Learnings
Hello everyone!! Hope you are all safe. I was planning to write a tech blog then I have put that in draft mode and started to pen down this one. For the past few days, I have started to see discussions like "Is it worth having kids for career-focused women?" on Twitter. This made me think about my own experience of having a baby. I am a career-focused woman and a mother of 11 months old baby. There are few important lessons that I learned after having my baby.
Time - This is one of the important resources that took a big hit after having a baby. I had very little time to spend at work as I have to spend more quality time with my baby. Earlier I could sit and work at any time of the day. Now I have a schedule and I have to fit my work into it. Once I had little time in my hand, I started to realize how valuable it is. I started to make good use of the time I get to work by putting more focus on the work at hand.
Energy - The amount of energy that needs to grow a child is very high. You should have a sound body and mind to match their energy level. So I started to preserve more of my energy. I learned to say no to many things in my work. Initially, I thought I was not competent enough like my old self. But actually saying no to things and doing few tasks in hand properly made me feel good.
Setting limits and boundaries - Earlier I tried to reply to office chats or calls at any time of the day or night. But now I have set a definite boundary and I wouldn't work beyond those hours. It was difficult at first, but when I started to follow this I felt like I have better control over my time. I started to feel like having peace with myself.
Self-care - Before having a baby, I took my own health and time for granted. I could stretch a long time at work or work even when I feel sick. But now things have changed. If I am not well, I had poor energy and had unproductive time at work. This affects spending time with my baby too. So I started to focus more on my physical and mental health, getting a balanced diet, and exercise. I can manage things around me well when I put effort to take care of my own self. I began to advocate this to many of my friends at work too. This is one of the important pieces of advice that I wish to tell my own younger self.
Emotional bucket - As energy and time have become very critical resources for me, I started to save them as much as possible. I couldn't tolerate things that unnecessarily waste the resources that I have. I started to fill my emotional bucket and stay away from things that deprived my energy. A few things that made me happy at my work are genuinely helping my team to complete the task, share the knowledge I gained. I started to focus more on tasks that keep me happy and kept my energy high.
Living the moment - This is one important lesson that I learned from my kid. Kids have an amazing presence of mind. When they are engaged, they keep their focus only on that toy or plaything or a view outside the window. When I spend time with my kid, I get to soak in those moments and learn to be present. This helped me when I was in doing my office work too.
The points that I have shared above are based on my experience and perspective. It may vary for each parent. It all heavily depends on the kind of support system that you have too. I had many life realizations and learnings in my motherhood phase. I fully agree that I have lost some freedom and each activity in my life is more planned than before, I couldn't miss agreeing on the peace and happiness in this phase. While having a kid is a very personal choice, the above points are solely based on my view. Thanks for reading.