Dare To Mother, By Rose Hindy
All the working moms!
Shout out to every working mom and to every working lady who is planning to become a mom.
First and foremost, kudos to you and secondly PLEASE read.
Heads ups to a vulnerability galore coming up. It looks like #mothersday made me do it!
Motherhood is neither a pitch we win nor a deal we close just like we do at the workplace.
Motherhood is not a plan with a strict width and depth (In fact it is a à fond perdu plan)
Motherhood is neither a duty nor a FOMO.
Motherhood is not a role we play in the background of our busy life.
Motherhood is not a ruthless 40-day maternity leave.
Motherhood is not a delusional and glorious office come back and life spinning as if nothing has happened.
Instead, motherhood happens, and everything changes.
It took me 15 years to finally understand what could have been the reason behind me being bedridden in a hospital for 3 months during my second pregnancy. I barely sustained life feeding on an IV with extremely low vital signs.
There was no evident clinical or medical reason.
Life seems to have stopped for the regional head of data science and all she dreamt of is being healthy again and devouring a burger. (I promise you would dream of a burger if you have been strictly on IV for 90 days)
I finally know what it was. It was a psychological battle between me and the normal process of conceiving. It was a battle between me resisting silently and secretly with all I can becoming a second time mother and the things that life proved to know better.
The working mother who is also unhappily married was solely keen on nurturing her career and raising her five year old son. The pregnancy test said otherwise. The fetus clinging fiercely to her womb said otherwise too.
There is a video of me in the labor room literally hallucinating: Can I give birth next week please? I am not ready now and I have many research projects pending.
I am not proud of being worried about work in the labor room.
It wasn’t the fear of labor. It was the fear of adding more to the already existing hefty load of responsibilities
I resisted becoming a mother again even during labor and I almost left this life (I will save that for later). This is when everything changed and my entire perspective on life and motherhood changed.
Life had other plans. They turned out to be the best plans indeed!
I just had to surrender, trust life and love it better and stop RESISTING.
That was my story. Here are the stories I have compiled lately from the amazing working ladies and mothers around me. There is no judgment here. There is only a bottomless empathy.
- Story 1: I am planning to conceive next month. This way I give birth before signing the contract of the big project I told you about.
- Story 2: I froze my eggs as I am 38 and since now, I am too busy at work I will have to secure a child in a year or two.
- Story 3: I will go for IV after the summer. I will not experiment if I can conceive or not as I have to get pregnant then.
- Story 4: I don’t want a second child but I SHOULD so my son can have a sibling.
- Story 5: I am not sure if I would like to become a mother, but I am scared to regret not to later on.
- Story 6: I wish I wasn’t taken by my career, and I have conceived as now I regret it.
Ladies, I understand we need to somehow plan our life, yet we can’t strictly instruct nature on what exactly needs to happen. Our nervous system gets permanently taxed. Our reproductive system takes note and trust me it starts acting up.
I strongly encourage every mother to go back to the workplace, if this is what she decides to do of course. Nevertheless, I also want to bring the awareness that motherhood is a lifetime commitment and is also worth either a considerable career slow down for couple of years or even one year maternity break which was the best decision I personally took with Chloe.
I am not proud of the badge of perseverance I carried on my chest showing up in the office when Assem was 25 days old. I wish I didn’t. I wish I had strolled him every afternoon in the park just like I did with Chloe.
Did I really think my career can’t wait for a year?
Did I really think I can carry on normally with life with a newborn in tow?
I am here inviting you to rethink the heavy title of a supermom. What if tell you if you can be a successful working mom and still be human? What if I tell you you have the right to slow down as long as you need to?
Also how about being solely moms today and celebrating fully in any way that resonates with you?
Happy Mother’s day.