Motherhood is a thankless job, and I am doing it. Never thought I would do it full-time. When you are young, footloose and fancyfree, you have all these notions about life and work and all the rest of it and you make bold declarations about how you’ll never do this and never do that. Right. Eat your words now. That’s what I am doing, eating my big fat words and looking after my toddler.

And its hard, no two ways about it. It’s the mother who, well mostly -we’re not talking exceptions here, takes the brunt of it. It does not have to be that way.

That said, now something about me: I am a mother, who, like a million others, is trying to strike that seemingly impossible, yet achievable for some, balance between work, life and child. Some say it’s easy if you’re organized. Right, it’s that simple.

I am not doing much of balancing right now..have pretty much quit work and am looking after my two year old daughter. It’s a constant effort..constant, constant, never ending effort. And it’s tiring.

I try to work from home, but it’s tough, tougher, I think, than getting out of the house and having a full day at work – that way you’re doing one thing, and you’re doing it well.

Mothers live with the ultimate quandary – career or child? Men believe it does not have to be either or. It does not have to be, but it is. That’s the truth.

Even if you don’t quit work totally and just take the slow path, it still affects your career, let’s not kid ourselves. Men can say what they want, it still does not make it true.

And no matter what road you take – the career-is-most-important one or the will-do-what-it-takes for my child one, you’ll look back, years later and wonder, even regret, not taking the other road. Yes, it’s true, that’s not going to change.

What I say to mothers (and to myself) is that try not to think too much about how you’ll feel ten years from now, because not even you can know the answer to that question.