Motherhood changed me in ways no other challenge has tried and tested my strength. It has been a thorough learning period and I feel like being forever in the “internship” stage, with each passing year evolving and requiring a different set of skills. They said no one has it figured out. And no one can be a perfect mother, only a good one. That’s a relief.
I thought all the years in college surviving with as little sleep as 3-4 hours a weeknight, studying for my engineering degree were already the worst it could get. Being a mom has made me survive an hour of sleep a night and still manage to fake an upbeat mood for the 9-hour work day the next day. We do go to work to “rest”, after all.

One of the things I hated and wondered much about after giving birth was the fact that every single parent I talked to KNEW it was hard but no one really talked about how difficult it could get, how much sleep deprivation I would experience and the worry every time the freaking baby would cry. You knew and you didn’t tell me?? The type of comments I got instead was – “You should start planning for the next one!” I still have this belief that these are the people who never took care of their children hands-on. Or my child is simply a handful (that must be it). Seriously speaking, I should not conceive until 18-24 months later, to fully recover the lost nutrients from the first birth that the next baby will need. Fourty six months have passed and the plans for a next baby is still a vision without a timeline.

Post-partum depression has consumed the critical part of the first year, without me being fully aware that I was going through it. It was still the toughest period I ever had to go through, the feelings of ‘uselessness’ made worse by sleep deprivation, going through days of emptiness from sun up to sun down. I would stare at the baby, happy to finally hold and smell him, and yet feel like being wasted away with the task of just watching over him. I would clean the house or go to the market, and I would spend I don’t know how long, sitting on a bench before making my way home, feeling accomplished after doing some chores. I did not realize immediately (until a friend had to remind me) that my maternity leave was exactly meant to take care of the baby. Though I was losing sleep, I had “all the time” to recover because I had no work to do the next day. Looking after the baby was all the work that had to be done.

What most people would probably not realize is that having a child is much like having a corporate job, sometimes more difficult but certainly more rewarding. More often than not, I draw learning from my job to be a more effective parent and vice versa. In my experience, here are some lessons that I find true in both situations:

  1. No ambitious goal would ever be accomplished without the proper mindset. A few people who knew about my breastfeeding struggles also knew how pained, frustrated, and demoralized I was during those days. I tried every galactagogue (food supposed to increase my milk supply) to no avail. When my mom advised me to prioritize pumping milk for the baby and drop everything else that could get in the way, I was deadset to make it work. I developed a routine and finally increased my supply to around 90mL per pump after 3 weeks of persistence (my mom is a genius, I know). It took a lot of patience, energy and positive thinking to push on and “relactate”. It was still the hardest work I ever had to put in to achieve something. Being able to breastfeed was one of those skills that no amount of knowledge or wealth can ever help. That’s why it is called a Superpower. I was so mad that I pumped milk to exclusively breastfeed my baby for 15 months (including the time I had to travel to 2 time zones and back, within a week) and breastfed him until 36 months! At work, goals and objectives are never left to chance too. Strategy, peristence, and plain hard work are also critical to success.
  2. Knowing when to call for help is a strength, not a weakness. Seek support when you truly need it. I never considered the thought of taking care of my baby single-handedly. I just know what my (lack of) competencies are 🙂 Due to my PPD, I almost always had an average of 2-3 people helping me out. I would not survive without my husband, my mom and my cousin and later on my trusted helper during the first 6 months. Why would I beat myself up if I can seek for help? Raising issues at work and the need for support is very much the same. Teams and individuals may re-prioritize tasks in order to get an important job accomplished.
  3. Nothing beats a great sense of urgency to get things done. Nothing matches a toddler wanting to have something NOW or else the world will crash upon everyone who will hear the wailing from hell. Toddlers are great models of living the present as everything they order must happen without delay. While priorities at work do not (literally) cry as loud, placing an equal sense of urgency to complete tasks at work will absolutely get them done, whether you like it or not.
  4. You still get to keep your job even if you have some lousy days. Bottom line is, no one wants to suck at any job. There would be matters not under your control, like failing to put the baby to sleep or being unable to feed him, proof that some days will not be as sunny as the others and you have to live with it. You can’t get sacked for trying your best. The baby boss can’t fire you anyway.
  5. If you are lucky, you’d get the recognition you deserve. Some of us in the corporate would probably think that we have a “thankless job”, very much like whatever we do for our children seem to be an “expectation” rather than something done over and above our capabilities (like the time we had to do everything with one hand?!). But there would also be days where we’d get a word of appreciation at work, enough to get us through the day. It is the same as seeing your kid’s eyes fill with excitement the moment you step inside the house, or when you’re the first person they look for when something good or awful is up. Yes, we live for those days.

To be honest, I find working and being a parent both fulfilling, as they meet different goals and needs. It may not be true for all as situations vary depending on the type of work you do or the family structure you have. My mom, who is my role model in this area, had set me a good example of how to balance both, and in certain cases how to manage if I need to lean more on one side than the other. Whatever we do now as parents also set an example for our children. What they see is more important than what they hear. So I hope I am making the best choices too.