This is a strange topic to write. I feel like by writing this, I’m going to seem like the reluctant mom, where my pregnancy was unplanned. But it’s the opposite - the pregnancy was very much looked forward to. So, one would find it hard to discover that…
I never wanted to be a mom.
I wanted to maybe have children, but I didn’t like the fact that having children would, inevitably, make me a mother.
In other words, I wanted to be a parent, but I had this inherent fear of all the implications that come with the word “mom”. I can’t really pinpoint to what it was, but I just never felt like the “mom-type.” In my mind, being a mother meant a lot of things, it meant being nurturing, caring, doing all the housework, cooking good food, disciplining kids, not very intelligent(!?), and all these qualities that I don’t have.
Even when I was in the hospital, being pushed into the delivery room, fully dialated, very ready to push my baby out. I remember the nurse said to me in a welcoming, supposedly encouraging tone:
Let’s do this, Mama! You can do it!
I was in so much pain physically, but I still managed to roll my eye, and thought to myself, “Who is mama? NOT ME!”
Now, my baby is about three months old, I am finally OK with being a mom. In fact, I have learned so much in the short time of being a new mother, I came to embrace motherhood in a way I never imagined I would.
“What counts as a good mother” is defined by myself.
In the first few weeks of being a mom, I really struggled with the concept. I was very exhausted from the delivery, so I wanted to rest. At the same time, whenever the baby cries, I would feel this very complex feeling. On the one hand, I wanted to sleep and just let the baby cry for a bit. On the other hand, I blamed myself: what kind of mother am I? What kind of mother would let her baby cry while she catches a few more minutes of sleep?
This self-doubt and guilt and shame combined was extremely discouraging. It didn’t help that I was having lactation problems so we were going to the lactation consultants for advice. The LCs made me feel even worse, like I should love my baby so much to want to wake up every few hours to tend to him and pump so I can provide for him. This led to more guilt and shame for myself. My mother-in-law came to our house to help, and although she was extremely helpful in the actual work of taking care of the baby, it also made me feel worse, like I was completely useless as a mother, adding to my pile of shame and guilt.
My own mother, however, said otherwise. (I’ll forever be thankful that my parents came all the way from Taiwan to stay with us and take care of us for six weeks. ) I will always remember the things she told me during my postpartum recovery time:
Who cares about breastfeeding? I never breastfed you and your brother, and look how smart and strong you are now! You need to take care of yourself first. The baby can wait.
Who says moms have to do all those physical work? You can hire someone to do all these tasks. You and your brother both had nannies. And we hired cleaners. Do you think I’m a bad mother?
Do not sacrifice yourself for your children. No one would appreciate your sacrifice. You provide, because you like to give.
Indeed. I look at my own mother, and realized why I am who I am now. I came to realize my mom had defined what her style was as a mother, and I grew up loving her the way she was. Growing up, I never envied anyone else’s mom, because I have my own mother. She is always optimistic, funny, and wise. My mom doesn’t really do much housework, but is an amazing cook. She loves to provide for us in the form of food, and she is a great listener. She listens, and provides very wise advice. I love her for her endless, undivided attention she provides for me.
Motherhood doesn’t have to be defined by others, it should be defined by me. And I believe I can do what I do well and still be a good mother. I don’t have to do all the stuff that the society expects of me as a mother, as the only person I need to please is myself.
I have always been great with kids - they love me because I’m this “fun big sister” or “fun aunt”. I always talk to kids like they’re my peer. I tell them about my life, they tell me about theirs. I invent fun games to play with them.
After realizing this, the big guilt and the shame that I am not a good mother started be lifted off my chest. I was able to breathe again. It was a big relief to realize that I don’t have to suffer in order to be a good mom. I can still be myself. After all, my son will grow to appreciate me being me, and he will love me for who I am, because that’s how I love about my mother - she is herself, 100%, and very unique.
Mothers are strong. They don’t sweat the small things.
I had a fast delivery. Because it was quick, I had no time for epidural (I was totally planning for epidural, because of my lack of confidence for my pain tolerance). It was a lot of pain, but at least it was finished quickly.
