One Year of Parenthood

It is 14 May 2007 and it is 12:11 A.M and it is One full year of Parenthood. Today Abhimanyu has turned One. The first year of Parenthood has been a amazing experience. In this one year Abhimanyu has morphed from a small infant who depended so much on us to a cute little child who now walks on his own and who speaks a few words.

Today as the clock was slowing moving towards 12:00 there was strange feeling in my heart, I was feeling weak. This appeared strange to me, My brain was saying why am I feeling weak now when I did not feel weak when he was born, when I did not feel weak when he fell from the bed first time or when he was ill and suffering from ear infection. But heart does not listen to logic. I am very happy but along with happiness there is this strange feeling of weakness.

How has this one year changed me. Has it changed my thinking, my principles or my attitude towards life? I will think about these in next few days and compare myself from now with myself from 1 year back. I hope once I have completed that analysis I will post my results. I hope I would be honest with myself.

Looking back at the 1st year now. I think this was very enjoyable one year. There are so many funny events that I can remember so clearly. I think both me and Jaya enjoyed it a lot. I think we enjoyed it right from the day Abhimanyu was born. Every thing was fun, from potty cleaning and diaper changing to trying to make him go to sleep. It was difficult some time but it was enjoyable. There was sense of achievement when he would finally sleep after crying for 45 minutes. There was sense of achievement, a sense of inner happiness, a sense of satisfaction in each of his activities like learning to sit, crawl, walk and finally stand.

We had heard a lot of horror stories like child does not allow to sleep, he does not allow to do laundry etc.. etc in pre natal classes. In our case we did not feel that a bit. May be what those classes did was to lower the expectations. Or May be it is just a attitude difference in way children are raised in different cultures.

Now after almost a hour the feeling of weakness is slowly subsiding, I don't know why the feeling was there in first place. Now I am feeling the journey has just begun, may God give us courage and strength for all the next phases of the journey.