Yes, I'm that crazy overprotective mom!

Hi! I’m Megha Menon. You’d probably know me better as “that eccentric mom” or that “helicopter mommy”. Yes I am completely aware that I’m constantly hovering around my child.. so much that he would probably pull a restraining order on me once he’s older.

When I was young, I swore to myself I’ll never become like my mother who was always around my brother and giving him all her attention. As a child I used to believe that hopefully I should get a little sick to get my mom’s attention! But as I grew older I understood where her stance came from. And when I had a child with medical needs, I could completely empathize with her. You see, my brother was very prone to mishaps and bad luck; He once almost drowned in a river, where for a few moments she actually thought he was gone forever. After that he accidentally spilled hot water on himself when he was around 4 years old and suffered third degree burns on his thighs. I would observe her always shielding him from anyone scolding him. Even my father wasn’t allowed to scold him much.

Fast forward to 2011 when I had a traumatic pregnancy and had a micro-premature child who later progressed to be diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. When my child became the center of my universe and my life revolved only around him since then, that’s when I realized that if you’re ever in a position where life has always shown that she has the upper hand and she can anytime destroy your world n a split second, you tend to hold your priorities, your precious ones, closer. 

While you were taught post-partum to change your baby’s diaper, I was taught how to perform an emergency CPR and how I should do chest compressions with my two fingers on my tiny baby who was born weighing barely a pound! While you got to celebrate your child’s first birthday in absolute grandeur, we celebrated his birthday with his neonatologist and we didn’t have to gift him anything, he gifted us the biggest joy of our lives by coming off of the oxygen support he needed to live!

Now you may say these are all things of the past and that I should move on. I did, but I could never sleep peacefully. You know once you have faced an unimaginable trauma, your body goes into the “fight or flight mode” . You’re constantly sensing danger, overthinking problems. In my case, I feared for my child’s safety. I could never trust anyone with him. People got offended, but they don’t realize that it was never about them. “Who” was volunteering to take care of him didn’t matter. In my mind it was etched in golden words that my son is not safe without me! Period.

I would start getting anxious the moment he was out of my sight. Then I realized I was probably stunting his growth and so I gradually started stepping away little by little, giving him wings to fly. He started daycare, then pre-school, then elementary and even Middle school! That tiny baby who could fit in my palms had grown up to be a confident young man and I couldn’t be more proud! As I slowly started relaxing, in April 2024, He had a massive seizure! When he was rushed in an ambulance to the hospital, all those hospital memories came flooding back. All through his life we have been in and out of hospitals, for surgeries, therapies et all. But this was the first time after coming out of the NICU I saw the doctor reaching for an AMBU Bag. If you don’t know what an AMBU Bag is, consider yourself lucky. I was standing in a corner of the emergency room watching all the doctors and nurses hustling and bustling. While trying desperately to get a tiny peek I saw my boy, my precious sweet baby, frozen with big wide eyes and not breathing. My heart sank into the pit of my stomach, and I mumbled a silent prayer, or rather threatened God, “No! After everything you have put me through, You are not doing this to me! I accepted the child you gave me and have raised him like a prince, I do not give you permission to do this to me!” And like a miracle, he started breathing again!

Coming back to my mother, almost 8 years ago I had a stroke and my mother’s focus turned entirely to me. Now my brother struggles for her attention! She is always at my beck and call and flies in with her wings to take care of my family and me. This is what all mothers do. We’re designed in such a way that we may look delicate and fragile outside but will protect our child/children with all our might and slay heads of every demon that even dares to attack our baby!

Have you seen Finding Nemo? Where Marvin is seen overprotecting his son Nemo who has one bad fin and so can’t swim as fast as others. Or Dumbo? Where the mother elephant takes it on her to protect her baby born with extremely large ears who stumbles and falls all the time. Or the quite recent one, The Wild Robot? Where Roz is so frantically trying to make sense of everything around her trying to safely raise Brightbill.

There’s in fact a beautiful line in The Wild Robot; “Sometimes to survive, you must become more than you were programmed to be.”

I’m just a mother who was pushed into a life that made absolutely no sense to her. She acted all brave on the outside but was terrified to her core, inside. I’m just trying to do the bare minimum that I was destined to do. Playing this life out one day at a time.

You might find me irritating and overprotective and anxious all the time, on my nerves and getting under your’s! But, hey..I’m just a simple girl trying to do her best.

With all these complexities in my life, God compensated for it by giving me the sweetest child anyone could ever have. He’s the most positive person in this world who has a million reasons to cry, but will always have the brightest smile! And I will do absolutely anything to keep that smile on him forever!