A few weeks ago, my nail artist came back to work from maternity leave. I was so excited to have my nails done for the first time in months but that excitement was drained away when she told me her child care problem. Shanna, my nail artist who prefers not to use her last name, asked me if I had any recommendations for child care before she was gone for maternity leave a few months ago. Since moms depend on word of mouth to find child care, I’ve recommended the day care where my two children, now ten and six, happily ensconced themselves for eight years in total to many moms. I’ve always been...

On June 27, the White House hosted a celebration of two historic laws signed by President Biden—the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and the PUMP for Nursing Mothers Act. These victories are very personal to me, and it was my great pleasure to share my story at the event. I have been advocating for the PUMP Act since 2013, when I was denied the accommodations I needed to pump at my office after my first child was born. Even after ten years, I still remember vividly how I crouched on the floor of a toilet stall to pump breast milk for my then 3-month-old baby. It’s not ideal, but that was the...

August is National Breastfeeding Month. My colleagues at the Asian Breastfeeding Task Force of Los Angeles are hosting photo exhibits in the San Gabriel Valley and downtown Los Angeles, in which 17 local moms joined this movement. Los Angeles is home to the largest Asian American population in the U.S. with over half a million Asian Americans and 7,000 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders reside in the San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys. Almost half of Asian Americans in the San Gabriel Valley are limited English proficient, yet less than 6% of lactation professionals in Los Angeles County...

A while ago, a teacher from my 5-year-old son’s Saturday Chinese School gave out candy rewards. My husband and I felt uncomfortable about this. We have opinions about candy. I don’t eat candy. I don’t spend my grocery money on candies. With that being said, there is no candy under my roof. When my children were offered candies, I say no for them before the they were three. When my first child turned three years old, I first taught him what candy would do to him, and then taught him how to turn down unhealthy foods. However, at special occasion like some kids’ birthday parties, or when my...

It is World Breastfeeding Week ! The slogan of World Breastfeeding Week 2018 is "Foundation of Life". And just recently, my 7-month-old and I had an exciting opportunity that reflects the #WBW2018 slogan: to participate in the production of a series of Breastfeeding-Friendly Child Care Training videos. The series of videos is to help train child care facilities on how to be breastfeeding friendly. I was so grateful for this opportunity. As a nursing mother, I am not only open and willing to, but do consider it’s absolutely important to support this kind of projects. Because they recognize the...

With jobless rates at multi-year lows in the United States and many other countries, finding talent is becoming a bigger task. Overall employment is expected to grow year on year at 0.7% from 2016 to 2026, faster than the prior decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics . For the country to prosper it must make competitive bids for the talent it needs. To do that, lawmakers must improve our paid leave policy and go beyond the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). FMLA is good, but not paid. Millennials value paid parental leave more than earlier generations, so much so that 83% of...

With a newborn, the days are long but the years are short. My baby turned ten weeks this past weekend. Which means I have two more weeks of maternity leave. Yes, I am on maternity leave. No, maternity leave is not a vacation. To the employers who consider maternity leave is for fun or moms on maternity leave are being lazy, I have something to say. I do want to work. I still deeply care about my career. I’m not taking maternity leave because of laziness. The fact that I love my career does not change because of motherhood. After becoming a mother, I have one more mouth to feed and an example...

Do you remember Joaquin Luna Jr. ? I do. He was a high school kid living in Texas. His family were undocumented immigrants. He was born in Mexico and brought to the U.S. as an infant. In his senior year he applied to college, only found out that he wasn’t an American on paper. After the Senate’s failure to pass the Dream Act , Joaquin felt despair over his immigration status and lost hope of becoming the first in his family to go to college. On the day after Thanksgiving, he put on a maroon shirt and a tie, lay down next to his mother and told her he was sorry he was never going to be the...

There has been a video circulating on the Internet. It shows Serena Williams playing in the Australian Open, Gal Gadot doing Wonder Woman reshoots, Alysia Montano racing at U.S. Championships, Beyoncé dancing on the stage, Nur Syryani Mohd Taibi shooting at Olympics, all during their pregnancy. The video concluded with “Anything you can do, we can literally do it while growing a human inside of us.” Merely 26 weeks ago, I’d totally agree with the statement. I was a tough cookie during my first pregnancy. I stood under scorching sun for 11 hours to shoot the final landing of Space Shuttle...