The idea of becoming a mother is one I’ve been turning over in my mind for years.
Was I ready? Was my husband ready? Were we ready to give up the version of life we’d built for the unknown of another?
You hear it everywhere now — that people today are more selfish, less willing to sacrifice for their children. I don’t think that’s quite right. I think people are more honest about what motherhood actually costs. And once my husband and I decided we wanted a child, we had to sit with that honestly: our lives would change, and there would be many moments where our child would have to come first.
I’m a psychologist. I run A Kind Place, a mental health and special needs practice in Singapore. And right now, I’m pregnant.
For the first time, I’m not just holding space for mothers in my counselling room, I’m becoming one. This Mother’s Day, I want to write about what I’m noticing, about pregnancy, postpartum, and the maternal mental health conversations Singapore still isn’t having loudly enough.
Motherhood Today Is Not What It Used to Be
In the past, a mother could be just a mother. That was the role.
Today, most of us are mothers, workers, caregivers, daughters, wives; sometimes all in the same hour. We’re expected to perform every role at full capacity, and the mental load of doing so is one of the least talked-about drivers of maternal mental health struggles in Singapore.
When we talk about depression in mothers, we often jump straight to symptoms. But culture matters too. Singaporean mothers are expected to glow through pregnancy, bounce back after birth, return to work at four months, and never let any of it show. That cultural script is part of why Asian perspectives on perinatal mental health often reflect lower awareness of its impact and greater reluctance to seek mental health support. (Quah et al., 2025)
In other words, we suffer quietly because we’ve been told that’s what good mothers do.
Pregnancy Mental Health — The Part No One Warned Me About
Pregnancy was tiring. The first trimester and the third were the hardest.
The first trimester was the strangest of all. From the outside, no one could tell I was pregnant; so the world kept its expectations the same. As a founder, I needed to look like I was handling things. Meetings, deadlines, decisions. Inside, I was exhausted, nauseous, and trying to remember what I had said five minutes ago.
Pregnancy brain is real. The fog is real. And yet you’re still showing up, still focusing, still pretending the cognitive load hasn’t shifted.
Then the values start to rearrange themselves. Quietly. Suddenly things that mattered didn’t. Suddenly there was only one priority – the baby.
With that came the anxieties. About the baby’s health. About my own. My blood pressure climbed. Sleep got harder.
And then there’s the body. Your body changes in ways no one fully prepares you for. Weight gain, swelling, a centre of gravity that no longer feels like yours. Clothes stop fitting. The face in the mirror looks softer, rounder, different. For women who have spent a lifetime being told their worth is tied to how they look, which is most of us in Singapore, this is its own quiet grief.
I’ve had to remind myself often: my body is doing something extraordinary. It is growing a person. The changes are not a loss of self; they are evidence of a self expanding. But on the harder days, that reframe takes work. Body image during pregnancy is part of maternal mental health, even if no one talks about it that way. You can’t do the exercises you used to do, you’re no longer as fit, as strong. Everything you do, you worry if it will hurt or protect the baby. At least that’s what I felt.
And some of the doctor appointments I went to didn’t help. Your baby is small. Your baby hasn’t turned. Said in a tone that made me feel like I had failed at something. I hadn’t. Sometimes it’s just nature. Babies grow at their own pace. Bodies do what bodies do. I chose to change doctors a few times until I found one who had similar values to mine and made me feel safe and reassured seeing her.
If you’re pregnant and reading this: find a doctor who reassures you, not one who frightens you into compliance. Find a doula if you can, mine has been kind, steady, and grounding in a way I didn’t know I needed. The people around your pregnancy shape your mental health more than most of us realise.
This is what perinatal mental health actually looks like, not a clinical category, but a series of small moments where you either feel held or you feel alone.
You Cannot Do This Alone — And You Shouldn't Have To
If pregnancy has taught me one thing already, it’s that the people around you matter as much as the medical care.
Your spouse is not a side character in this story. He is part of the mental health equation. A partner who shows up emotionally, who notices when you’re running on empty, and who takes things off your plate without being asked. That partner is a buffer against everything pregnancy and postpartum can throw at you.
