{"id":356792,"date":"2026-03-31T12:43:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:43:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/356792\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T12:43:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T12:43:06","slug":"the-things-physician-mothers-dont-talk-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/356792\/","title":{"rendered":"The Things Physician Mothers Don\u2019t Talk About"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s so much we don\u2019t say out loud, not because it\u2019s not true, not because it doesn\u2019t matter, but because somewhere along the way, we were taught that strength looks like silence and that if we\u2019re struggling, it must mean we\u2019re doing something wrong. Or maybe we just forgot in the brain fog<\/a> of the postpartum hormones<\/a> and the blur of sleepless nights.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a family physician. I\u2019m also a mother to an amazingly bright and wildly entertaining 2.5-year-old. I\u2019m a wife and daughter. There are so many more identities that I hold: Asian American, physician coach, entrepreneur, advocate, lifelong learner. I\u2019m still learning what it means to carry all of these identities at once.<\/p>\n

Some days, I feel proud, like I\u2019m doing it all and doing it okay. <\/p>\n

Other days, I feel like I\u2019m barely keeping it together, failing at everything.<\/p>\n

The fourth trimester was the hardest thing I\u2019ve ever been through. Harder than our 30-hour calls in residency. Harder than the all-nighters I pulled in medical school before an exam. Because it\u2019s not just one sleepless night. For me, it was a full year of breastfeeding and pumping through the night, sleeping<\/a> in 2-3-hour intervals, waking up in a haze and forcing myself to keep going because I thought that\u2019s what I was supposed to do.<\/p>\n

Breastfeeding didn\u2019t come naturally like I thought it would. When my baby\u2019s weight dropped to the 3rd percentile in the hospital, I blamed myself. Supplementing felt like failure.<\/p>\n

For three months, breastfeeding and latching were extremely painful, and my supply always inadequate. Every feeding became a battle between what I imagined it should be and the reality I was living. I tracked every session obsessively, convinced that if I just tried harder, my supply would improve. I equated my ability to nourish my baby with my worth as a mother.<\/p>\n

The message from the medical societies I trusted most echoed constantly in my mind: Breast is best. The unspoken implication? Anything less meant I was falling short.<\/p>\n

No one told me how hard it could be. No one told me how lonely<\/a> this journey might feel. <\/p>\n

In those quiet, dark moments, pumping alone at 3AM, I always questioned whether I was enough.<\/p>\n

I thought I would bounce back quickly after my delivery. I had done everything \u201cright\u201d: weekly yoga, a healthy diet<\/a>, regular exercise. The pain was unexpected and the physical recovery took far longer than I anticipated. It was months before I could walk without pain. I eventually sought pelvic floor therapy<\/a>, which helped immensely. Even then, I kept wondering: Why didn\u2019t anyone talk about this? Why, even as a physician, did I have no idea what to expect when it came to postpartum recovery?<\/p>\n

Then there were the other physical changes, the ones no one prepares you for: A small laugh, cough, or sneeze could lead to an unexpected leakage of sorts. I remember standing in my driveway, surprised, embarrassed, and frustrated, realizing that my body was not what it used to be.<\/p>\n

Then the postpartum anxiety<\/a> came out of nowhere and took over everything. I had no history of mental health struggles, so it was unexpected. I became hyperfocused on my baby\u2019s weight, her feeding schedule, how much I was pumping. My mind constantly spun through worst-case scenarios: how I\u2019d feed her during a natural disaster, what I\u2019d do if we were stuck in an earthquake, whether we had enough formula, batteries, or backup water. I worried whether her bottles and nipples were clean enough. And there were a lot of bottles and nipples to worry about.<\/p>\n

After I went back to work, the anxiety started to improve, but in its place stood guilt<\/a>: Guilt when I was at work, wondering if I was missing an important milestone at home. Guilt when I was at home, thinking about all the charts I hadn\u2019t finished or the inbox that I didn\u2019t get to. All I wanted was to go home and be with my daughter. But if I left early, I felt like I was letting my colleagues or patients down.<\/p>\n

It often felt like no matter where I was, I wasn\u2019t doing enough. I just wasn\u2019t enough. That constant tug-of-war between being a \u201cgood doctor\u201d and a \u201cgood mom\u201d was relentless and exhausting.<\/p>\n

These are the things we don\u2019t talk about because we\u2019re supposed to be high-functioning. Capable. Selfless.<\/p>\n

But physician mothers are not immune to struggle. In fact, the struggle is often amplified because we carry so many identities, so many expectations. The societal pressure as women: to be assertive<\/a> without appearing as aggressive, to be competent and capable without ever appearing overwhelmed, to be confident without being seen as arrogant. As women physicians, we navigate unspoken gender<\/a> bias<\/a> every day. We\u2019re expected to be accommodating and helping, successful but never threatening. As moms, we\u2019re expected to be endlessly patient, selfless, nurturing.<\/p>\n

All of it adds to the weight we carry.<\/p>\n

In a medical culture that rewards self-sacrifice and martyrdom over self-care, the internal voice whispers that we should be able to do it all, so why can\u2019t we do it perfectly?<\/p>\n

So, we keep going. We keep trying to hold it all together. We push through even when we\u2019re barely holding on.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still learning how to give myself grace. How to ask for help. How to redefine success, not by titles or checkboxes, but by how peace, joy, and presence show up in my everyday life. I\u2019m getting better at this.<\/p>\n

I did eventually reach my goal of exclusive breastfeeding, but not without triple feeding around the clock for a month. Sleep helped immensely. I didn\u2019t start feeling like myself again until I gave myself permission to wean and stop pumping at night. I learned to give my body grace, recognizing that it took nearly a year to return to my pre-pregnancy<\/a> weight. That this new version of me, leakage and all, with all its changes, wasn\u2019t broken. It was transformed.<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t a \u201cbounce back\u201d or return to my old self; it was an evolution into someone new. Someone stronger and wiser. Someone who could finally let go of the pressure, ground herself in the present, and relax. Someone who could stop missing the very thing she had prayed so hard and deeply for so long: the growth and life of my beautiful baby girl.<\/p>\n

So to every mother out there wondering if she\u2019s the only one feeling this way: You\u2019re not.
You\u2019re not alone.
You\u2019re not failing.
You are doing the most awe-inspiring<\/a> work there is: healing others, creating life, raising tiny humans, and carrying the invisible weight of it all with a fierceness and strength that deserves to be seen.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s okay to say: This is hard. Because it is really, really hard, and you don\u2019t have to carry it alone. We are all here for you.<\/p>\n

A version of this was published on KevinMD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s so much we don\u2019t say out loud, not because it\u2019s not true, not because it doesn\u2019t matter,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-356792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}