Why is it so hard?

Mothers always feel so much guilt about everything. All moms have to agonize over every decision that they make while pregnant and after. For example when a woman is pregnant all of a sudden she has to have a cost/benefit analysis sheet to figure out if she should eat that chocolate chip cookie she is so desparately craving, and moms have to decide whether they should always kiss each boo-boo and make it all better or tell their children to tough it out on occassion. Perhaps the hardest decision for a mom to make is whether she will go back to work. For me and many of my friends, it is a no brainer. We have to go back to work. NO.. not because we want too( although adult company is a very nice perk), but because we have to, yes we have to. If we want to keep a roof over our precious children's heads then yes we have to work. I know many are saying, it can be done, living on one income is doable. Try coming to central jersey with your clan and buying a home. With the median price of a house currently at 380,000, and just try it on a teachers salary.If you want to live in a decent area, not one riddled with crime scene only tape, it is impossible!( If you have a large inheritance, this does not apply, or if your spouse makes well over 6 figures.) So why must we feel so guilty? I do not know but we do. A friend called me today for advice, you see she had her first child in November and she is going back to work June 1st. She is beginning to freak out. She has crunched the numbers, with a 330,000 mortgage for a 2 bedroom townhome( see I told you it was expensive to live here) she has to go back... She has stayed out as long as she could, she took out a home equity loan to pay for 6 months of COBRA so she is done. She will be officially entering the work force. Since I have been through this three times, I think she thought I would tell her that it is easy, but no self respecting mommy would lie like that to a friend. I told her it gets easier, but it is never easy. I told her that she would learn to get ready in record time, and that the 45 minutes of free time each day is underrated( Prep). The guilt however has a way of rearing it's ugly head just as you get into the swing of things. For example, school starts in September, so the teacher mom feels horrible those first few days in September after the full summer with the kids, then once everything starts flowing smoothly, flu season hits. Children get sick and average of 8-10 times per years while young. So do the math, it the sick season is October-April, you could be looking at every 3-4 weeks. Each time the children get sick someone has to take off. The dreaded decision( my kids vs. my students), ( my job vs my husbands), then the one that hurts the most, it tends to happen at the end of the year, when you have exhausted all of your sick leave( or should I say your childs sick leave, because moms know to never take off when they are sick because one cannot possibly waste a sick day on themselves), and the decision is my child seems like they are getting ill vs. I will get docked a days pay. That is the worst. So I probably scared my friend even more about going back to work. I told her though that she needs to ignore all well- meaning comments, such as I don't know how you do it, my daughter just had a baby and just had to quit her job because she could not leave her baby. ( that and her husband is the assistant to Bill Gates!) So now anytime I get these well-meaning comments, I simply say it is very hard to leave my children, but they do like to eat, so I have to work. Feeling guilty just goes with the territory of being a mother. Just think one day your children will be parents and they will understand.