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I have always considered myself a woman of privilege but I hadn’t realized just how privileged I really am until about two years ago.
I can say it out loud now – I’ve always secretly wanted a daughter. I’ve had the best times with my own mother who I consider my closest friend and I know just how special the father-daughter bond is. Movies and TV shows I’ve enjoyed have been about the parent-daughter relationship. I’ve always had dreams about what my future daughter and I would do together.
But when I got pregnant, which I considered a miracle, I didn’t dare to even pray for a specific gender. I was so grateful that I was pregnant in the first place, I just prayed for a healthy baby. How dare I pray for a girl? Also, at this point, I really didn’t care. I know for a fact that I would have been just as excited to be a boy-mom. Especially after knowing all my darling little nephews and sons of friends.
Cut to my c-section (the pun just occurred to me and I’m chuckling as I italicize ‘Cut’), a couple of doctors are working on pulling out the baby. I’m under spinal anaesthesia so I can only feel pressure, no pain. I hear my baby for the first time and the moment is as surreal as they say it is. In seconds, the messiest, feistiest, most beautiful baby is brought to me and they unwrap the bundle. It’s a girl! In a second, all the unprayed prayers and longings for a girl come back to me and I’m overcome with emotion. I begin to cry cry.
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But then it started: Everyone in the operation theatre assumed I was upset. “No no! I wanted a girl. I’m so happy it’s a girl!”. One doctor says: “Haan aaj-kal ka fashion hai, ladkiya ko pasand karte hai” (It’s the trend these days to like girl babies). Hmm. Odd comment. But I don’t have time to think about it too much right now.
After a couple of hours, they were wheeling me back to my room. The lady wheeling me back says, “Toh, ladka hua ya ladki?” (So was it a boy or a girl). I respond “ Ladki”. And pat comes the response: “ Ladki? Koi nahi. Pehla bacha hai. Ho jaata hai” (A girl? Don’t worry. It’s your first. It happens). My brain can’t think of how to respond.
I learn about another rule at this upscale hospital that I wasn’t aware of. When a baby is born, a junior doctor and a few nurses, bring the baby out for the father to see. They unwrap the baby and the father is asked to say the gender out loud in front of the witnesses and sign a form confirming the gender. My husband had to do this.
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Apparently there have been cases in the past where fathers insist that they’ve had sons and the hospital has switched them for girls. I can’t even process this. So I live in the same city as parents who have disowned their daughters at birth and claiming a son in exchange? Like a sweater that didn’t fit? They had to put a rule in place to prevent this from happening? How insulated could I have been to have not known this? It hit me that the first messages after I had my daughter, my pride and joy, were not congratulations but condolences. As ridiculous as it is to me, there are parents not unlike me. Today. In big cities. Who look at their messy, feisty, beautiful bundles with regret. For whom, these messages of condolences bring hope that they might have a different outcome the next time they try.
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So when we talk about international women’s day, I often hear, “But why don’t we make a big deal about men’s day, if you want equality?”. To everyone who feels like we make too much of a deal about the 8th of March, I say this: We make a big deal because someone like me will take time to write this. Someone like you will take time to read this. I write in the hope that one day, if my daughter is in the hospital delivering her own child, her partner will not have to sign a form acknowledging the sex. She will be congratulated regardless of the gender of the bundle in her arms. Her tears of joy will not be mistaken for tears of sadness. In that moment, the world will simply celebrate the joy of a new life.
View: Why Women’s Day matters to me – Hindustan Times
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