Straitjackets for Infants and Newborns

| Baby Ziliya Padiyath | April 2026 | Non Fiction Essay |

The market had no shortage of baby clothing stores. It didn’t make sense. Surely shops are supposed to sell things that other shops don’t? Yet demand was so high that seven stores within a one-mile radius was completely normal. Here is the actual list: there’s Baby & Me, Just Baby, Baby Steps, Popees Baby Care, Baby World Store, FirstCry, Maappi Kids Mall—more than enough within a one-mile radius. In this area, there isn’t a single park, no bookstores, not even a place to sit with a coffee. But there is a disproportionately high number of baby stores.

We stopped at the first one on our way from home. We had visited the biggest, triple-storied baby store once before to purchase a gift, and that’s how we knew to avoid it. It was absurdly expensive. 

This was no gift-buying trip. This was an exhausted emergency run. 

My kitten had broken her surgery stitches again. She could not comprehend the idea of not running at full force—why else would she have four legs? What else were all those calories for, if not back-to-back somersaults? She had never considered the idea of impulse control in her life. Like me, she would never pass the marshmallow test. 

It had been a scary day. It was the beginning of the holidays, and we could not reach our vet. Earlier that week, he had handed us his card and declared, “ Do not hesitate to call for anything!” So much for that. 

The fancy 24-hour vet clinic we first went to rudely kicked us out: “You dared to do the surgery at a different clinic? Then this is not our problem!” 

The wound looked so big and scary. 

To make matters worse, her motion sickness peaked during the drive to the hospital. She cried the entire time without pausing to breathe. By the time we got back home in the evening, we were physically and mentally exhausted. 

The doctor who finally ended up restitching the wound prescribed another ten days of bed rest — for this pop-rock-candy child bursting with energy. The only thing that calmed her down was wearing baby onesies, and we were out to get more, right on the eve of the big festival of Onam. 

The store named Baby & Me wasn’t just a room in a shopping complex; they had a separate building for themselves. “Someone has a rich, Middle Eastern migrant father-in-law!” I thought, in thinly veiled jealousy. 

The giant glass windows of Baby & Me were decorated with marigold garlands for the festival. Had we gone there the next day, they must have had the floral carpet as well. You cannot go anywhere without knocking into one during Onam.

I still hadn’t changed from the loose dress I had haphazardly thrown on while rushing to the hospital that morning. After the three hospitals, and waiting in the sun for two hours at noon at the grounds of the government hospital that finally showed us mercy, my dress was stinking with sweat. My hair was the same as it was when I woke up that morning. The thought of running a comb through it never even passed my mind. 

“Please, come in!” the middle-aged woman greeted us excitedly at the store, but it was the air-conditioning that welcomed us in. I stretched out my neck, letting the cold air hit the sweet spot.

The store was fancy—like a designer studio. 

There were no explosions of colors or the cliched pastels. The color palette was elevated—shades of beige and brown. 

The warm lights made everything feel even more expensive. 

I definitely felt too dirty and underdressed to be shopping there. 

“What age is the child?” they asked excitedly. 

We looked around, unsure of what to answer. My kitten was a Houdini-level escape artist, from even the smallest onesies. After all, she was a rebellious teenager in cat years. So we simply said: “The newborn clothes would be fine.”

“Please, look in this section,” she pointed us toward a long rod on the wall from which many tiny clothes were hanging in even tinier hangers. Frilly frocks, denim jackets, and even the Onam special skirt sets with golden brocade borders. How do I explain that what I need is a bodysuit that resembles a straitjacket for my baby? 

“I don’t need these. Just onesies, you know, the kind that cover up completely?”

“Of course, let me get that for you,” and she began pulling out many different onesies of all different colors and designs, which left me a little dumbstruck for a moment.

“Is it a baby boy or a girl?” she asked with a smile, holding onesies with Winnie the Pooh on one hand and Paddington bear on the other. I did not know they were assigned genders. 

“It’s a newborn. The colors don’t matter. Anything is fine,” I declared, a little too fast. My kitten might be female, but I was a progressive woman. I was not about to force anachronistic gender norms on my child.

“Of course,” she put both down for me before pulling out twenty more.

The clothes did live up to the designer-level flair of the store. They were nothing like the tacky things I had on in my baby pictures. These were sophisticated black-and-white cartoon animals. Mickey and Minnie, posing in front of the Tower of London. All muted shades. 

After a moment of quiet confusion, I picked out a grey one with a turtleneck—that should make it more difficult for my kitten to get out; and a white one with red double-decker buses and telephone booths — just because. A decision made under pressure. The lady was staring hard at me, and I had to choose fast. 

“These two, please.”

The lady gave me a once-over as I handed them to her. It took me a few minutes to register what must have been running through her head. Given the time of day, the urgency in our voices, and most of all how I looked—shabby hair, haven’t bathed in two days, and the long dress that did nothing to hide my clear paunch.

Ugh. She thought I was a mother who had a surprise delivery!

Okay, that’s a personal low. Time to reconsider my life choices. I hadn’t had a moment to even think about my appearance all day long — as I assume one does when a loved one is in trouble. Or is that not the case? Around here, you almost never see a dishevelled woman in public; there was no excuse big enough to not present yourself pleasantly. Not even at childbirth. I once saw a strikingly beautiful woman, heavily pregnant, walk calmly into the delivery room, wearing a pretty pink nightie and her hair in neat plaits. Was it my personal failure to be so consumed by my struggles that I had forgone the bare minimum expected of women? To be pretty at all times? That my body was revealing my struggles so clearly?

As we paid the bill, they handed the clothes in a bag, not as elegant as I expected (maybe they save the best ones for the big purchases). 

“Please come again!” they declared loudly, along with wishing us the best for the holiday season.

Had I just gone through a major milestone in the female life — a rite of passage — without even realizing it? I had never planned on dipping my toes in this particular pond; I had no plans to procreate. But maybe this was my version — the closest I’d ever get. 

My baby was waiting in the carrier, crying her lungs out. I quickly made my way to her so she could bite me while I calmed her down. If that self-sacrifice isn’t motherhood, I don’t know what is.

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_{Baby Ziliya Padiyath is a writer from Kerala, India. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Delhi University and a Master’s from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar. She enjoys coffee, her cat, and the quiet hours she carves out for writing— completing the writer cliché trifecta. She is currently developing her first full-length book alongside her short fiction.}

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Photo by Caique Morais on Unsplash

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