Is it possible to balance being a mom with a demanding career? Here’s Michelle Zhu’s Perspective.
As a child of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs, the values of hard work and constant productivity were drilled into me from a young age. Those values went on overdrive when I quit my corporate job to become a startup founder.
That’s why I felt so many mixed emotions when I became pregnant 2 years ago. My husband and I were excited to start a family, but I also worried about how difficult it would be to balance motherhood and my already stressful CEO job. In my head were the common refrains told to me by society, bosses, even my own parents: being a good mother is in opposition with having a successful career; you can’t have it all.
Despite the uncertainty, the one thing I had deep clarity about was that I wanted a healthy pregnancy and baby, so I had to give myself permission to start taking it easier on my body. When I was 5 months pregnant, I took two work trips across the country in a month. Whereas I would have normally stressed about working on the plane, I instead let myself doze upon take off and rest upon arriving at the hotels. Without intending it, my pregnancy became an experiment in whether I could still be the working professional I wanted to be, without grinding myself to the bone. And much to my surprise, it proved possible.