Motherhood.

 [Inspired by Annette to pen down postpartum thoughts]

There is no sugar coating of the fact that the '4th trimester' and beyond has been the toughest one thus far.

One thing about motherhood is that there will countless of adjustment to adapt to. Just when I thought that I have adjusted pretty well to the new routine, and to the little human, another waves of adjustment came along. My patience has been really put to test in motherhood, and am learning to cope with the mental stress.

My parents have always said that I love to 'Pa Pa Zhao' (go everywhere), because I really do - catching up with friends, doing handmade stuff, and going on local staycay and overseas trip. The start of motherhood has  led to me 'mourning' about the loss of my freedom to go out anytime (especially during this vacation), and self-judging my declined efficiency to complete the tasks that I planned to do. My thought was moody and sometimes, grey. Then, one of the conversations in the netflix show about motherhood dawned on me that I need to face the fact that my life will be different. Instead of looking back to reminisce about how much freedom I used to have, I can focus on the time at hand to enjoy doing some things I love.

Motherhood is a sacrifice, but come with bittersweet memories. Despite the struggles, I wont exchange you with anything else. There will definitely be tough, tougher and toughest days, I hope to breathe better, and to step out of stressful situations first to manage my mental and emotional states before going back to deal with the situations.

'It takes a village to raise a child.' I have slowly come to agree to this when I am caring for the little one. The mental and physical stress are so real and too much to take for me as a mother. I wish that I could  be more vulnerable and 'let go' to allow both sides of grandparents to come more often to see and take care of the little one. However, my heart couldn't do it because I felt uneasy troubling them, and am self-judging myself for being a 'weak' and over-reliant mummy. This is still something that I am working on, and I hope that I can become more open to receiving help and less critical of myself..

On a lighter note, cheers for 2 consecutive days of completing the things I wanted to do before Christmas (rather than the usual routine chores and taking care of baby) - wrapping xmas gift, setting up xmas trees and finally, back to doing a non- pregnant HIIT exercise!:D❤️

~ If there is no struggle, there is no progress (Frederik Douglass)~