Burp Time

I am blessed to have a 1 month old in my arms and as you may have guessed. most blogs going forward, for some time at least, will be based on inspirations provided by him. So here goes –

Most of our waking time together is spent feeding and being fed. As a mother, it took me precious days and weeks to figure out his feeding patterns and simple cues he gives to communicate with me. Once he is hungry he starts by licking his lips, followed by hand in his mouth, then turning his head from side to side in search of milk and the final cue (for the Mom who is silly enough not to catch any of the above) – Howling!! Once the feeding starts, he sucks as if the world is about to fall apart in the next five seconds and then as fast as the process started, it ends! And then starts the magical time called – Burp Time! 

For those who have not been so fortunate to feed a baby and experience the nuances of this skill, I will provide some explanation. As a baby drinks milk, along with the milk a lot of air also flows into the small tummy. This air tends to fill the stomach giving the feeling of fullness to the infant. The baby stops drinking thinking he is full, when it is hardly the case. This air needs to be rubbed out of the stomach through various techniques (which I am still figuring out myself). Once the air comes out, it makes a loud sound called a Burp and the baby starts feeding again! This is the most magical sound that a mother can ever experience as it tells that the feeding process has been successful so far and is all set to continue!

As I burped Yog today, I realized it is not only infants who need burps. They might need burps only while drinking milk, but we as adults need burps from the life around us. For example, like Yog, we all latch onto our work with such speed and passion, as if, we only have the next one day to live. Then of course, the speed of work fills up everything inside us and makes us feel completely full, with no space in our mind or heart to absorb anything further. We get stressed, frustrated and extremely tired thinking we have failed midway. We then force ourselves to believe that we need to work harder and harder. In the process, we keep getting fuller and fuller till we are ready to explode.

If only, we realized that like the tiny infant stomach, all our body parts including the brain and the heart only have limited space. When we experience the fullness, it doesn’t mean we have failed. It just means we need to stop for a while, give a few decent pats on the back or taps on the heads (whichever is deserved), and do whatever it takes to take out the accumulated air in our system. Once we have practiced burping ourselves a couple of times, we would have hopefully mastered the art and may even be able to experience the magic of it.

Next time someone tells me that they need a break, I am most likely going to tell them that they just need a burp. I think this term summarizes the issue more appropriately. 🙂