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The transition to motherhood can disrupt identity and challenge a physician’s sense of self.

Expectations around performance and perfection can heighten shame during postpartum recovery.

The lack of honest dialogue about postpartum struggles can deepen isolation for mothers.

Balancing professional responsibilities and motherhood can lead to persistent feelings of inadequacy.

There’s so much we don’t say out loud, not because it’s not true, not because it doesn’t matter, but because somewhere along the way, we were taught that strength looks like silence and that if we’re struggling, it must mean we’re doing something wrong. Or maybe we just forgot in the brain fog of the postpartum hormones and the blur of sleepless nights.

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

Some days, I feel proud, like I’m doing it all and doing it okay.

Other days, I feel like I’m barely keeping it together, failing at everything.

The fourth trimester was the hardest thing I’ve 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’s not just one sleepless night. For me, it was a full year of breastfeeding and pumping through the night, sleeping in 2-3-hour intervals, waking up in a haze and forcing myself to keep going because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do.

Breastfeeding didn’t come naturally like I thought it would. When my baby’s weight........

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