect I realise I should have first blitzed the roasted sesame to extract some oil that would have helped form the balls. In my greedy haste, and because I am still learning to re-inhabit time maternally, I ground everything in one go, forgetting also that the device in my kitchen that calls itself a processor isn't half as intelligent as the Bajaj mixer I had back in Delhi. I ended up with what I would call a deconstructed til ladoo, its textural consistency resembling the crumble layer at the bottom of a cheesecake. I introduced into this deliciousness two tablespoons of ghee and allowed the heat from my fingers to bring it all together. It didn't matter to me whether I had round balls or whether the texture was sandier, when I hurriedly put a morsel in my mouth to check for flavour I was gobsmacked. The buttery intensity of the ghee had intervened to provide a warm, nurturing undertone, while the sesame-jaggery-peanut crumble mix danced together to offer a nutty-salty-sweet-roasted nudge on the tongue. I filled two bowls with this concoction, used a spoon to press it down, and offered one to my partner before sitting myself down at the kitchen table with my hot chai and my portion. I devoured every teaspoon of it.

I wonder, today, if I offered myself this treat to reward my perseverance over the last four weeks. As a C-section mother, I felt as though I had been entrusted with care-giving, but with some of the essential tools held back from me. I have felt the time not so much as pulse in my empty uterus or as scab forming over surgical scar or as lochia transforming in colour and intensity. I have experienced each second of anticipation on the tips of my breasts as I made every effort to pump every three hours, all the while praying to a fictional milk goddess, asking her to intervene for me, to allow for enough flow as to satiate my child so I wouldn't be spending almost 90 minutes at each feeding session, so I could be a bit more functional, a bit less sleep deprived.

Wednesday night began to feel like a breakthrough moment when for the first time, in under 30 minutes, he seemed full, and I didn't feel the need to supplement his meal with pumped milk from a bottle. All the efforts were finally bearing fruit, the dietary supplements - methi seeds, saunf, oat milk - the regular pumping, the breastfeeding alongside bottle feeds… What could it mean for me to not have to bother with the fussiness of formula when his hunger announced itself at night, when I am at my sleepiest? What might it be like to not have to constantly sterilise all the pumping machinery and the bottle? What could it look like to have more agency over my ability to nurse his hunger?

In Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, one of the few books I read when I had just discovered I was pregnant, Angela Garbes fuses her own experience of motherhood with a nerdy passion for science, journalism, and feminism. In a chapter on breastfeeding, titled ‘Mother's Milk', she speaks candidly about how her research into the elaborate science of breastfeeding was fuelled by her desire to find motivation to continue with it after 10 months. "In fact, the greatest cost of breastfeeding, which is invisible to most people besides parents, is time (and, oh, bodily autonomy)… The lost wages incurred by time spent pumping and nursing is real. In fact, one report estimates that the monetary value of the time spent breastfeeding during the first six months adds up to 14,250 USD." While the value she offers is dollar-based, I wonder what the figure would look like in India, for instance, where breastfeeding is still the norm, giving the higher costs of alternatives like formula or pumping. I tried to transform each 15-minute pumping session into something resembling a prayer and a meditation as I thought about how mothers are among the unseen discontents of hetero-capitalist-patriarchal systems.

The start of my infant's life also coincides with the beginning of Russia's assault on Ukraine. Had I been admitted to the hospital on my original date of delivery, I would most likely have been sharing my room with refugee mothers. I cannot imagine what it must be like to navigate the fourth trimester without the comfort of a roof over one's head and a bed of one's own in which to sleep. As I tried to come to terms with the tingling pull of the pump's vacuum upon my nipples, I had to acknowledge the sinking feeling that always accompanied it - the cognisance that the world continues to fail mothers.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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