My journey of motherhood

Motherhood is a journey filled with laughs and tears.

Before having my own kid, I was very confident that I would be a great mom. I am patient, caring, and love to play with children. I was looking forward to my baby girl’s arrival and believed I was undoubtedly ready to be a mom. However, after my baby was born, I started to realize being a mom isnot a piece of cake. No matter how much work you have done in preparation for the new addition, no matter how much confidence you have had in yourself, no matter how competent you are at balancing between life and work, being a mom makes everything different.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was working on my PhD dissertation. Although I was not the most talented or most diligent researcher in my field, I was very ambitious and eager to do something in academia. I did not think seeking a balance between work and parenting would be a great challenge for me. However, I was totally wrong, especially after I moved to Washington DC and started to work in January 2013.

Taking care of an infant after an eight-hour full-time job is exhausting. It was terribly frustrating when you needed to comfort a whining baby in the middle of the night. Sleep deprivation made me exhausted and irritable. As parenting took most of my time after work, I gradually realized that I barely had time or energy doing other things. Reading academic papers or conducting a research sounded like an unreachable dream for me.

Being a mom is filled with bitter sweet feelings. Motherhood made me stronger and gave me a more flexible perspective. Before being a mom, I was strictly goal-oriented. As a Virgo, I love making plans and enjoy achieving goals before deadlines. If I was not able to put everything under control, I felt panicked and lost.  In these seven hundred days of motherhood, I have learned one lesson: you need to expect something unexpected. For example, in the middle of dinner, your little one pooped and you found she had diarrhea. Her upset stomach made her scream in the restaurant. After changing her twice in ten minutes, you found you were out of diapers so you needed to pack everything home, including the untouched food and a smelly dirty baby. Not kidding, it happened.