Stage 1: Birth to 5-year-old
Tags: Baby, Life Lessons, Birth, Life, Lifestage

There are various stages in our life from birth to death, helping us to become the best version of ourselves and learn all the valuable lessons which our life offers us every moment in different situations and circumstances. Among all the stages of our life, the birth stage is the primary stage to help us become confident enough to face this world and take charge of our lives.

As we all know, all of our life journeys started from our birth, by stepping into the reality of our life “unconsciously”. You had no idea, what was happening in the hospital room when you were born. Your mom was crying in pain yet she was happy seeing your first cry as well. You both cried on that day with respective joy and sorrow. She cried due to the labor pain but you brought a smile on her face and you might have thought, you were chilling in your mother’s womb for 9 months and now you are out, so you are a bit insecure to face this new world on your own. But everyone around you is very happy to welcome you to their family. While your relatives and neighbors are busy judging who you resemble like i.e., your father or your mother and they keep advising your mom “n” number of useful things even though the Doctor has given her all the necessary information.

In the initial days, according to the Doctor’s advice, your mom will breastfeed you to satisfy your hunger by providing you essential proteins. And then after a few months, you were made to consume the baby’s milk powder as a malt every day. Surprisingly, if we check today’s grocery stores and markets, we will come across “n” number of variety of baby’s milk powder brands such as Lactogen, Nan Pro, Similac, Nangrow, Dexolac, Aptamil, Cerelac (to name a few!) depending on the baby’s age(in months). Among all of them, the most preferred brand (by every Doctor and mother’s community) is “Lactogen”. You might have not realized its taste when you were an infant but if you have tasted it later, you would have come to know it tastes so good just like “Amul” dairy milk powder. If you wanna taste it now, you can taste it by stealing a little bit of it from your baby’s food. I’m just Kidding. But if try doing it in front of your baby, then it will be no wonder to see your baby’s angry yet funny face reactions. Many parents do it purposely with their baby to record it’s funny or cute facial expressions to post in WhatsApp or Youtube to get lots of likes and comments from the random people (and known friends, relatives) to convince, their baby is really cute by commenting “awww, so cute baby” with hearts and love emojis. This may make them to constantly steal/pierce their baby’s food just for the sake of recording their baby’s facial expressions to upload in Social media, and by unaware of the fact that their keto diet is changed to lactogen diet! Haha! I guess, it will give them faster results than the keto diet. How do I know that? Have I also stolen any(my) kid’s food and did all that Social media stuff? No way! I’m still single! But I have tasted it by purchasing in grocery stores (I love tasting raw milk powder very much!).

So, the lactogen was all about your intake. And when you have consumed the input, you have to let go off the output as well, right? But since you are still a baby without the knowledge of any sense of values, you don’t have any idea about where you should pee and poop( if you knew also, you may not succeed in it as you still don’t have any grip to move properly to the desired location) So, unconsciously, you will pee and poop anytime, anywhere, irrespective of the time, location and surroundings (I know, I’m sounding disgusting but I’m an open-minded person you know..atleast by now I guess!). And it will become a hectic thing for your parents to keep track of your excretion timings 24/7. As by the saying, ‘necessity is the mother of invention”, they will cover your private parts with proper materials like cloth or diaper so that they can change it twice or thrice a day to avoid the unnecessary wastage of their time. Shockingly, today, there are so many different types of diapers (Mamy Poko Pants, Huggies, etc.) that have come into the markets to rescue every impatient parent. Diaper brands have grown to such an extent that, with the help of TV, Mobile and Newspaper, “n” number of variety of similar(same motive but different brand) products are entering the market through tons of commercial advertisements. It may help the people to choose the best product among other similar products available in the market as the media is flooded with tons of ads by serving less entertainment to the viewers, and more ad breaks in between every show!