I’ve been lucky. My husband has carried more than his share, and there are days I don’t think I would have stayed grounded without him. But I also know that not every woman has this and that the data on maternal mental health in Singapore consistently points to spousal support as one of the strongest protective factors.
So if you’re a partner reading this: ask your wife how she’s actually doing. Allow her to rest when she needs it. Run the errand without being asked. Notice the small things. You’re not “helping”, you’re parenting too.
And if you’re a mother reading this: it is okay to lean on him. It is okay to need him. Asking for support is not a failure of motherhood. It is part of it.
Part of leaning in is also learning to say “No”.
I’ve had to get better at this. Saying no to social events when I’m exhausted. Saying no to work requests that can wait. Saying no to the friend who wants to catch up when my body is asking me to lie on the couch and do absolutely nothing.
Some days, that’s exactly what I do. I lie on the couch. I don’t fold the laundry. I don’t reply to messages. I don’t justify it.
Rest is not laziness. In pregnancy and postpartum, rest is medicine. The guilt that comes with resting, the voice that says you should be doing more, being more, achieving more, is one of the loudest cultural scripts Singaporean women carry. And one of the most damaging.
If you are tired, you are allowed to stop. You don’t have to earn your rest.
The Postpartum Conversation Singapore Isn't Having
I haven’t given birth yet. So I won’t pretend to know postpartum from the inside.
But I know the data, and I know the women who walk into my counselling room.
In Singapore, postnatal depression affects one in 14 women, while antenatal depression affects one in eight. KKH saw a 47 per cent increase in patients who screened positive for postnatal depression between April 2019 to March 2020 and April 2021 to March 2022. These are not small numbers. These are our friends, our colleagues, our sisters. (KKH, 2023)
Four months of maternity leave sounds generous until you’re the one inside it. Four months to recover from birth, learn a baby, renegotiate a marriage, and somehow prepare to hand your child to someone else and walk back into a meeting room.
I’m already noticing my own anxiety about this. I run a business. Letting go for four months feels enormous (which is why I’m only planning to be gone for 2). I genuinely don’t know what it will feel like yet.
What I do know is this: the world doesn’t stop expecting things from mothers. Work expects work. The family expects presence. Friends expect updates. And mothers themselves expect to handle it all without dropping anything.
This is where postpartum depression and anxiety quietly take root, not in dramatic moments, but in the slow erosion of a woman who has nowhere to put her own needs down.
There Is No Right or Wrong — Only Your Values
Many people don’t understand what motherhood is, or what it asks of you. To them, work is work. Output is output. The fact that you grew a human and are keeping one alive is filed under “personal life.”
But for me, family is number one. That’s not a moral statement — it’s a values statement. It’s the kind of life I want for my child, and the kind of mother I want to be.
There is no right or wrong here. There’s what you value, and what kind of life you want to build around your child. Some mothers will return to full-time work and thrive. Some will pull back. Some will reinvent their careers entirely. All of these are valid.
What’s not okay is doing it in silence. Doing it while quietly drowning. Doing it while convincing yourself that asking for help means you’re a bad mother.
You’re not. You’re a mother in a country that hasn’t fully caught up to what mothers actually carry.
This Mother's Day, A Gentler Ask
Mother’s Day in Singapore tends to look like brunches, bouquets, and Instagram posts. Lovely things. But this year, I’d add one more.
Check in on the mothers around you, and specifically. Not “how are you?” but “how are you really?” Ask the pregnant friend who’s been a little quieter than usual. Ask the new mum who keeps saying she’s fine. Ask the mum of the child with additional needs who hasn’t had a real break in months.
And if you’re the mother reading this, quietly wondering if what you’re feeling is normal, please know you’re not alone, and you don’t have to figure it out by yourself.
At A Kind Place, we support mothers across every chapter – pregnancy, postpartum, and the long journey of caregiving. If something in this piece felt familiar, we’re here for you.
📩 Reach out to us via Whatsapp or email us at hello@akindplace.co
