Prologue to Birth Story #3: *Vaishnava Dasa*

My pregnancy with Rohan was physically easier than either of my previous pregnancies, but emotionally it was the hardest.  I went through a lot of suffering and depression.  Finally, though, one day I had a huge, super important realization.  I realized that what I'd been trying to do to achieve spiritual happiness -- i.e., chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra and reading the Shrimad-Bhagavatam at home alone -- was not enough.  (I'd already heard that it wasn't enough, but this is when I realized it!!)  Trying to achieve spiritual success exclusively by those means amounted to trying to jump directly to Krishna's lotus feet, which isn't the process Krishna wants us to follow.  He wants us to be humble, to be aware that we're tiny, inexperienced children in devotional service, in need of training from an expert devotee who can teach us how to serve the Supreme Lord.  If we don't have a guide, the odds are that we'll make many mistakes and do things Krishna doesn't like in our blind, groping, stumbling efforts to find and serve Him, which was exactly my experience.

I had known those things, but since Shrila Prabhupada is a perfect guide, and he translated and wrote the purports to the Shrimad-Bhagavatam, and it was on his advice that I was chanting Hare Krishna, I'd been thinking that I was under his shelter -- and of course I was, and that was wonderful.  But that still wasn't enough.  Shrila Prabhupada has disappeared from our sight in this world and gone back to the spiritual world to be with Krishna.  We can see his murti in the temple, just like we can see Krishna's.  We can read his words in the books, just like we can read Krishna's.  And just like with Krishna, the only way we can speak to Shrila Prabhupada is through prayer -- and we can't hear his answer unless he makes that possible through some special, miraculous experience.  The experience of being under Shrila Prabhupada's shelter and guidance is thus exactly the same as being under Krishna's... which means that for all intents and purposes, he might as well be Krishna as far as we're concerned (although, of course, we know he's not); he's practically on the same level as Krishna.  What I'm saying is that if we're trying to make Shrila Prabhupada our direct, immediate guide, that's also an incorrect jumping process, and it's not enough.  That's not all we need in our devotional life.  We need personal guidance and human interaction here, on this plane of existence.  We need to seek not just (theoretical) book-learning, but practical, real-life, interactive learning in how to serve Krishna through serving the Vaishnavas (devotees) who are His loving and beloved servants.  And since relationships go two ways, we need to not only serve the Vaishnavas, but also allow them to take care of us!

Whenever I've felt depressed, it's always been because life was too hard and I didn't have enough support.  With this new realization, I suddenly felt as if everything was clear.  I was too isolated, at home alone with two kids and another on the way (and in the evenings with my husband, whom I love dearly and am very grateful to because he works hard to financially maintain us, helps out with the babies when he's home and once in awhile does some housework, and is mostly very tolerant of my shortcomings, bless his heart!!!!... but... he doesn't always understand me and is sometimes a bit too harsh and short-tempered).  I was pretty cut off from any kind of gentle, sympathetic, female association, and I suddenly realized how badly I needed just that.  Vaishnavi (female devotee) association, to be specific.  I needed to serve the Vaishnavis, and I needed to let them take care of me.  That kind of nurturing interchange would save me.  My depression would immediately go away, and the ugly, rotten, moldy stagnation of my life would be replaced by a brisk current of wholesome joy, love, and spiritual progress.

I cried to Shrimati Radharani as I was chanting, praying to Her as the universal mother to mother me through Her servants.  I felt so grateful for all these realizations.  I also saw that if not for the emotional suffering I'd been going through due to this pregnancy, I would not have realized the futility and inadequacy of what I'd been doing to achieve happiness, nor become so desperate to seek answers as to what else I needed to do.  Consequently, I could literally credit the baby in my womb (and, of course, Krishna for sending him there!) for bringing home to me at last the well-known fact, sung profusely and with maximum emphasis throughout the scriptures and often heard by me but never realized before, that association with and service to devotees (Vaishnavas) is the key to everything.

I'd known that Krishna never puts His devotees through suffering without having a great reason for it, a vital lesson for them to learn through it.  But it was wonderful to see it now.  Here it was -- the reason for all the suffering I'd had to go through with this pregnancy.  And sure enough, it was 100% worth it.  I was very glad now for every bit of emotional pain I'd gone through, because it had all helped bring me to this point.  I prayed to Krishna, expressing my gratitude that, in His wisdom and mercy, He had, even against my will, sent me this child, who was like His ambassador to teach me about the supreme glory and importance of service to the Vaishnavas.