When I was in the delivery room, I was still in big shock that I wouldn’t get any epidural that I had been so looking forward to; and that I was ready to push the baby out even though I was already so exhausted from all the contractions. I remember vividly how desperate I felt, and how I was mentally quite crushed that I was left with no other choice but to PUSH THAT BABY OUT OF ME. I don’t know if it was the endurance athlete in me, or the grad student in me trying to shamelessly finish that PhD thesis regardless of its quality, but according to my husband, I looked very determined in that delivery room and really “powered it through”, pushing even when the contraction stopped, causing the doctor to have to slow me down so I could save some energy.
I would even go as far as saying, at that moment I wanted that baby out SO DESPERATELY, it was much more desperate than my PhD defense ;)
After the delivery, I remember looking at the baby in awe, at his big head (he’s not that big of a baby, just a big head), thinking: did I really push this thing out? How did I do it? This is so big! And I was quite astonished by my own will.
Honestly, I wasn’t aware I was that strong. It was quite an empowering experience.
I reflect back to the labor experience sometimes now, and it made a lot of my everyday things seem unimportant in comparison.
Or maybe it’s more of a “I’ve fought that difficult fight, and I’ve suffered enough, so I’m cool with whatever now. I have nothing to prove anymore.”
I’m happy with my looks - first time in my life I’m happy with my looks. Strangely, I’m also finding my weight quite satisfactory. I might have another 1-2 pounds to lose to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, and normally I would care about that 1, maybe 2 pounds, but now I feel that it’s good enough for me.
I don’t think I’m lowering my standard or I’m settling for less. I just don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. I feel a lot more comfortable in my own skin now.
Productivity up!
After having the baby at home, my time has become very fragmented. I don’t have a routine - the time revolves around pumping, feeding, comforting, changing, burping, washing all the pumping parts, organizing stuff at home. I wouldn’t say it’s “very busy”, but things really do get pretty urgent, and you want to be prepared for that urgent cry of hunger, or that leaky diaper. It’s not that I don’t get free time, I do get them! But they are in very small chunks, like 20-30 minutes at a time, and ready to be interrupted any time.
I used to spend a lot of time idling - I take time to think about what coffee I want to make each morning, where to eat, what to eat, research on each option for something I want to buy, research on a project for a long time before I start to work on it. Now, since my time is so fragmented, I find idling a luxury. I became very quick in making decisions and very fast to act on things I decided to do. I actually became a lot more productive and got a lot of things done during this time. It feels great to be productive and being a mom really pushed me to be this way.
For example, I thought about starting a blog to note down the stuff I learned along the way of being a mother, so I quickly used a day of fragmented free time to research on what blogging platform I wanted to use, decided I wanted the more technical command-line interface, so I decided against Wordpress and chose Hugo, then researched on where to host, decided against the easier github pages since I wanted to play with Firebase, and got the site up and running in the next day or so. Continued writing for the next few weeks, and got a domain name from Namecheap and set it up on Firebase. Normally, this would have taken me forever because I would spend endless time researching for the best option. Now, because I need to get things done quickly, I actually get them done quickly.
Even when I don’t have time for some project, I don’t get upset either. I feel that I’ll get the important stuff done, and can’t sweat the small/unimportant stuff too much. It’s a great feeling not being obsessed about things.
Bottom line: Being a mother isn’t so bad, as long as we as a family get to define what counts as a good mother
Really, no one can define that for us. When you ask others to define it for you, it’s somehow always a competition of who can suffer more for your child. Somehow if you don’t exclusively breastfeed (I don’t, we supplement with formula), you’re not doing enough for your child therefore failing parenthood; or, if your baby doesn’t sleep in the same room as you (we don’t, since my husband can’t sleep at all with the baby’s constant noise) you’re somehow bad parents. I let that guilt build up and it was hard to not feel like a failure and hate this new role I’m in.
But it really doesn’t have to be this way. I learned that I have to be confident that my child is going to grow up as a whole person of his own, and he will have his own perspective. He will be raised by us, therefore (generally) share my values. My child is the only person that can ultimately decide whether I’m a good mother, and those “other people” won’t get to decide that. So who cares what other people think? It will ultimitely come down to our own family and what we decide how we want to live, and how we can grow together as a family. As long as we’re moving together towards that goal, my role of being the mother will always be good enough.
And so far, I really like this role :)