Motherhood changed me.

Just like that, we are now in the last month of the year. It seems like just yesterday I had a baby and today she is seven months old. Looking back, I haven’t stop one bit since my water bag broke at midnight of the 27 April 2021. Pretty chilled out, I wondered why I was given a year maternity leave option. In Asia, three months are considered too long. As someone who constantly strives for self-development, I’ve prepared an ambitious list of things to accomplish in maternity year – not necessarily related to motherhood.

• Enrol into accent reduction training
• Prepare for driving test
• Write everyday
• Resume sketching and painting
• Build professional network being a newbie …
• Catch up with French speaking lessons
• Polish Mandarin writing
• Learn Gemmology

Maybe I was aiming for the moon with hope to land among the stars. Out of the above non-exhaustive list, only a quarter was accomplished.

I detest that I’ve lost a fair amount of time to procrastination. Not that I did it on purpose. On my last trimester, so much more energy was consumed into developing a human being, Feeling fatigue every other day, I was aggravated by morning sickness that lasted until the end of pregnancy. In many occasions, my willpower was put off by inevitable mood swings, putting a pause to my ambitious list – Perhaps I could get back at them postpartum?

I must confess that my partner and I had focused so much on building a family that we underestimated the weight of parenthood responsibilities. One step at a time became multiple steps at once. We didn’t anticipate any of them. In particular, impromptu travelling became used-to-be. How it is like being a new mother in my second year abroad? How lonely motherhood can be especially under pandemic situation? In Asia, it is very common to seek for parents’ help and even hire a confinement lady to help with newborn chores. Unfortunately for me, on top of living far away with no parents immediate support, there was a clash in Asian and Western practices when it comes to postpartum care. There was no rest and recovery period but straight into sleepless nights and back-to-back feeding all the way up to three months. I sort of had a modified confinement period in an expedited way. Being a workaholic, I used to wonder why it was such a torture to get friends who’d became parents on a phone call or an outing. Now I know – to squeeze a little time for myself is indeed demanding. There is no sparing time to waste but absolute priorities to check!

Since given birth, my life has taken a 180 degrees turn. It is a surprise-after-surprise kind of scenario until today. I would substitute ‘shock‘ with ‘surprise‘ simply because shock had left me with postpartum depression for over two months. I was exhausted and traumatised after over thirty hours in labour, so emotional that I broke down almost every evening in the first month. “I’ve created a human being. Unlike a 9 to 5 job, this is going to be harder work and completely personal” ran over and over in my head. I blame these on self-imposed expectation. With mixed feelings, I was trying to digest realities that I am a new mother to a beautiful child and it comes with extended responsibilities beyond my own life. Reading motherhood books can only prepare us preliminarily. Learning by doing (trial and error) has taught me so much more, simply because every baby behaves differently. Flexibility is necessary to work around them than to forcefully expect them to work around us. Advanced planning and back up plans are all great, but still, I am always expecting some changes on the side. As I am writing this, I’m still figuring out what surprise is going to come next. Whatever it is, I’ll just have to go with it and enjoy every moment.

Learning to work around my child, I saw my expectation on “how things should be” falls by the day, leaning towards embracing the unexpected instead.

The ‘unexpectant‘ is the wow factor, and it’s also the little bonus that makes my day. Every step deserves an applause.

Keep to schedule or spend the rest of day in misery. Strange that baby loves routine so much. Routine works like magic if mommy wants to earn some time for herself. Keeping to routine requires discipline and dedication. Less of me means sacrifices would need to be made. Honestly, they would pay off eventually, even with a little time predictability or a smile coming from little one. No doubt my personal ambitious list is now secondary as Eat-Play-Sleep routine takes the lead. At first, I questioned myself if I’ve become complacent. Am I giving excuses? Maybe I should be kinder to myself? Perhaps having achieved a quarter of the list is already worth a celebration?

I debated within and settled with “better I did something than nothing.”

The beauty of being a mother is all true. Motherhood changed me in and out. Long way to go, I would say that being a mother comes with an immeasurable price. It requires so much strength, persistence, and sacrifices both physically and mentally, beyond one could ever imagine. Motherhood teaches me to let go, pace out, and be kind to myself, yet appreciate little milestones. Happy mommy, happy baby as many said. Here, I am ending my post with massive kudos dedicated to all mothers in the world. You are amazing!