Then, suddenly, I felt as if Lord Vishnu was speaking to me, confirming my idea and suggesting that this supremely glorious purpose of this child's advent into our family be honored and commemorated by giving him the name Vaishnava dasa.

I was elated, and immediately accepted this as being, at least, my own name for him.  I was thrilled to have, for the very first time, the experience of having a name already decided on for a child before the child was born.  The idea of having no stress after the birth over picking a name within a given amount of time, because we already had a name for him, was novel and wonderfully peaceful; it made me very glad.  I weighed the value of the communication I'd just received from the Supreme Lord against the idea of checking the baby's astrological chart after his birth for ideas on what to name him, and there was no comparison.  The former felt purely transcendental to me, whereas the latter, although in line with a science given by God, was material.

However, I thought it was important for my husband to also be happy with the name we would give our son, and I didn't know what he would think of the name Vaishnava dasa.  I prepared myself for the possibility that he might not like the name.  I decided that I would be fine with whatever.  I was excited about the name and hoped he might like it, but if he didn't, that would be OK too.  We could go ahead with our usual program of consulting our astrologer friends after the birth and picking out a name accordingly, and Vaishnava dasa could just be my own special name for our son.

As it happened, indeed, my husband wasn't crazy about the name Vaishnava, so we went our usual route in naming our child, and came up with a name we both loved, which I am very happy with.  But I still call our Ro-Ro "my little Vaishnava" sometimes.  ^_^  And I discovered something so interesting to me!

The idea of giving him a name starting with a Swati syllable (Ru, Re, Ro, or Ta) was to strengthen the effects of Jupiter on him (which was located in Swati nakshatra when he was born).  But I read that there is also another way to give a child a name connected with a particular nakshatra: you can name the child after the demigod who rules that nakshatra.  In the case of Swati, that demigod is Vayu, the wind-god (who is also famous for being very strong!  LOL!  *see previous post for the significance of this!*  ^_^ ).  When I read this, I was delighted, because the names Vaishnava and Vayu both start with the same sound.  Although I did not read that the system is to name your child anything starting with the same sound as the nakshatra-ruling demigod's name, but rather to give them that actual demigod name, still, due to the similarity in sound, I felt as though this astrologically validated the name Vaishnava for him.  Woo-hoo!  :D  LOL!  :D

Birth Story #3, Part 5: Third Time's the Charmer

Meet Ro-Ro!

(His sister gave him that nickname, and it stuck.  ^_^)

Late February 2018.  Nearing three months old.

I said that I did end up having the Monday baby I'd been yearning for, because he was born well before sunrise on Tuesday morning -- which means, by Vedic understanding, that the Moon's influence was still in effect.  For a long time, I thought he was really moonlike.  :)  Unlike his adorable but skinny sister, Ro-Ro is all chubby curves, and to me, his rounded lines made him resemble the full moon in shape.  ^_^  Also, much more so than with either of his elder siblings, I seemed to be always struck by the whiteness of Rohan's complexion, and white is the color of the Moon.  According to the Vedas, the Moon has a very cooling and pleasing effect, and Rohan's generally peaceful, chilled-out nature has been very pleasing to everyone who gets to know him.  Both his older siblings are highly dramatic and emotional, prone to frequent rides on the psychological roller coaster from high to low and back, but Rohan has been our even-keeled Mr. Cool much of the time -- relaxed, happy, patient, tolerant and undemanding.  As you can imagine, he's been a breath of fresh air in our home.

With his Sun being in Sagittarius (according to Western or tropical astrology, which I also take into account), a fire sign, he was bound to have some fiery yang energy in him as well.  My mom could see it from early on, but for months, I couldn't see what she was talking about.  It wasn't until he was an older baby, transitioning toward toddlerhood, that I could finally begin to see the traits in him that she had been alluding to -- and after he turned one, oh my goodness, he became so intense and way-too-much-to-handle!!!!  Not all the time, but a lot of the time!!  

