Mum advocates: She worked through maternity leave, now she helps parents find the joy of having kids

SINGAPORE – As founder of Baby Planner SG, Ms Teng Yi Ling helps couples who feel as lost as she did as a new parent, advising them on breastfeeding, babycare and what to expect during their hospital delivery.

But her journey from a corporate high-flier to entrepreneur was accidental, forged from the struggles of parenting in Singapore.

In 2013, the 28-year-old seemed to have it all.

The former Singapore Exchange scholar and associate director, who covered business development for the exchange’s South-east Asia market, had just had her first baby.

“It was a big struggle, but I managed it,” she says of raising her son while working full time.

When her daughter was born three years later in 2016, her best-laid plans to master motherhood the same way she approached work challenges were put to the test.

At work, she was living her dream of growing the market for the exchange.

At home, she worked through the first eight weeks of her 16-week maternity leave, answering e-mails and keeping her laptop open.

“The breast milk came from me, but other than that, I didn’t spend time with my daughter for almost the first two years of her life,” recalls Ms Teng, now 41. Her mother cared for her daughter during the day.

She and her 44-year-old husband, then a commodities trader, tried to prioritise their kids, but domestic life turned into a never-ending cycle of childcare, chores and chasing work targets.

They left the office on time to feed and shower their kids. Each parent put one child to bed before opening their laptops at 8.30pm, working until almost midnight. They worked on weekends, too, after spending time with the grandparents and taking the kids on outings.

“We were just roommates,” she says of the state of their marriage then.

Around that time, her son’s pre-school urged her to seek help as her then four-year-old had challenges socialising with other students.

“That was when I really questioned whether this was the life I wanted,” Ms Teng says.

A year-long sabbatical in 2018 helped her spend more time with her children and seek early intervention for her son, who has not been officially diagnosed with a special-needs condition. He is in a mainstream secondary school.

She returned to full-time work after her third child was born in 2019, hiring a helper for about four years. Her kids are now aged seven, 10 and 13.

Her soul-searching continued as her identity as a mother evolved.

She reflected on how growing up herself with a stay-at-home mother had proven “invaluable”, compared with friends who had dual working parents. She felt her presence would prove pivotal, especially as the children grew older and dealt with issues such as too much screen time.

“There was always the question if I was just weird. The life I described is not out of the ordinary. Everyone works, goes home and has very little time with their kids, and they seem to be fine,” she says.

“But was this the best way to bring up a child? Singapore is a very ‘outsourced’ society and that was something I didn’t want to follow.”

She and her husband, who now works in procurement, had several discussions about the value of her being there to nurture their kids versus her per-hour pay.

After tracking their expenses, she realised she could quit if they gave up the quintessential Singapore dream of upgrading from their executive HDB apartment in central Singapore to private property and did not start their kids on expensive enrichment lessons.

“I reached a stage where I could be honest with myself. I have agency over my life and I do not need to conform to the standards of the general person in society,” she says.

She adds: “I think it was a very conscious choice, rather than a sacrifice.”

At age 37, she resigned from her job, but her company offered her a one-year sabbatical in 2023. She then took on a part-time role in February 2024 before she quit in September that year. 

Finding her ikigai

Meanwhile, Ms Teng had started Baby Planner SG, a concierge service for expectant couples and first-time parents, in October 2020, with a view to pivoting from her job.

She was among the first of her friends to become a mother and online support groups were then limited. Although there was plenty of parenting information online, the advice was often contradictory and confusing.

As she settled into motherhood, she found herself helping friends and relatives, like teaching a new mother to swaddle her newborn to soothe his crying. Such grateful parents encouraged her to consider starting a business.

She has since helped more than 300 couples. Her “stay-out” confinement nanny sessions cost $320 for four to five hours, which parents can customise to match their needs. Most clients sign up for a package of three sessions at $850, or 10 sessions at $2,600.

An a la carte sleep consultation costs $200 and a lactation session $160, with a package of three priced at $400. Ms Teng has a postpartum doula certification from the New Zealand-based Childbirth International organisation, which has been training childbirth educators and doulas since 1998.

While Ms Teng chose to put her kids before her career, she feels one reason fewer women want children is the imbalance in childcare duties between husband and wife.

According to the Government’s 2021 Marriage and Parenthood Survey, women spent an average of six hours every weekday on childcare duties, compared with 3.6 hours for men.

But that does not mean women are genetically wired to be better caregivers.

“There are a lot of ‘learnt disabilities’. Many mums whom I help say things like ‘Whenever my husband puts my child to sleep, the child ends up crying for an hour.’ My response is: ‘If you want him to learn, he needs the chance. You didn’t learn this overnight, it’s just that you were with the child for four months during your maternity leave,’” she says.

Another example of a “learnt disability” is when a mother berates her husband for not completing a task the way she would do it.

“If you are going to take over a task every time you don’t think it is done well, your husband will feel like ‘I can’t do it as well as her, so let her do it, it’s more efficient.’ Or they will use it as an excuse because they become defensive,” she says.

Sharing her own experience, she says she had a frank conversation with her husband on what she needed him to do and, importantly, own.

She then gave him the space to try it out. This meant accepting that the task might take longer or be more inefficient at first.

“As he practises over time, it breeds perfection where he finds his own systems and ways to get the job done more efficiently. It might still be done differently from how I would do it, but I respect that it is still done and don’t undo his effort,” she says.

Her husband takes charge of chores such as ironing – which includes tracking when their kids will run out of uniforms – and loading and unloading the dishwasher.

He is “an equal partner” in all the night duties, such as getting the children fed, bathed and in bed by a certain time. The couple may rotate duties depending on their activities – whether it is hitting the gym or enjoying a night out with friends.

She has also trained her children to be independent, managing chores such as cleaning the table and managing their bedtimes. Over time, all these actions have helped lessen her mental load when it comes to running the household.

Her advocacy comes at a time when Singapore faces a historically low total fertility rate of 0.87, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

If it stays that way, there will be 44 children and 19 grandchildren for every 100 residents today and the citizen population will start to shrink by the early 2040s, Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said in Parliament in February 2026.

Ms Teng contends that it costs about $500 a month to raise a child, as long as parents do not subscribe to the typical Singapore “outsource model” for childcare and enrichment, and let go of their desire to upgrade.

She would also love to see men take at least four weeks of the 10-week-long shared parental leave announced in March 2026, which she believes will mostly be taken by their wives.

Previously six weeks long, shared parental leave can be divided according to a couple’s needs. This is in addition to 16 weeks of maternity leave and four weeks of paternity leave.

Eight weeks, she feels, is the settling-in period that will help dads embrace their role as a partner in caregiving rather than just being a playmate for the kids, while their wives do the heavy lifting.

“When men get the chance to spend two months alone with their baby, guess what? They’re going to experience the joys of getting it right – that sense of satisfaction the first time you manage to put your child to bed in 10 minutes or the first time you take your child out on your own or the first time you see a milestone,” she says.

While she now earns a fraction of her former six-figure annual salary, Ms Teng says being a babycare concierge is her ikigai, a Japanese term that describes a motivating force giving purpose to one’s life.

“It was a long journey for me, but I enjoy being a mum. I want to help others figure out that the joys of being a parent are what makes it all worth it. If the costs are all you can see, then you need time to experience the joy,” she says.

Correction note: In an earlier version of the story, we said that the replacement rate was 1.0. This is incorrect. It should be 2.1. We are sorry for the error.