1 How It Begins

During pregnancy, going to work felt like carrying my own personal cheerleader everywhere I went. A little being was growing inside me who would always listen to me, who was always on my side, no matter what I said. So whether something good or difficult happened, I naturally talked to my belly all the time. “Mom had a rough day at work today,” I’d say, and it felt like the baby was listening and comforting me.

At the same time, I remember how hard it was to work while pregnant. That’s why when I see pregnant colleagues at the office now, I feel this tender concern—”How hard must it be for her?” Behind that calm exterior, I know she’s fighting through countless pregnancy challenges while trying to do her job.

Your body can betray you at the most unexpected moments during pregnancy. I’d get dizzy spells and end up sitting on the bathroom floor. I once finished a new product training session in this raspy, squeaky voice because I was so out of breath—I was mortified. Luckily, I didn’t have severe morning sickness, but I’d run into colleagues struggling in the bathroom every day, and I heard about a friend who cried while clutching the toilet. So many pregnant women are fighting incredibly hard battles just to show up at work. That’s why whenever I see pregnant women at the office, my heart goes out to them. I silently cheer them on.



It’s different, but I think all those moments are really “where being a working mom begins.” From that point on, a mother’s daily life and her baby’s existence begin to support each other.

2 I Want to Watch Just Makeup Too

This comes up a lot with my colleagues at work:
“Did you watch Just Makeup?”
“Did you catch last night’s episode of I’m Solo?”

Sometimes I do, but mostly I don’t. When I think about it, my days have absolutely no gaps. I wake up before the kids, get ready, wake them up, get them ready for daycare, and head to work. Once I’m at the office, there’s work to do, meetings to attend, and the day flies by in a blur. When it’s finally time to leave, I think, “Now I’ll get some time for myself,” right? But once I’m home, I’m making dinner, cleaning up, bathing the kids, bathing myself, and suddenly it’s bedtime. I tell myself, “Tonight I’m definitely going to watch an episode of Just Makeup after I put the kids down,” but more often than not, I’m the one who falls asleep first. Sure, if I hustle and deliberately carve out time, I could find some, but most days I’m just too low on both energy and hours. So lately, my life’s greatest mystery has been: “When does everyone find time to watch all this stuff?”

One day, my oldest and I were walking, and we saw a mayfly. I told my child, “These are called haru-sari in Korean (which means “one-day life”) because they only live for a single day. Since they only have one day, they’ve got to live really hard, right?” And my kid said, “Well then, they should live happily since it’s only one day.” Hearing that caught me off guard, but it also made me laugh. Ever since becoming a working mom, all I’d been thinking about was living intensely, hustling harder. When you’re running at full speed, trying to pack every minute of the day, it feels like ‘my time’ doesn’t even exist. But then, when I actually look back at the moments spent with my kids, there are surprisingly fun scenes hidden between all that intensity—expressions that suddenly make me laugh for no reason, absurd questions that completely flip the mood.

And then it hit me: I’m not watching Just Makeup, but I’m living my own personal parenting reality show every night. It’s not a program I chose, but it’s full of unexpected scenes, and even when I’m exhausted, some lines make me laugh. I’d been so busy thinking I had to live ‘hard,’ but when I look back, there’s actually quite a ‘fun life’ rolling along inside those hectic days.

3 The Criteria for Choosing a Good Preschool

My oldest graduated from daycare and was finally heading to preschool. I was so excited as I researched options—in our neighborhood, there’s a university-affiliated preschool, one with 80 years of history and tradition, a nature-based forest preschool, and so many places I wanted to send my child. I compared curricula, evaluated educational environments, wanting to choose the very best place.

But the ‘good preschool criteria’ I’d held in my heart for so long changed more easily than I’d expected when faced with reality. All those standards I’d carefully considered—curricula comparisons, educational philosophies, environmental quality—ultimately crumbled in the face of one working-mom reality: pickup time. I had to check things like how late care was available and whether other kids besides mine would be leaving around 5 or 6 PM. Watching a stay-at-home mom friend celebrate getting into the preschool I’d wanted—I felt a twinge of envy.

But anyone who’s been through this phase knows: kids make friends with their teachers quickly, make new friends, and every day they excitedly tell you what they learned. In the end, children adapt well to any environment. I’m sure there will be more moments ahead where I’ll need to compromise between what I want and what reality allows. It’s probably something every working mom faces at some point, but in hindsight, we’ll also realize it wasn’t such a huge dilemma after all. And maybe by the time my child heads to college, I’ll think, “Ah, those were the good days when the choice was still in my hands,” right? 😊