Like his sister Lalita, he's always been super intelligent and extremely curious about the world around him.  His older brother Bhadra was always much more attracted to animals, but Rohan has had a noticeable attraction from the very beginning to anything with wheels (various vehicles) and machines in general.  Of course he's very attracted to animals as well, but since the great interest in wheels and machinery is something I hadn't seen in his older siblings, it's been to me a noteworthy feature of his personality.  My younger brother was also always interested in machines and vehicles and how they worked, and would take them apart to study them and try to put them back together.  With time he became pretty expert in that regard, and I wouldn't be surprised if Rohan followed in his footsteps.  Bhadra has ADHD and I believe Lalita does too, although it hasn't been diagnosed in her yet, but Rohan has, at least thus far, had the attention span, patience and diligence to sit still and thoroughly study and examine something he's interested in to figure out how it works.  Sometimes I've called him Parikshit because in Sanskrit, that name means "examiner."  :)

I've been very happy to have an intelligent and curious baby with a long attention span.  However, the downside is that, unlike Lalita when she was a baby, he can be very difficult to distract or dissuade when he's latched on to a particular thing he's interested in learning about.  Not only is his focus strong, but so is his determination!  And not only that, but his physical strength is unbelievable!!  My mom and I both agreed; never before had we experienced or dreamed of being forced to use all our adult strength -- fighting desperately! -- just to control an infant and keep him in the sink so that we could wash his poopy bottom.  (He wanted to get out so that he could explore the soap and other fun-but-off-limits things he saw near the sink.  ;) )

His incredible strength, pale complexion, and pleasing personality are the reasons why I feel that Rohini-tanaya dasa is a very appropriate name for him.  Lord Balarama (Shri Rohini-tanaya) is also white-complexioned, and in Shrimad-Bhagavatam 10.8.12, Gargamuni says:

ayam hi rohini-putro

ramayan suhrdo gunaih

akhyasyate rama iti

baladhikyad balam viduh

ayam—this; hi—indeed; rohini-putrah—the son of Rohini; ramayan—pleasing; suhrdah—all His friends and relatives; gunaih—by transcendental qualities; akhyasyate—will be called; ramah—by the name Rama, the supreme enjoyer; iti—in this way; bala-adhikyat—because of extraordinary strength; balam viduh—will be known as Balarama.

"This child, the son of Rohini, will give all happiness to His relatives and friends by His transcendental qualities.  Therefore He will be known as Rama.  And because He will manifest extraordinary bodily strength, He will also be known as Bala."

Of course, the amount of these qualities that my child possesses is just a drop in comparison to the entire ocean of such qualities that is present in Shri Baladeva (Lord Balarama).  But that's why my son's name is Rohini-tanaya dasa.  He's the infinitesimal servant of that Supreme Lord, Shri Rohini-tanaya.  ^_^

 Early September 2018 (nine months old).  At the temple for Janmashtami (Krishna's birthday)!!  

Lord Shri Nila-madhava (the form of Krishna who resides there) had been wearing ankle bracelets made of flowers and pumpkin seeds, and one was given to us as maha-prasad (great mercy).  Rohan is wearing it on his head in this picture.  ^_^

Anyway, as you can imagine, intense determination to explore certain things (that are, of course, often unsafe or off-limits for other reasons) and unwillingness to be dissuaded from his desired goal, coupled with jaw-dropping super-strength, have made him a really tough toddler to handle!!!!  Not to mention the fact that his personality, although delightfully happy, jolly and fun most of the time (as his Old Norse middle name, Raeifr, gives reference to), has not yet developed to the point where he can understand the feelings of others, and at present he's still in the stage where he simply enjoys getting various reactions from other people when he does different things to them -- as if they're toys or machines and it's exciting for him to push different buttons and see what happens!  So he can be pretty brutal when he's feeling happy and excited.  He'll hit, bite, pinch, pull hair, or climb onto our stomachs and hop up and down, using his full weight (which is considerable -- as his name Rohan denotes, he is growing well!!) to land heavily -- laughing all the while.  He can be scary!!!!  I often have to shield my face, look down or turn away when he comes close in order to protect myself from his just-for-fun violence.  Needless to say, I don't think of him as being so moonlike any more!!  

But he's still irresistibly lovable and charming.  So much love has been poured on him for his whole short life that he has total confidence in being loved, and seems to know just how to wrap the rest of us around his little finger.  His joy and excitement, his smiles and ridiculously cute facial expressions, his utterly adorable little sounds, his hilarious habits and ways of moving, his generally sweet nature and good attitude -- all of these endear him to us so much that we still adore him and consider him a great blessing from Krishna in our lives, no matter how much he beats up on us right now.  We'll be very glad when he grows out of this stage, though, I can tell you that!!!!  

I haven't really had any experience with the infamous "terrible twos," because Bhadra was always a good little boy, and Lalita was terrible as a one-year-old, but by the time she was two she had grown out of most of that and become a very good little girl.  We'll see how it goes with Rohan, but I'm hoping he'll be like his sister and become more manageable by that time.  At the moment, though, he's definitely in the midst of the "wicked ones," to try and coin a comparable phrase for this age!!

