womaninginindia

Newsletter, podcasts, workshops • Author: @mahimavashisht • Talk to me at

[The Better India @thebetterindia]

“Growing up, I noticed that conversations about sex were always shrouded in secrecy.

@mahimavashisht | @womaninginindia

#GenderEquality #ParentingTips #EndGenderBias #ParentingGoals #RaisingBoysRight

[Gender Equality, Raising Boys Right, Safe Public Spaces]

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

August 1st to 7th is celebrated every year as #WorldBreastfeedingWeek.

I am celebrating this week by sharing some real #breastfeeding stories of real women I have interviewed while writing Womaning in India.

I hope this will make some mothers reading this feel less alone, and some non-mothers reading this get better informed.

❤️ Here is story 3/7:

Like all new mothers, Ekta was extremely overwhelmed, sleepless, and exhausted after the birth of her child.

"The nurses just handed me my baby and said, 'Lo, ab isko doodh pilao' (Here's the baby, now feed him). It looks simple, but it isn't. My baby wasn't able to latch properly. My mother-in-law took the baby from my arms and commented, 'Bechara baccha! Kaisi maa hai iski, jise doodh pilana bhi nahi aata'. (Poor kid, his mother doesn't even know how to feed him.)

I was shattered. This marked the start of my freefall into postpartum depression."

Ekta doubled down her efforts to feed her baby. Eventually, her milk came in, and the baby latched.

"But that led to the next round of horrors. Nobody had warned me about the pain of the baby gnawing on the nipples. It hurts like hell, and moms are expected to brave it several times a day, without complaint. With a smile, even!

Next, I started experiencing stiffening of breasts and intense pain. I was told by family elders, 'Ye sab toh hota hi hai. Maa banna koi aasaan baat thode hi hai.' (All this is to be expected. Who said being a mother would be easy!)

They called a domestic help, who said she would help me express milk manually. It was beyond painful. I cried and cried. Finally, my husband stopped them, saying this much pain can't be normal.

That night, I developed 104°F fever, and had to be taken to the emergency room, screaming in pain. They diagnosed me with severe mastitis, and I was rushed into surgery."

As soon as Ekta awoke from the anesthesia, her mother-in-law put the baby in her hands.

"Before I even came to my senses, she said, 'At least feed him some milk'.

I had stitches on my breasts! I was in so much pain, I could not even sit up. I had to say no.

My son is 7 years old now. To this day, my MIL leaves no opportunity to remind me how I 'abandoned' my newborn baby."

For some mothers, BFing is hard. For some, it is not.
But for almost all, society makes it a judgment of their character.

If you have a story that would help the world see breastfeeding beyond the cliches, please share in the comments.

Happy BF Week, folks. 😑

#breastfeeding #breastmilk #fedisbest

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

August 1st to 7th is celebrated every year as #WorldBreastfeedingWeek. Here are the few things I knew about breastfeeding before motherhood -

🤱🏻Breastmilk has antibodies that give immunity to babies, without which they fall sick a lot.

🤱🏻Breastfeeding comes naturally to mothers after babies are born.

...and my personal favourite:
🤱🏻Breast is best!

I laugh when I think back to those days now. The information we are given about breastfeeding is both - tragically inhuman and laughably incomplete.

I will be celebrating this week by sharing some real #breastfeeding stories of real women I have interviewed while writing Womaning in India.

I hope this will make some mothers reading this feel less alone, and some non-mothers reading this get better informed.

❤️ Here is story 2/7 (trigger warning - grief):

When Sheetal discovered she was pregnant, her mother became her biggest cheerleader.

"She was on cloud nine at the thought of becoming a naani (grandma). But it was not to be. In the fourth month of my pregnancy, she was diagnosed with cancer. By my eighth month, she had left us."

When her daughter was born a month later, Sheetal was still grieving.

"From the very first day, my milk supply was not enough. Maybe grief had a role to play. It was the most difficult phase of my life. My baby would be constantly crying because she was hungry. I tried everything - I saw a Lactation Consultant, I took supplements - none of it helped."

Ultimately, Sheetal spoke to her sister, who is a pediatrician.

"She told me to forget what the world was saying, and do whatever made the most sense to me. She said what I fed my daughter was less important than how I felt and behaved around her. If I was constantly unhappy and stressed, my baby would pick up on that stress - and it would harm her far more than what I fed her."

Following her sister's advice, Sheetal switched to formula milk.

"It felt like a weight had lifted. I became a much happier mother, almost immediately, and my daughter became a healthier child as well. People who judge ‘formula moms’ need to realize that they don't know what we are going through, and can probably never fully understand it. So at least stop making it harder for us than it has to be."

If you have a story that would help the world see breastfeeding beyond the cliches, please share in the comments.

Happy BF Week, folks. 😑

#breastfeeding #breastmilk #fedisbest

[Shruti Rajagopalan @srajagopalan]

In this video, @mahimavashisht leverages the stories she has learned from her work @womaninginindia and argues that a critical reform needed today is making workplaces more equitable for women to boost female labor force participation.

https://t.co/zBjib3Wcbn

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

August 1st to 7th is celebrated every year as #WorldBreastfeedingWeek. Here are the few things I knew about breastfeeding before motherhood -

🤱🏻Breastmilk has antibodies that give immunity to babies, without which they fall sick a lot.

🤱🏻Breastfeeding comes naturally to mothers after babies are born.

