It truly sucks. It sucks that despite the clear understanding that you're a good mom, a hard-working mom, pushing to make it work, an irritating feeling starts to creep in. It's like a toddler: they're cute and active until a tantrum hits in surprise. I recall watching multiple reels on Instagram when I was pregnant with my boy about motherhood and mother's guilt and the struggle between it all.
Being a working mom gives you an energetic thrill. Like you're a superhero. And it's amazing. I look at my boy at the end of the day and then take a quick view of my momentary life earlier that day. I skip backward as if life was a tape on video, and I watch myself taking charge of providing care for my patients. It makes me feel mighty. Like I can do it all. But you don't. Because you break down when the guilt attacks, and it's not once or twice, but many times
.
It's when you're heading home, thinking how fast you'd like to reach home to spend enough time with your child. It's when you're already home but too tired to play with your child, so you hand him over to the nanny. When your child is too attached to the nanny, they don't quite feel comfortable with you. It's you needing to be more available. It's the physical exhaustion brought by the job and the mental and emotional exhaustion brought by the unintentional feeling of child neglect. It's two lovely worlds colliding. And you're entrapped under the rubble, battling between hate and love.
It's the million-dollar question: "Is it all worth it?"