He's also followed in Lalita's (one-year-old) footsteps in feeling the need to get into everything and throw it all on the floor.  He seems to have a mischievous streak, too, so that if we tell him "No!", it just eggs him on.  He'll laugh with tremendous, delighted excitement over the opportunity to "live on the edge" by relishing forbidden fun.  We've dissolved into laughter on countless occasions of witnessing this hilarious behavior of his.

He's not only violent toward others, but -- inadvertently, for the most part -- toward himself as well, due to (a) being inordinately wobbly on his feet and (b) being too reckless, fearless, and focused with tunnel vision on his goal.  In spite of his questionable sense of balance, he's so eager and bold that he'll run at top speed, even leaning forward as he runs as if to get there sooner, only to trip and fall flat on his face.  (Fortunately, since he spends most of the time indoors and we have foam mats covering most of the tile portion of our floor, this doesn't usually lead to his getting hurt.)  Hilariously, when this happens, he'll often stay in that position, lying on the floor for a while.  He'll turn his head to the side and often move his arms in stroking motions over the floor, just looking chilled-out.  I jokingly refer to this as his "I meant to do that" move.  

He really does get hurt often, though.  Sometimes he falls on a hard surface that doesn't have a covering of foam; other times he hits something on his way down.  He's also often misjudged the height of my husband's desk (or just not noticed how close it was to him) and hurt his head on it while trying to move beneath or around it.  He's earned some nicknames based on how accident-prone he is.  I came up with Tumbleweed (which also alludes to his being short, round and Texan ;) ).  My mom proposed the variant Stumbleweed, which we've also used.  And my husband came up with Bonky Bihari (after a famous and much-loved murti [form] of Krishna in Vrindavana named Banki Bihari).  

Sometimes he'll hurt himself (just slightly) on purpose, though; he has a tendency once in awhile to repeatedly bonk his head on some hard surface.  I haven't figured out the reason for that one yet!  I often tell him, "Don't do that!" if I see him doing it, but this just makes him laugh and try to continue (which I will prevent him from doing by putting my hand between his head and the hard surface he's been hitting it on).  Silly-willy!

Mid-December 2018.  One year old!!  ^_^

In this picture you can see the scar over his eyebrow from an injury he got about one month prior, on November 16th.  He fell and hit his head hard on the corner of the wooden frame around his brother's bed.  Poor baby!!!!  :( <3 <3

Looks-wise, my mom and I both think Rohan resembles my father (and me).  Bhadra looked a lot like me as an infant, but as he grew into a toddler and then an older child, he looked less like me and more like his father, my ex-husband.  (He still looks quite a bit like me as well; he's a good mix of both me and his dad.)  Lalita, on the other hand, totally resembles her daddy (my present husband), and looks very different from her brothers (who look much more similar to each other, with the most noticeable difference between them from the very beginning being their noses).  :)

One way Rohan is unique, though, is that he has CURLS!!!!  (Soft, gentle ones, not tight or springy.)  You can't really see them in any of the pictures I posted, but he's got 'em!  I was blown away when his hair first grew out enough for us to discover this fact.  I never dreamed that I would ever have a child with curly hair!  Nobody in either my immediate family or my husband's has the slightest hint of any curls; everyone's hair is totally straight.  My mom did say that one of her younger brothers had hair that was a bit wavy.  As far as my husband's extended family is concerned, he couldn't be sure whether any of the ladies had curly hair or not, since the fashion was for them to artificially curl their hair.  Anyway, wherever Ro-Ro's curls came from, they are adorable.  We cannot get enough of them!!!!  ^_^  <3  ^_^

10 more random tidbits about him:

1.  He also has a slight cleft in his chin.  Nobody else in my immediate family has that, either!

2.  His skin is by far the most sensitive and prone to diaper rash out of all my kids.  We've had to battle some really bad cases of that with him.  And once, after I took him outside and let him play in the grass without a shirt on, he broke out in hives!!!  :O

3.  When his hair first started growing out, there was this one single hair on the crown of his head (in just the place for a shikha!  :) ) that was super long.  It was hilarious.  It grew out to be about two inches long while the surrounding hair was only about half an inch long.  I loved it.  I can't find it now, though, so it must have gotten broken off at last.  :(  :)