...and my personal favourite:
🤱🏻Breast is best!

I laugh when I think back to those days now. The information we are given about breastfeeding is both - tragically inhuman and laughably incomplete.

I will be celebrating this week by sharing some real #breastfeeding stories of real women I have interviewed while writing @WomaningInIndia.

I hope this will make some mothers reading this feel less alone, and some non-mothers reading this get better informed.

Here is story 1/7:

Akanksha was let go from her job during her pregnancy, and was applying for new jobs when she delivered her daughter.

"My milk supply was limited to begin with. We lived in a small town. I had to travel out of town several times to attend job interviews. As a result, my daughter got used to formula milk. I tried everything - uncomfortable new feeding positions, pumping milk, rubber extensions, dietary changes - everything recommended by everyone. Nothing worked, and I felt like a total failure.

My husband demanded I stop torturing myself. We decided to switch the baby to formula for good so both she and I can breathe easy."

Even as Akanksha was battling an unreasonable amount of guilt herself, family elders began piling on.

"Since I was a 'kaam kaaji bahu' (a daughter-in-law with a job), I was considered an unfit mother anyway. This became another weapon in the family's arsenal. I was introduced at family functions as 'our bahu who stopped feeding her child so she could go back to work'. Everyone looked at my child with pity for having a mother like me."

The weapons were fired at the most painful times.

"Once, my daughter was ill and, while I was worried sick anyway, someone commented that the poor child doesn't have any immunity because I didn’t breastfeed her.

She had a lean body for the first 3 years, so they would say, 'This poor child didn't get her mother's milk. Where will the nutrition come from?'

When I pointed out that a 3-year-old is no longer dependent on breastmilk for nutrition, and that my daughter always ate a healthy, nutritious diet, their favourite retort would be 'Maa ka doodh toh maa ka doodh hota hai' (Mother's milk is mother's milk). How do you respond to that?"

Akanksha's experience is far from unique. Recently, when my 4-year-old was down with a seasonal flu, someone asked me if I had breastfed him enough.

At what age does every challenge in a person's life stop being a fault with their mother's breastfeeding?

If you have such a BF story, please QT.

Happy BF Week, folks. 😑

[Aditi Taswala 🚢 @adititaswala92]

The best article I read today❤️

“In a world full of Watsons and Cricks

(and all of the other pricks),

Be a man who does better,

When you see a Marie, be a Pierre”

@mahimavashisht @womaninginindia

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

Call for @womaninginindia stories!

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

In the last minutes of the last workshops of our last cohort, one of my students said, “You have taught us that everything has a story. Now I see stories everywhere I look. I think we can even write a story about a g** c******* now!

Richa was in the workshop too, and she took this amazing compliment as a writing prompt and immortalized it in this story. I don’t want to spoil it for you by filling in the asterisks above - you will just have to read it to know. But I promise you this backstory will make so much more sense once you do ❤️ Link in image.

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

Some stories make me feel awed by the writers Humaning is unleashing on the world. This is one such story from a student, who has me crying in a cafe with her very first Substack post. Please subscribe to her newsletter, I am sure you won’t be disappointed ❤️

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

Every once in a while, I get to write with my students in the writing course. During our last workshop, I was inspired to write this poem.

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

Authored a chapter in the new "Humanise" book about building gender-equitable and inclusive workplaces.

Spoiler alert: It cannot be done until we are open to questioning the biases we carry ourselves.

Check out the book on the link in the tweet below - all profits from book sales go to charity ❤️

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

In the Mother's Day edition of the Humaning newsletter, Deepa remembers her mother through her statement dish - her bisi bele bath which was full of spices, aromas, and love 🥘

(link in image)

[Sushma @voidinthehart]

Crazy career trajectory. Impressive!

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

On CRAZINESS: I graduated from #IIMBangalore in 2009 - perhaps the worst economic period of our generation. I was lucky to land a job in consulting – my sector of choice – and get what was considered a respectable pay package, given the recession. 🧵

[womaninginindia @womaninginindia]

Oooh happy days. Thank you to everyone who I had the pleasure of interacting with this month.

For everyone else, you can book a call with me here: https://t.co/WAUlrLf0d2 to talk to me about Career, Life, the Universe, and Everything 🥰

[Aditi Parekh @aditipar]

I love reading stories of people beginning to see & accept themselves as teachers :)

Having had a glimpse of Mahima’s course over the past few months, highly recommend it anyone who wants to explore identities and writing stories!

(I think the May batch has last spots left 🏃🏽‍♀️)

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

Hello Residents of X, I have an announcement to make:

I have finally overcome the imposter syndrome holding me back from calling myself a Writing Teacher.

Or Writing Coach? Trainer? Facilitator?

Whatever is considered most respectable in your parts of the internet - I am that!

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

No greater reward for a teacher than when a student says you helped them find their voice and claim their space ❤️❤️❤️

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

In this Humaning story, Shreya writes about her life-changing decision to live by herself, to build a safe space where she could be herself.

And how her mother's willingness to bless this space with her art meant everything ❤️

[Mahima Vashisht (she/her) @mahimavashisht]

In this short yet heartbreaking piece, Shreya - a Humaning writer - reads a moment that might have seemed mundane and barely noteworthy to the untrained eye. Women speak so much in their silences. If only someone around them listened. 💔

https://t.co/glli9dHCjW