Working Mom

I have been a mom for a year now and working for 6 months of it. One day my colleague told me 'Oh we would love to see a lot more of you in office'. My son had been sick for more than a week and I was working from home. That comment made me realise that career and motherhood don't go well together: especially in the first few years of motherhood. Well to make things clear, I never had a very high-flying career before my son was born, but I was quite ambitious, worked hard, stayed late to complete projects and generally gave 100% into my work. The general opinion was that I did a good job. But things changed quite drastically once I became a mom. My priorities had to shift (quite naturally). I now had someone who depended on me for everything. Balancing work and motherhood is quite tough. I do feel the tussle between professional ambition and motherhood from time to time. How do you kill that feeling of guilt that comes seeping through when you hear your child cry as you leave for work ? Or that sadness that envelopes you when he doesn't seem to mind when you go. How do you concentrate on that all important meeting when you know you child is down with a cold and fever and is refusing to eat whole day ? How can you explain to your colleagues that you are going home at 5:30 cos you came to office long before they arrived and that you need to be with your baby after being away for almost 12 hours ? How can you tell all this to your colleagues all of whom are men ? Most are fathers but somehow they don't seem been wrecked by these thoughts, but then all of them had wives who opted to stay at home to look after their babies. So I have to ignore comments regarding my work ethics and just continue doing my job.
Having a working mom in a company may seem like a bad idea to many, but I think there are many skills that we moms have to offer
Patience : How else can you handle an hyper-active toddler who refuses to do anything you say. These skills will definitely help you tackle any wayward colleague
Time management and Multitasking: Try looking after the house and managing a baby for couple of weeks, you will know the value of these skills.
Innovation and Problem solving skills : Need to think of a 100 different ways to entertain a fussy toddler while he eats his dinner. or think up a different story each night to put him to sleep. What product/creative company would not love to have a person with such imagination ?
So anyone looking for an ambitious, hard-working, talented working mom: you know whom to call ;)