To DINK or not

Now that I have seen both sides of it, let me throw some light on this.

There was a time when I liked only some chosen cute kids. I used to hate most of them. I had the believe that giving birth is cruel as its your choice and you don’t know if the soul wants the life, which might be injustice. And life with just the two of us and just money building, travelling and good lifestyle was too hard to let go. Honestly I never understood the term "Bundle of Joy"!

Life post parenthood is undoubtedly challenging.

1)      Your time management needs to be excellent to manage everything. For sure motherhood brings in unimaginable capabilities. But life becomes hectic.

2)      If family support is not there, then n number of logistics need to be planned to make things work out safely. Logistics is an everyday issue. And life requires meticulous planning.

But then there must be a reason why everyone ends up having a family. So I got deciphering the need for kids:

1)      When we get old and don’t have our parents as “family”, it will be lonely.

2)      But still how can I contradict the fact that it’s still cruel? So I read Bhagavat Geeta and got the answer. The souls will anyways take birth to get purified and exit the life cycle. So maybe I can give a good quality life to one J .

3)      Life needs some variation all the time. After a point even travelling, job roles, lifestyle, making house and cars get boring.

4)      One must have all generation touch points to make sure you are not out of sync with some latest in-thing. Weird but true driver.

So there we went and had our lil one. And let me tell you few key facts of it:

1)      Its b***** difficult. It’s just the two of us and I not only joined back office in 3 months but also shifted job when he was 5 months. I again did another shift when he was 15 months old. Which meant no leaves and a lot of work pressure.  But as I said motherhood brings in amazing qualities in you – patience, physical & mental strength and alertness. You just know you got to make things work out and you will.

2)      Fatherhood is as important as motherhood and we do share it just equally (except the breastfeeding bit of it).

3)      I have decoded the reason behind the “joy”. 

              a)    You get to relive your childhood. Child with money and independence. You get the deal? 

               b)      And there’s love all around. So much love, love and just love! What’s life without purest love?

               c)    That unique discovery of someone which is you but yet not you!

5)      There is hardly anything you can’t do once you have a kid. He has been to Coldplay concert with us, been to HRC, movies etc. etc. He has been travelling on flights since he was 18 days old and he has done n number of journeys both domestic and international. Recently we went to Italy and it was the best vacations we had ever had. Vacations with him are always full of fun. Honestly.

6)      Well probably the only things we have missed are attending classical concerts and plays.

7)      The best beauty of having a kid (apart from the fact that it’s so much fun), is that it feels so good to have one more life in your family. I now feel I should have 10 kids (had I the means of it). The fact that death is not in our hand but making life is! And it’s so beautiful.

8)      Sometimes, only sometimes when I see DINKs, I have a tiny winy jealousy as they get to have so much time!

9)      But I still read books, listen to music, do full time work (am in consulting – if you know what I mean), serve weekend guests with 4 course meals, go for movies and dance with my son. And we neither have a nanny, nor family support!

So life’s good with kids. The more the merrier, I believe now. And I have started loving kids. I know mostly all kids in my society. Incredible feat I would say!

[P.S. Contemplating why I wrote this. Am sure no one was waiting for my gyan. It looks so much like my ppts- with a background, trends and drivers, facts/use cases and conclusion. Only that its free]