#1: About my journey, and how I found confidence in motherhood & parenting

Nov 30

Written By Ava

In this episode, I share about

My journey as a mother and how this has inspired my personal growth & also the work that I do
Key challenges that I have faced so far in my motherhood journey
How I have found my own confidence in motherhood & parenting

Listen to the Episode:

+ or you can read the transcript by clicking here

Hi, welcome to Making Mama Magic podcast. Thank you so much for all who have shared your excitement for the podcast. Since I launched the podcast introduction last week, I am really excited to share future episodes of which some of them will be solo episodes by myself and some of them will be chats with other mamas.

So for this episode, I wanted to share more about my journey as a mother and how this has inspired me in terms of my own personal growth and also the work that I do, some of the challenges that I face so far in my motherhood journey and how I have come to find my own confidence in motherhood and parenting.

I became a mother in 2018 when I gave birth to my firstborn and I realized that even though I have learned so much through the books and the workshop that I've attended on things like child development, breastfeeding, newborn caring, labor process, giving birth, a lot of the things that I've learned I simply call like the hate knowledge. But when it comes to the actual delivery, it was smooth.

I had the water birth that I planned which was really wonderful and truly life-changing experience but when the baby is here, I realized that all this knowledge that I've learned, a lot of them are applicable in that sense so like you know things like sleep patterns, things like jaundice, measurement and everything, all this are information that I was aware of but with the postpartum hormones adjusting to the sleep patterns and recovering from the labor that was emotionally and physically taxing, it was really challenging and I felt that I was really overwhelmed by all the noises and opinions by others which was constant throughout my own experience as a mother since the beginning until now and it was really hard to make decisions and to feel that you know I'm there, I'm confident enough and I know what I'm doing because of all these noises and opinions by others, by well many friends and relatives, I felt that I was really struggling in the first year of motherhood.

It was only when I had my son going through like a bout of illness so what happened was he had sensitive airways and there was a period of time where he was having a few rounds of bronchitis because of the air con at the infant care that he was at.

So I went back to work at around three months plus and he was at infant care and my work at the point I was a full-time office work.

What happened was the pediatric that we were seeing mentioned that it would be best that he can be at home to recover and you know be healthy again because the bronchitis was happening way too often and my husband and I decided to move into part-time work where I was at home for a few days and went back to office the other days and vice versa that he was at home and we had family and support to help to raise and take care of our child.

It was then that I realized that I had to choose, I had to make a decision because I was so overwhelmed with juggling with all these various responsibilities and I felt really really burnt out. I needed to transit from work to home. I constantly thought about my son.

I was really struggling to focus at work which was a very hectic period of time and I found myself really crippled with a lot of anxiety about a lot of things that was happening. When that happened I realized that hey you know something has changed.

I need to make the decision because I cannot be juggling all these balls and I felt that much to really to slow down life a little and spend more time with my child and of course with choices like this it's a decision that needs to be considered as a family because that comes with you know implications like financial, about roles, about career, about work and it became clear to me that I wanted to slow down a bit to spend more time with my child, to spend more time with my family.

It was then that I realized that okay I will take a pause from my full-time work. I've seen my child really thrive in the home environment when he was when we were still having that part-time work arrangements and all and I saw how he also thrived when we had more quality time together, one-to-one connection time together and yeah it's just really something that was enjoyable.

It was honestly tiring you know being around with a toddler but it was just something really beautiful and I am truly thankful that I have the opportunity to do that.

You know my husband was supportive and then we are privileged to have that choice in that sense but of course there was trade-offs that we knew and yeah it's just really something that I felt that was really aligned to what I really wanted to focus on that inner-seism life so it comes to the point where I became really clear about my own priorities and values in life right now and honestly for some of the things that I have struggled with throughout my life, becoming a parent has helped me to reflect a bit more.

I am a recovery perfectionist and I realized that as a mother there's nothing really perfect that I can do all the time because things change, babies' behaviors change because of their needs and the need to be certain.

It's something that it's hard to have when we have a child especially a young baby or a child because their needs in terms of their sleep, activities, play and a lot of things really fluctuating throughout their growing years. Adapting to that was challenging.

