#workingmomwoes

I’ve been tagging a lot of my Instagram posts lately with the hashtag #workingmomwoes.  My current reality is that my Mondays-Fridays consist of 12 hour workdays. Dan and I leave for work at around 8:30 am. Both Noah and David are already awake by then and so we try to cuddle and play with them before going on our 1.5 hour commute to Makati. I work until 5:30-6pm and we get home at around 8:30. Bedtime for the kids is 9pm but there are times that I have to take calls from 9 until 11 pm so yep, the evening bonding time with the kids is sometimes wiped out.

My work-life balance is skewed towards more work and this is my struggle now. Being a mom who works outside of home has its ups and downs. I’ve written about how I’m dealing with my working mom guilt in this post but it’s so hard when I’m at home, in a call and I see my kids just in the bedroom waiting for you to come in.

I saw this video on Facebook recently. I watched it at 1:30 am in the morning. The kids were beside me asleep and the room was dark.

Well, I cried. The message at the end got to me

“We know it’s not always easy to give the best to your children, but know that your best will always be enough for them.”

There was a time when I was finishing up a report and David came up to me and said:

David: “Mama, what time will you stop working”

Me: “Why, Kuya”

David: “Because we need to be together as a family when we sleep”

My heart broke into a million pieces. I work so that I can also provide for my family alongside Dan but sometimes….I dream of winning the lotto so I can stay at home and be a full-time mom to the kids (kailangan ko ng tumaya!) Right now, I sneak in bedtime stories with Noah before I jump into my next call. When my calls are over and David is still awake, we sometimes lie in bed together and I talk to him about his day.  The spaces in between the busy busy days are so much more precious to me now than ever. I look forward to these small slices of time because these moments propel me to overcome my challenges at work every single day. At the end of the day, all that I do, I do for the kids.

After watching the video, I wept a little and I let out a huge sigh afterwards.  Ang hirap maging nanay BUT I would never ever dream of not choosing motherhood. I can’t ever dream of a life or a world without my 2 boys.  I hope that David and Noah realize that I miss them every day and that I love them very dearly and that I try every single day to be the mom they need me to be. To borrow the video’s hashtag, provide them with #kalidadnaalaga 🙂 Their hugs and kisses melt my stresses away and sometimes I think….well maybe I’m doing something right after all.

So to my fellow moms out there who have the same #workingmomwoes me like me, can we all give each other a hug?  Can we all just give each other a pat on the back?  Oh and happy happy Mother’s Day to you!