4: Money - Investing in oneself

Every Mother Matters With Sharon Ow

Welcome to Every Mother Matters. I’m Sharon and in this episode, I will be sharing with you how to invest in yourself in order to be successful.

I always feel that I was the odd one in the family. I was the only one at home who love to study. My mother disliked me more because I love to study. She said that I did not do anything except sitting down the whole day. Big bosses also did not study much but they were rich. I later understood her words when I read the book RICH DAD POOR DAD by Robert Kiyosika. He is really rich! So I told my kids if they don’t like to study then learn how to earn money. There are many ways to earn money and make a living. Not everyone is good at studying but it is ok as everyone has a different talent.

Once, when I was taking a course, my husband saw me studying for exam. He also commented that I sat the whole day and did nothing at home. In my horror, he sounded like my mother. They shared the same thinking. Sometimes, I thought to myself, no wonder there is a saying that says that we tend to marry someone like our mother or father.

My husband is a responsible man. He does not smoke and seldom drinks alcohol. Luckily, he is also not a football fan, who will drink alcohol while watching football games. But I seriously cannot figure out why he is like my mother. Maybe just great minds think alike.

Life is interesting! I don’t want my girl to marry someone like my husband, who is sometimes like my mother. So, I always explain and reason with my girl what type of boy to look out for since she was 3 years old. One day, she told me “so difficult, until die also cannot find!” I was completely in shock and speechless to hear that. Then I thought to myself “wow, is it a mission impossible to find a suitable good boy?”

My voice was never being heard or respected in my family. It is also the case with my husband. As kids grew bigger, I talked less to save my energy and breath. Life is too short to fight over small issues. I let go and let my husband take charge. We really have different ways and thinking.

He said I am lazy because when I cook, I will ask both my kids to help out in the kitchen. He thinks that they are simply too young to do anything. So he takes over the cooking. In fact, he is a good cook too. He does everything at home and with the kids’ school work.

I hardly need to do anything at home. Even though I do everything at my shop, like a one woman show, he refused to come to my shop to help up as he feels that I should go back to my office job.

I have a different purpose in life now and I don't want to die with regrets.

I love to upgrade myself. I don’t like to travel but I love to spend on courses. The more I study, the more I need to learn because there is so much to learn. The major part of what I am doing now is to continue to upgrade myself with new skill and knowledge so that I can be an informed and updated instructor.

After having a bumpy transition to motherhood, I understand the emotional and physical needs of modern new mothers. I began to learn and equip myself with new knowledge and skill about postnatal care for mother and baby care and I went further to get myself certified. I believe that every woman deserves to be well supported in her journey to motherhood.

One of my friends was a coordinator in Singapore promoting an energy course which is called the Gentle Bio-Energetics. It sounded interesting so I signed up for the course. Energy work is effective but not known to the new mothers at all.

To reach out to the mothers, I started with learning prenatal and postnatal massage with belly wrapping. These are WSQ advanced certificate modules. When I was attending TCM sports massage, my trainer who is a chinese physician asked me to complete the requirement to get a full advance certificate. To fulfil the requirements, I took up the 4 more theory modules.

In fact, I got my CIBTAC diploma in body massage first before I got my WSQ full advanced certificate.

I completed many massage courses but I never see myself as a masseuse. My purpose was to reach out to the new mothers and doing massages was the easiest way. I remembered that my first massage was my postnatal massage with belly wrapping after I birthed my first baby.

I put on 14 kgs during my 1st pregnancy. Putting on weight to have a healthy baby was a wonderful experience. Pregnant woman looks very beautiful to me. I like looking at them. I did not know there was prenatal massage for pregnant women when I was pregnant. I had muscle tension and a lot of discomfort and backache due to the growing fetus inside me, especially in the last trimester. My belly was really super big like as if I was carrying twins. I only apply oil occasionally on my belly. Luckily I do not have stretch marks.

After the massage courses, I did not have a mentor. I just need to apply what I learnt and perfect the skill through experience and feedback from mothers. Some were more verbal and expressive and gave me valuable feedback on my strength and weakness.

I had clients who loved me so much that they asked me if it was possible for me to massage them during their labour in the hospital. I said I had no problem but the hospital would not allow me to go into the delivery suite. Because of my clients’ request, I did explore and attended some basic birth doula and spinning babies courses. The only way to attend birth is to be a birth doula. After the course, I was sure that it was not the service I wanted to provide. I did not see myself to be doing a birth doula job.

To massage a labouring woman would be awesome. I would love to support the labouring woman to the best of my ability. But to be a certified birth doula to be able to go into the delivery suite is a different story altogether. Especially true for my case where I did see hospital as a safe place and I had fear of hospital. I am personally very scared of medical intervention. I don’t even see vaccination as safe. It is not about the needles. I have no fear of needles. It is the substance that is going to be injected into my body that I see it as unsafe.

I engaged birth doulas for my two births. I knew how they worked. Basically doula has no say in the hospital. They are not the hospital staff.

I started doing home visit pre & postnatal massage while doing part time studies again. I continue to upgrade myself and invest the money on online courses. After the basic certificate and diploma training, I wanted to learn more and I thought to myself that I wanted to go for more advanced training in postnatal care. I had in my mind to learn from a midwife and I need flexibility in training as I was too busy to go and attend in-person live class.

I am hungry for knowledge. After every course, I will be thinking about what is the next course I want to attend. I realised that I spend a lot on training. To make it possible, I will wait for the early bird discount which is between 10 to 30% discount. Some courses only have such a big discount once a year and so I will wait.

I need to be wise not to overspend as I have a physical shop to maintain and also my business is a pte ltd company, costs are higher.

Many modern mothers do not se...