4.  He loves being sung to.  Ever since he was a small baby, sometimes when we've sung to him, he's raised his little voice to sing sweetly along with us.  He can't manage a real melody, of course, but he sounds entirely precious.  <3

5.  Another endearing personality trait of his is that he seems to have a natural humility, responding sometimes to our beaming love and approval at him by shyly looking down while smiling.  <3  He used to do this more often when he was younger, though.  He was really such a nice baby!  Whereas I used to be impatient for Bhadra to reach toddlerhood (and learn to talk!), I enjoyed every stage of Lalita's development while peacefully looking forward to her next stage; but I relished Rohan's babyhood so much that for the first time, I actually felt the way I'd so often heard other moms speak of feeling about their children's babyhood.  I felt he was so nice at that age that I'd be sorry to see him grow up!  :)

6.  He developed gross motor skills like crawling and walking later than Bhadra and Lalita had done, but developed super-fine motor skills prior to that -- very, very early on -- picking up the tiniest objects with just his thumb and forefinger.  I was so impressed!  :)  He has been by far the most inclined toward using his hands out of my three kids.  The other two in baby- and toddlerhood might try to reach for something with their hands, but if denied the opportunity and presented with the chance to experience the thing with some other part of their bodies (e.g. their mouths, if it was a bite of food), would be perfectly fine with that.  Not Rohan.  If not allowed to use his hands to hold and explore the object, he would often become disgusted and refuse to take it at all.

7.  He used to make sounds that resembled Mama, Dad, and "nun-nun" (our family word for breastmilk), and we thought he might be working on speech, but he doesn't make those sounds as much anymore, so now I'm not sure.  Also, one time his daddy was holding him and letting him flip the light switch on and off (something Rohan loves), teaching him the words "light" and "dark" as he did so, and it sounded very much like Rohan was trying to say the word "light" along with his daddy whenever he flipped the switch on.  But, again, that was a while ago and he hasn't repeated it since.  I'm not worried, though.  Rohan is clearly smart and alert and learning every day, and definitely seems to understand some of the things we say to him, so I know he'll get around to speaking whenever he's ready, and that's good enough for me.  I'm much less antsy for him to learn how to speak than I was for Bhadra and Lalita to.  Maybe because with two older kids in the house, there's already plenty of talking going on, and I don't feel any need for the quantity of talk to increase!  :)  But also because, just like Lalita when she was preverbal, Rohan is quite good at communicating without words.  I do pleasantly look forward to the time when he starts learning how to speak, though, since that's always such a fun time for me in a child's development.  ^_^  As a side note, although it was only playful babble with no meaning to him, he went through a phase of saying "yeah" all the time.  We would laugh so hard about how funny it sounded, especially when (as happened often enough) he would happen to pipe up with it at exactly the right moment so it sounded just like he was taking part in our conversation!!!!  ^_^

8.  I call him Muffin a lot, since he's short, round and sweet.  Another name I've often called him is Pumpkin, both because of his short roundness and because he was born in autumn.  :D  Another P-name I call him is Puppy -- which is very well-earned, since he hilariously loves playing fetch just like a dog (not with sticks in particular, but anything we happen to throw, he'll often have fun going to find and bring back to us), and he also developed the habit of letting his tongue hang out of his mouth sometimes, for many seconds or even a few minutes at a time!  Such a weird little goof!  ^_^  He also has somewhat of an obsession with shoes.  When he was younger, we used to catch him chewing on them.  He doesn't often do that anymore, but he still picks them up and carries them around to other places in our apartment, so that we're at risk of having trouble finding our shoes when we need them.  We have to hide them from him to prevent this from being a problem.  :D  On the other hand, when he wants to go outside, he will go get a pair of shoes and bring them to a grown-up as if to suggest, "Put these on and let's go out!"  He usually brings a correctly matched pair that actually belongs to the grown-up in question, proving how smart he is.  :D  <3

9.  I also call him Vaishnava dasa sometimes, because of a really cool experience I had while pregnant with him.  I'll go into it more in my next post!

10.  More than with either of his elder siblings, with Rohan I've always felt a hesitation to refer to him as mine (as in "my baby/child/son"), and I used to always correct myself immediately if I ever did so, verbalizing that he's not really mine, he's Krishna's, and Krishna is just blessing me by letting me take care of this child for Him.  I don't correct myself on that out loud anymore, but I still often remember Krishna, remember that Rohan is Krishna's, and feel grateful for the privilege of taking care of him when I refer to him as "mine."  <3