There is nothing easy about being a mother. It is the toughest job in the world. 

You really have to love and be in love with both to make it through one day.

Every day is a circus act.

I guess that happens when you become a mom at 23, when I’ve been everything but prepared, when just a few months before I stared at a stick bearing two faint lines, in total shock, all I had thought about was my career.

That’s my life there. And this is my story: Getting pregnant early threw me for a loop. I had been careless at a time when I had been nothing but carefree. My bank account wasn’t ready for costly pedia visits, let alone for a secure future for my son. I wasn’t able to steel myself for years of soiled diapers and incomprehensible crying because it really wasn’t part of my plan. I didn’t think I was ever going to be ready for the enormity of raising a child.

But you never really know what life-changing truly means until you’ve held an infant in your arms and have someone so delicate and innocent depend on you for survival. Being a mother changed me, and the landscape of my life. In a snap, I went from a career woman full of dreams to someone willing to throw all that away just to be at my son's side when I’m needed, which is basically all the time.                                                                                                              

Yes, I entered Call Center for me to support myself and my son. When you’re a mother, it’s never just about you anymore. I said yes to the job, to the long hours, to the behind-numbing commute because I wanted to be able to provide him the kind of life I didn’t have.

But every time I would bury myself in work, times that I would be so swamped that my son doesn’t even cross my mind, an uneasy feeling settles in my gut: I’m a horrible mother. And when you spend more time at your work  than at home, that feeling is magnified by the littlest of things. 

His milestones will always trump mine. I take pride in everything he does, be it as small as his sucking on hands or as big as his eating solid food for the first time.

Yes, I know. There will be overwhelming moments when I would want to pack my bags and just go. Maybe I will always have those few minutes when I’d rather be at work. But when your love for something runs so deep, like how my love for my son  does, you will always choose to come home.

A mother’s job is never done, much less a working mom’s. I just have to keep on reminding myself that everything I’m doing is for him, that I’m striving to do well because I want him to be proud of me, and that I’m juggling two hats to give him a better future.