The Ugly

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, one of the best things about working at LifeSpring is the fact that whenever you are feeling a bit down you can go two floors down and check in on the clients (mothers and babies) of the hospital.

On Saturday as I was trying to leave the hospital (due to the political agitation) I had the wonderful opportunity to see the mother and child of whom I witnessed the C-section. The mother was there for a post-surgical check up.

An older woman, who I would soon learn was the mother's mother immediately handed the newborn to me. She looked so much better and was beautiful in every sense of the word. She now has a full head of hair. Perhaps the most interesting or amazing thing about her was the way she slept...with such intention. Having never been around a newborn, I have never realized how intently they sleep...as if this is her only job on earth - to sleep. Her little hands were clenched in tight fists and as I looked at her I couldn't help but sort of fall in love with the little thing. She was spectacular.

I turned to the mother, "she is beautiful."

The mother solemnly replied, "she is?"

"Yes, she is looking so healthy and happy," I said.

The mother then looked at me and said, "No one has come to see her - my husband and his family refuse to see her because they are angry and upset she is a girl."

To this point, I simply did not know how to reply. What do you say? All I could think was here is a perfect little human being who is, thus far, unmarked by life...but is she really?

Coming from the Western world, I once again was forced to swallow the reality of my luxuries. In India, the male child is still out rightly favored. He eats before the female child, he goes to school before the female child and he is valued more than the female child - end of story. This gender bias is a major catalyst to mal-nutrition issues as well as many others. In India, it is illegal (atleast on paper) to have any test performed which identifies the sex of the child because of the ever existing risk of female infanticide.

And these thoughts don't even touch on the way it must feel to the mother of the child who is a female herself and THE MOTHER OF THE CHILD.

As I am holding this baby all I can think is how ridiculous this whole notion is and all I can wonder at is how this still exists eventhough I fully understand why it exists and the history behind these types of cultural bias.

I continue to hold the child and just say "she is happy and healthy and that is what matter." But now I sort of feel like a fraud because, clearly, this is not all that matters. In fact, what matters most is that she is a girl.

The mother slowly dabs away of couple of tears and remains eerily quiet. She is neither disagreeing or agreeing with me. She is just there - she is just stuck here a week after major surgery with an infant no one feels is good enough.

"Is this your first baby?"

"Yes."

"Will you have another?"

"I don't' know," she shrugs as she looks away from me.

And as she looks away she puts her hand on top of mine and I turn to her and say, "It will be okay."

And, honestly, from that moment forward I have been thinking on that coy little phrase: "it will be okay." Here I am, white, educated, free and female. Who am I to say this. In reality, it might very well not be okay. It is not okay now, in this moment. This mother has been abandoned, thus far, by the father of her child. She has been made to feel inadequate, unworthy and shamed. This child, so small I am holding her in the palm of my hand, has hardly began life and yet she has already been condemned to a certain reality: FEMALE.

I don't know why I said "it will be okay." The more I think on it, the more I begin to believe that I likely said it more for myself than for this mother.