One of the key things that I've learned a lot is to tune into my intuition as a mother and really parent from the heart while we see so many things around us whether it is it from our own family, our own friends and even from social media we are always inspired or reading all this but ultimately it boils down to what our child needs, what I need and what my family needs at this point in time.

It's so individual, it's so unique to each of the family situations and I've come to realize that comparing to other people, other babies, other child, other families, it's not the most pleasant thing ever because we are so different in terms of so many things.

I think once that became clear and once I realized that I am at the point where I'm struggling with some decisions about the family, the child, I always go back to this question you know what's important for our child right now, what's important for family and of course talking to my husband helps a lot and I think that really gave me a lot of confidence in terms of parenting and motherhood because you know through this practice of being mindful, being aware and also really noticing my emotions and response to things around me, I think it gives me that sense where I can pause and notice and through practice I realize that hey you know it's something that I know that is happening but what's the anchor, what's the thing that is important right now and I think that's the beauty about mindfulness that I have practiced in my own life and parenting journey whether it's through these kind of decisions or whether it's through the temptations and breakdowns that my child has or whether it's through some of the discussions and even arguments with my husband, I think it's going back to what's key, what's important.

It can be challenging because sometimes we are not in our best mood or energy level but the practice is important and also being self-compassion, being honest and authentic about you know sometimes we will have situation that we blow out and not in the best energy and having patience for our child in terms of their acting out or whining and everything but we learn, we know that not every day will be a good day, not every day we'll have happy moments, not every day is perfect and goes in a way that we want to be.

So I think that has been something that I have learned and grew from that in the experience.

The other thing that I've learned and embraced is to really to be constantly learning about parenting because parenting itself is a skill, learning about and relearning about my child through observation and spending time with him really helped me to feel more confident about what I am doing and working together with my husband as a teammate on sharing our observations and parenting together has really helped us to kind of like notice what's happening in his own world and I think we both are very conscious about conversations and spending one to one time with him.

Now he is able to speak and express himself very clearly so I really really love like after school conversations because it's so interesting to know that what he's observing in his own world and also noticing and learning about his friends, his teachers and about himself and about his emotions because I think that's something that is very important for him to understand himself and also relate to other people as well.

That has been my journey so far as a mother, what I've realized is being a mother really fundamentally shifts our identity and I feel that a lot of moms struggle with you know feeling lost and thinking they have to be as good as or even better than other moms that they see and there's a lot of emphasis about what we should do to be a good mother having activities, having to make sure that they hit their milestones, having to cook out healthy meals and having all the latest gadgets and tools and toys to engage them but I think this causes a lot of anxiety, a lot of guilt and overwhelm for mothers.

For me I truly believe the greatest gift that we can give to our child and our children is the power of connection and presence. One of our friends mentioned to me that how our children feel loved is when we spend quality time with them and secure attachment starts from young and this helps to nurture and build confident and curious children who is open to learn.

One of the workshops that I've recently attended, the trainer said this sentence which I really feel that it was really very true. So she said, children who are loved at home, they go to school to learn. Children who are not loved at home in the way that they feel loved, goes to school to love.

So in order for our children to feel that they can go to school to learn, they need to be connected to us at home or when they are with us. And parents consciously tune in to what they need. It is really helpful in their own learning journey. Just in school but also in the outside environment like in parks, in malls, in supermarket, they are more eager to learn and observe.

So in my conversations with guests in the coming episodes of this podcast, we will talk about all these struggles in motherhood more and how they are also supporting other mums in terms of redefining their own motherhood experience and help them to move from a place of overwhelm to a meaningful and joyful motherhood and parenting experience.

I hope that through this podcast episodes, mothers can own their confidence in terms of motherhood and parenting and find their own unique ways to create magic in their own lives and also in their parenting and motherhood journey. So that's all for today's episode.

I hope that my journey has kind of like helped you to understand who I am and what I've gone through and in some ways helped you to connect to what you have experienced.

With that, thank you so much for tuning in. If you'd like to connect with me, feel free to follow me on Instagram at The Curious Mama or DM me to share your thoughts and questions about this podcast. I'll see you around.

Note: at this time transcripts are automated and unedited, which means errors may occur. But we hope you find them helpful!