Hello, working mothers! It’s been a while for me. I’ve been very busy, well, devoting much of my time to a place some like to call a “day job”. But tonight, I’m sitting on a train commuting home, feeling so fierce and emotional about something that I felt compelled to pull out my laptop and let you know.

I have been grappling with my lifestyle as a working mom. As I write this and check the time, its 6:54 PM on a Wednesday night. Two reasons why this time is VERY important in my life:

1.     My daughter Alyssa goes to bed at 7 PM.

2.     Wednesday is my husband and I’s “date night”.

Have I missed Alyssa’s bedtime before? Oh goodness yes, several times…countless times at this point, and she is just 11 months old. And yes, I’ve missed our Wednesday date nights too, where I cook a yummy new meal for my husband and I. On date nights we put Alyssa to bed and enjoy our time together – just us – no distractions, no phones or internet. We celebrate the reason we are together and what we have for the rest of our lives. (Sappy, I know…but it is true!)

What is killing me right now – at this moment – is the fact that I cannot put my daughter to bed. I can’t kiss her goodnight. I can’t spend the evening with her, bathe her, feed her, play with her, read to her, soak in the moments that years from now I am told I am going to miss the most. I am bitter.

Perhaps I am just “fed up”; it’s been one too many nights that I have been away from her, missing her, and, literally in tears, knowing that upon my arrival home, she won’t be awake to even see me.

Of course, my husband is amazing. He handles everything on the home front while I work. We make it work. That’s what husbands and wives do. But lately I've been feeling more like an absent wife and mother.

I want to be there to put my daughter to bed every night. And now you are thinking, okay lady, quit your day job and do it. Be the stay-at-home mom that it appears you are dreaming to be. Well, let’s be real here. The economy is in the dump and it takes two salaries to keep our house running. That is just the way it is.

Why am I feeling so robbed of a gift that mother nature has given me that I cannot, in no way shape or form, fulfill the duty of ? (And that duty, I speak of, is being a good mother to my child, to raise her and witness milestones, many which I have already missed.)

So, my question to my other working mothers is simple: How do you make it work, moms? And are you fulfilled with your current situation as a working mother and wife? Do you ever feel the same way I do? If you have advice for other very hard working mothers who would by a small miracle like to be able to spend more time with their family, please share.  Because at this moment, I believe it is impossible to do both and “have it all”.

And that, of course, leaves it to the sacrifice we take of working in general. Right now, if I had a choice, I would gladly stay at home with Alyssa during her younger years. But I work so I can provide for her and her well-being and I also happen  to have a career that I truly enjoy.  If that’s not a Catch-22, I don’t know what is!