Shark Tank India fame Ghazal Alagh recalls being in extreme pain during C-section delivery; says ‘My husband cried a lot and told doctors to save me’

Ghazal Alagh, founder of beauty brand Mama Earth, recently appeared on Rubina Dilaik’s podcast and spoke about her motherhood journey, painful delivery and a father’s role in equal parenting. Ghazal was seen in the first season of Shark Tank India and here in the podcast she spoke extensively about marriage, motherhood and more.

For any woman, I think this journey would become 100 times more difficult if your partner is not supportive and more so if the father is not involved. I'm blessed. Varun is a very very active, involved, always present kind of a father. He's always been that kind of a husband as well. I still remember when I was pregnant, everyone used to teach me that this is how it should be done and be ready for this. And all that knowledge was coming only to me.

I didn't tell Varun that you have to do this, you have to do that and life changes like this. There was no conversation like this. But when Agastya happened and it was a C-section, I was in labour for 48 hours and I still couldn't deliver normally. So in the end, they had to do caesarean and it was a shock. It was a shock to me mentally. I still remember Varun's expressions because there is a pain threshold, which they measure on the painkillers that when the baby should be delivered. The pain had crossed the threshold and I still remember very clearly that I was in pain but Varun was sitting on the bed and he had tears in his eyes.

He went out of the room crying and I could still hear it in my ears right now as I speak, that he cried a lot outside the room. He was feeling helpless. He was feeling that I was in so much pain that he couldn't do anything. He took a call saying that whatever happens save her. That was the first time I saw that change and that emotional side of Varun. Before that I never saw that side of Varun. After that, the baby was born healthy everything was fine we came back to our room. Varun said a small line, he said, ‘you have given me the most beautiful thing in the world.’

There are so many emotions that are going on in your mind you are happy but you're also in pain your body is in pain there is so much expectation out of you. Baby ko feed karana hai feed nahi aati. Mujhe nahi aayi thi feed. Like, I didn't get breast milk. And doctors were after my life, ke yeh breast pump se yeh karo, woh karo. And it's like torture at that point of time. And nobody prepares you for that journey. Varun stepped up and he said, all the duties around the baby, I will do it. From taking his diaper dutie to giving him top feed because breast milk wasn't coming, first 10 days, I touched the baby only when I wanted him to take a feed. And that too we were going on trial and error because it took a lot of time in breastfeeding and nobody trained him to be like that. But I think it came to him naturally by looking at the baby. Or by looking at me, I don't know. I want to believe by looking at me.

I think we are blessed to have partners like that because many people don't get such support. We live in a patriarchal society, right? Some roles are pre-defined from the beginning that the woman has to do all of this and the man is going to earn for the house and that's it. There is not much responsibility with the babies and they are not that involved. As a family, life can be so much better and changed just by being more involved and equal parenting. Like we call it equal parenting and I am blessed to have Varun, who shares all of this with me. The sudden change that comes with the children it is so precious, it is so valuable. And it changes your family's life for the better.

Varun and I had an arranged marriage. Obviously when you're meeting for the first time, there are some criteria of yours and some are theirs. You're having a conversation and you're judging each other. You would have judged at that time. There is no love. Let's be very honest about it. I am the first person, first woman to go out and make her own living. Before that, there was no permission that girls will go out and work and earn their own money. The only criteria for girls were that they should study enough to get married at a good home. So, mama took that stance. But even after that, when it came to marriage, she started creating these biases in my mind that when you meet a guy you should talk like this, don't say that I am career oriented. I was doing a job then. I also wanted to study more. So she specifically gave me this brief that don't say that I have to study a lot. So whatever she had told me not to, I did all of them.

And Varun was the first boy that I met. I told him, that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And I generally asked a question. I said, ‘a lot of people have views that a girl should do this or that after marriage. What do you think?’ And he said this one small line. He said, ‘marriage is not life. It is an event of your life. Right now we are doing these things separately. But if we choose to be partners and get married. It becomes a team. We will do these things together. And whatever you want to pursue, be more than happy’ and then we had like one hour long conversations, where he wanted to understand what is it that I want to do, what are my passions and all.