For the first weeks following the birth of my first son, I felt oddly silent. I continued work at my day job — leading communications for a large state government department — and my evening gig as an adjunct undergraduate instructor.

I returned to work when my son was only 25 days old. It is a day that is burned into my memory because it was the start of months of denying that I needed time to heal and care for my child.

Initially, I went into the office part-time and then eventually full-time when my son wasn’t even 3 months old. Simultaneously, I taught classes at night. There were nonstop, 12-hour days.

I took this burden on because that’s what we had to do. My husband and I had crunched the numbers and for both of us to stay working, we were going to sacrifice one of our monthly paychecks to child care while neither got to spend more than a couple of hours awake with our child. We made the difficult decision that my husband would care for our baby full-time while I continued to work. We knew it would be tough, but what other options did we have?

Parents — especially in Hawaii — face incredibly difficult decisions every single day. Those of us blessed and willing to have children face some of the highest housing rates, inflated food costs and extraordinary child care price tags. Honolulu is ranked 38th in the country in terms of cost of infant care compared to rent.

Last calendar year, we spent nearly $20,000 for child care for our infant son — our third. This is not a competition we want to win.

Additionally, those of us without paid leave count on either receiving a portion of our salary via temporary disability insurance or banking enough vacation and sick leave to get the necessary time to physically heal and bond with our newborn. I didn’t have enough leave to cover the 12 weeks I was entitled to take. For any portion of the time I took unpaid, I would need to contribute more to cover our health insurance and it would impact my retirement benefits, essentially equating to a penalty. We were among the lucky Hawaii residents who could access paid leave protections and a way to finance that leave — at least in theory. Many residents don’t even have these luxuries.

All of these realities echo the U.S. surgeon general’s recently issued advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents. He warns about the significant stress parents face and the long-term impacts it has on both children and parents and caregivers.

As a new parent, I placed invisible weights on my shoulders that weighed me down. The pressure to provide financially for my family, the comparison I made to the perceived “good moms” in my life, the desire to be a good partner — it all added up to a breaking point. This pressure was the subject of the story I traveled to Washington, D.C., to share recently as part of Caring Out Loud.

The U.S. surgeon general recommends we speak openly about our challenges, and I did just that. The stress our family faces is shared across the majority of families here in Hawaii. It took me a long time to realize that the most effective solutions were collective ones: public investments in a statewide paid leave program and subsidization of child care to ensure families can access programs that pay early childhood professionals living wages.

I hope that more families will speak their own stories and together we can call for the policies that matter most for us and the generations to come.

Keʻopu Reelitz is a working mother of three and family advocate; her recent participation in the Caring Out Loud event was sponsored by Hawaii Children’s Action Network.