The push and pull.

I'm about to enter the work world.

And I have massive excitement as well as massive misgivings. The perennial struggle that all working parents face.

Ideally, I picture us in a country house, me looking after 3 kids, tending to our garden, and us sailing on the weekends and shopping from the organic farmer's market down the road.

Reality? We live in an apartment in an odd little run-down town, we have 1 beautiful little girl (for now), our garden is a wooden porch, we haven't visited our sailboat for about 6 months, and the local market is actually a big cheap-o supermarket with about 150 different kinds of potato chips.

In order for us to really save up and live out our dream of circumnavigating the globe and living on our boat someday, I've decided to go back to work.

I've thought of loads of unconventional, creative things I could do for money, like giving singing lessons, working from home as a telemarketer, setting up my own business and getting back to my writing that I've always done..

But the lure of my previous life and the ability to earn good money is calling out to me. I can't help but be tempted by how easily I can walk through an agency door and feel like I've never left. I actually got a job offer today, a really good one at that, earning about 10% more than I did at my last job, and it seems so simple. So black and white. Business lunches. Presentations. 12 hour days.

Easy? Hmm.. that word is a double edged sword. Sure, I could warm up my Blackberry fingers again, but what's the compromise? Does it bother me that half of my salary would go to paying a nanny? Nope, money isn't the issue, as I'd want someone perfect to be with the baby all day. Does it bother me that I'll be in an office environment, meeting with clients again? No, I like the challenges, the deadlines, the boys' club, the energy.

It's her. My mirror image. My heart. Her smile. Her chubby arms reaching out to touch my face. Her new skill of blowing raspberries at me. Her giggles. Her smell. The way she watches me get dressed in the morning, as if to memorise me. The way she melts into my body and we sway to "Claire de Lune" in the darkness of her room before I put her down for bed.

Someone else will be seeing her face all day. Someone else will be holding her. Someone else will be getting her giggles. Someone else will have to pronounce a few Ukrainian words, so she keeps hearing the language all day. Someone else might see her first steps, might hear her first words.

I know no child ever resented their parents for working hard and seeing them a bit less than they'd like (my parents did it for years), but this is new territory for me. She is my drug. My baby. Mine. I feel so fiercely protective of her, it's like a sickness and its cure rolled into one. It's all-consuming love, and I just want to give her 150% of my time, because that's what she deserves. That's what she wants. If I do any less than that I feel like I've failed as her mother in some way.

But the reality is, that while we still only have one little one, the push to get us two incomes right now and help the mister build his business, well, that's what needs to be done right now, no question.

But the pull. Oh, the pull on my heart... it leaves me breathless.