Along comes baby...

I don't think it's possible to be truly prepared for how a baby will change your life. You can read all the parenting books, you can hang out with friends who have little ones, but you don't really know. Not until you've been been sleep-deprived for months on end. Not until you've seen your baby's first smile and thought "She likes me!" Not until you've been woken up in the middle of the night, scared half to death, because your baby has croup and can hardly breathe.

Likewise, for a mother who also holds down a job outside the home, I can't begin to describe how heart wrenching it is to leave your baby in the care of total strangers for the first time. Or the joy you feel about wearing clothes without baby spit on them, or talking to adults for most of the day, or just being able to get something done! Or how tired, frazzled and guilty you feel when you have to cancel that meeting for the third time because baby is sick again.

At least that's how it was for me.

Before baby, I worked long hours, often leaving my house at 7 in the morning and not returning until 7 or 7:30 at night. I was a producer for a newspaper Web site, a job I loved but that required juggling multiple projects and constant deadlines.

I was fortunate enough to work for a company that offered me six-months' maternity leave and a day care center across the street. But I knew that if I continued to work those long hours, I would never see my baby, and that wasn't the kind of mom I wanted to be. So I successfully negotiated a job-share agreement, found a co-worker who would be willing to be my job-share partner, and went back to work when my son was 5 1/2 months old.

I enrolled my son in day care at the end of October. I was happy to be back at work, tackling new projects and using my brain. I would go over every day at lunchtime to visit, often nursing him so I wouldn't have to pump breast milk for his bottle.

But we had problems with day care almost from the start. A. did not nap well there. My breast milk supply quickly dwindled, and I reluctantly had to supplement with formula.

And A. was sick all the time. Within a three-month period he had RSV, bronchiolitis and four ear-infections. I had to bring a nebulizer to the center to administer his medicine. Every other week I was asked to come pick him up because he threw up or he had a fever. And when he was sick, it usually lasted for a week.

I didn't have backup child care, but A. was too sick for me to leave him in someone else's care anyway. Fortunately, I was able to work from home, but due to the daily deadlines, if I didn't finish my work for that day, someone else had to pick up my slack. I opted instead to work into the night after I had put A. to bed, which only deprived me of sleep, left me vulnerable to getting sick, and made me feel like I wasn't doing a good job at work or at home.

These were the things no one told me about before I had a baby.

I was the only working mother on our team of about 20. I was lonely. But I was determined not to fail, grateful to work for a company that valued me enough to let me set up a job-share.

When my parents moved to Washington state from California to help out, I pulled A. of day care faster than you can say "Achoo!" and gratefully left him in the care of Grandma.

As A. got older, things started to get easier. He wasn't so dependent upon me anymore. I started to feel more like myself. I was enjoying myself at work again.

And then, the same month my son turned one, I got pregnant again.

Now, some women rave about being pregnant, say it's the happiest time in their lives. I am not one of them. I threw up almost daily for five months. I was nauseated all hours of the day. I did not sleep well at night. Yet somehow I managed to get through the pregnancy, raise a toddler and (barely) hold down a job.

This time, I started my maternity leave a couple of weeks before my second child was due. Again, I took six months off. When I went back to work, I had the support of my mother at home, watching the two kids, helping to clean the house and occasionally throwing in a load of laundry. When I was running late (frequently), I could even call home and ask her to warm up dinner.

It was an ideal situation. "You're so lucky," friends would tell me.

But for someone so lucky, I wondered why I was so unhappy. After six months of trying to balance the needs of two kids under 3, a part-time job that was no longer satisfying, and still have time for my husband and myself, I decided I'd had enough. (If there's one thing having kids has made me realize, it's that if I want to accomplish all the goals on my life list, I might as well start now.)

Now I am a freelance writer, editor and Web site producer, plus I help my husband with the family business. When I have work, I work; when I don't, I spend time with the kids. It's how I found my work-life balance, am still finding my work-life balance, but I had to leave a traditional office environment to do so. And I am lucky, because this wouldn't be possible if I didn't have an extremely flexible and loving babysitter. ("Nana," as my kids call her.)

The choices surrounding working and parenting, especially for a woman, are never easy. What helps me: having family nearby, doing work I am passionate about, and surrounding myself with other moms. (It doesn't hurt to hire a housekeeper or a meal delivery service, either.)

My working mother friends and I, we all struggle over issues of how to be good mothers and good workers, of how to balance home life and office life. But I don't think there is one solution. We all just do the best we can.