Lessons from Motherhood

It has been exactly 3 months since baby Liting stepped into my life and it has been an amazing period filled with laughter and tears, challenges and breakthroughs, and most of all, wonderful memories!

Within this short span of 3 months, I have come to appreciate many life lessons and insights from my own experience, sharing from friends and books.

1) About Time Management

Gone are the days when I can just relax in bed on lazy sunday morning or catch a movie, go shopping when I feel like it. Nowadays the days seem to just whizz by with the 24/7 cycles of feeding, changing diapers, playing with baby, coaxing her etc leaving only pockets of time to catch a nap when baby sleeps and have my meals.

Time has become a scarce resource. Now I truely appreciate the saying “Time is precious, use it wisely!”

Given the limited time for myself each day, I learned how to allocate this scarce resource wisely between “me-time”, couple time, work time and rest time. I found that the only way to accomplish what I want and have balance in my life was to be very intentional about what I wanted and schedule those important activities into the day first.

It’s like trying to fill a bottle with rocks, the bottle representing the time we had each day and the rocks signifying the various activities and tasks each day. If I placed the small rocks and sand into the container first, there would be no space left for the big rocks which are the things that really matter in life like health and relationships. Similarly if I drifted along the day, getting busy with whatever cropped up during the day, the time will just tickle away leaving no time for the bigger, more important but maybe not as urgent things like exercise, communication with my husband and managing my finances etc

Having limited productive time also made me learn how to get the important things done faster.

Here are some tips which helped me to increase productivity:

• Prioritise the tasks and act on the most strategic ones first – the ones that would make the greatest impact if I do or do not act on them.
• Focus on the desired end result and think of ways to achieve it in the most effective way possible. This actually trained my creativity to think of new ideas and look for additional resources I can leverage on to complete the tasks more quickly.
• Give up trying to be perfect. In the past I would spend hours trying to organise, beautify and finetune my work, e.g working on my blog articles which takes up additional hours but does not generate much additional impact. By letting go of the need to be perfect, it freed up more space and time to do the things that really matter e.g enjoying the special moments with my baby. My friends and family even commented that I eat much faster ever since I became a mum!

“A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten & the future worth living for”

Indeed, having a baby really changed my life. True, there are sacrifices to be made and challenges at times, but seeing the smiles on my baby’s face, knowing she’s happy and healthy makes everything all worthwhile.

2) About Personal Power

Motherhood made me discover the inner power and strength within me.

Recovering from the physical pain of an emergency c-section, coping with the emotional rollar coaster after delivery, overcoming the initial challenges with breastfeeding, picking up the various aspects of taking care of baby, dealing with the lack of sleep…each day presented new challenges both physically and emotionally, yet somehow I found the courage, resilence and resourcefulness within myself to overcome each challenge and come out of the whole experience stronger and more peaceful then before.

“Our greatest fear is not that we are weak, but that we are powerful beyond measure”

The height of it all happened just 2 months into motherhood when my family was struck with hand foot mouth disease. Imagine the anxiety and worry I had about my 2 month old baby’s health, coupled with the physical discomfort of battling the virus, and the subsequent fatigue from a weakened constitution which has yet to recover from childbirth. Phew! I’m so glad it’s over, and yes, I survived it all!

Looking back, I am also amazed at how I overcame all the challenges and accomplished things I never thought I could do previously. I now see that as women and mothers we all have this immense power within us which gives us the strength and courage to handle anything that comes along. Mummies – you are great!

3) About Self Trust

During this period there has been a lot of well meaning advice given by friends, relatives, books etc that advocate all kinds of advice about the baby, from feeding to sleeping to how baby should behave.

Take baby sleep for example, we heard stories of how other people’s babies managed to sleep through by 6 weeks (while our girl was still waking up 2 to 3 times each night and we were having a hard time coaxing her to sleep every night). So we researched and tried implementing sleep techniques suggested by various sleep experts, hoping to achieve the same result. These included establishing a sleep routine and putting the baby down to sleep by 7pm. But our girl simply refused to sleep and trying to enforce the routine only resulted in a lot of struggle and frustration for us. Eventually we realised 7pm is simply too early for her, in fact 7 to 8+pm is her active evening time when she enjoys interacting and having fun with us. After we adjusted the schedule, she now falls asleep much more peacefully and soundly by 9!

“You know what’s best for yourself and your baby”

After some time I learnt that each child is unique and not one size fits all.

Ultimately we need to trust our instinct as mothers and trust that we will know what’s best for them.  By observing our child’s behaviour and understanding what works for them and suits ourselves, we will become happier and more at peace with ourselves.

4) On Responsibility

Becoming a mum meant that I am no longer just responsible to myself – my physical, mental, emotional and financial well-being now has a direct impact on my child’s life. It has been said once we would do more for others then we would do for ourselves – this is especially true when it comes to parents for their beloved children.

Taking care of myself for my child

• I choose to take care of my health so I have the energy and vitality to care for her.
• I choose to stay positive and happy so I can create a healthy, happy and nurturing environment for her to grow up in.
• I choose to take care of my finances and plan for the future so I can provide a good quality of life for my child and secure her future.

I am my child’s no 1 role model

Knowing it gives me the motivation to constantly grow and improve on myself in terms of character, interpersonal relationships, career and financial success.

My goal is to become a role model who inspires my daughter, a mentor she can learn from and a mother she will be proud of.

Motherhood has truely made me a much stronger, more patient, loving and bigger (both literally & figuratively) person. This is just the beginning of this magical phase of life and I’m sure there’ll be many more lessons and insights to be learnt along this journey as I grow and progress with my child.

I look forward to sharing these with all my friends and would love to hear your experience as well! Feel free to comment & share your thoughts about how motherhood has changed your life with other readers!

To Your Success and Happiness,

Yong Hui