Random fact: Sometimes I feel like, why don’t the media simply name all the channels as advertisement channels so that some of the poor middle-class people like me will stop wasting our time, watching the TV. And the most corrupted thing we all see daily but none of us can do anything about it is certain channels claiming they are free but will ask you to recharge them to watch. A few examples are, Star+1=” free”, Colors+1=” free” channels. I feel interesting to watch my neighbor’s kid playing with stones and mud rather than the Malaika Arora’s “Chaini chaini” pan masala ad on the TV! UGH! So disgusting! Almost every Indian pan masala ad, don’t have the proper content to effectively interact with the viewers. Seriously, who will hire a horse, a Range Rover car and a big bungalow (Foreign) in its background just for a Pan masala ad (without even a proper tagline in the advertisement)? What is their intention? To advertise their product or to show how rich they are and their brand is? I, personally don’t like wasting my time watching the nuisance ads. Even if there is some creativity, we can watch them. But without conveying the necessary message, leave about purchasing those products, no one will like to watch them on TV also. And there is no wonder, if any program on the TV takes 30 minutes(without any break), it will be shown in 1 hour by playing 10 minutes ads in between every 10 minutes of the show. The irony is, have you noticed, almost every channel plays ads on their channel at the same time, making me feel that I’m recharging the channels to watch ads rather than the actual shows!

After you have grown around 2+ feet and 5+ kgs, you will start crawling on the floor and very soon you will try to stand on your feet (just physically huh! not yet financially… You have to wait for it till you step into Stage 5: ~ “AGE 20–25 YEARS”) And then, you will start to talk with yourself and the people around you by uttering few words which cannot be understood by anyone except yourself. Well, one can guess, you might be telling your mom that, Mumma I’m bored of having milk every day, can you give me a chicken leg piece which you are holding in your hand to eat? And the moment you see your dad licking his favorite ice cream, your mouth starts to water like a river. And your dad will enjoy watching your expressions, by teasing you with his ice cream constantly and then your frustrated expression (like below image) gives him sadistic pleasure. But only you know how badly you want to taste his ice cream.

Random fact: This photo gained so much popularity on the internet and the kid eventually became known as, “success kid” and from the money he earned through the internet, he saved his dad’s life by getting a kidney for him.

From the previous paragraph, I said, you started talking but as we see in our Bollywood movies, any baby will not spell/call their parent’s names in the first go. But the moment you perfectly call your parents as dad and mom, your parents might have felt excited as if they won any lottery. What will surprise them more is that you will walk on your own and talk fluently by the age of 4 and 5. Then they will initiate to provide you a good education in the best school (in the city) which will help you in shaping you to become a useful citizen for the country. And as you grow up, your expenses will also increase daily and you will not realize the fact that how hard your parents are working every day in their offices to provide you a good life and good education. But knowingly or unknowingly, you will often waste food and resources when your parents are not around you.

Random fact: I heard that “an empty pocket and an empty stomach will teach you very important lessons of life”. Till then no one will realize the value of the food, time, money and resources. So, let’s not wait for our life to teach us the lessons and learn them whenever we get the chance and save and respect all the resources by feeling blessed when compared with the unprivileged and poor people, who find it hard to satisfy their hunger, at least once in a day. Let’s teach our next generation also to value the food and resources and share the food and water with disabled and underprivileged people in the society selflessly without feeling entitled and hesitated. Let’s teach ourselves and them the real meaning of humanity, which our world is losing every day.

Disclaimer: I’m still a beginner in writing and my intention is not to get lacs of views for money, but to share few of my life experiences and memories with you so that you can relate them in your life and not repent on thinking that why any writer, don’t write this kind of mundane stuff, to take you back to your flashbacks and bring a smile on your face often remembering them. And I’m just a medium between your flashbacks and the reality, to make you enlighten a bit about how your past life experiences are responsible for who you are today. So, if you ever feel bored or tired in your hectic office routine and get free time then, you can grab your phone/laptop and open my articles or anything whichever makes you feel good. My intention is not to hurt anyone’s feelings or emotions but to share my experiences and opinions. If I said anything wrong which I’m unaware of then, kindly bring me into notice with your valuable feedback and comments. And, I have read somewhere that, if we appreciate and encourage the efforts of others helping in boosting their confidence for their service, our confidence will also become double it seems! If you wish, you can experiment on me, I will appreciate very much! Thank you.