My daughter is already a month old. How can that be? It seems like only minutes ago that I saw her for the first time. How do hours and days and weeks fly by so quickly? Before she was born, the idea of a whole month at home was unthinkably luxurious. I haven't had a month off from a job since I was fourteen years old. A month seemed like a lifetime. It seemed like plenty of time. Now, it seems like the blink of an eye. And I'm lucky, no blessed, to now be able to work at home for a while, to delay the inevitable moment when I have to close the door each morning and walk away from my baby, knowing that I'm the person she needs most. I like to think that I've always been sympathetic toward working mothers. I've ached for friends who have had to leave their six week-old babies at daycare centers, friends who then wept in their cars all the way to the office. But sympathy is a little like the shadow cast by an object: the shape is there, but you can never appreciate the real weight and texture of anything by its shadow alone. Now that I'm a mother, I realize that I had no idea how wrenching the decision to return to work could be. And let's be honest: the idea that women work for "extras" is too insulting to waste time arguing. Every working mother I know is working to support her family. Period. I've lost count of the number of times that I've been told, "Once that baby comes, you won't want to work anymore." Listen: I have never wanted to work. A life of leisure would suit me perfectly. I work in order to live, just like everyone else I know. Bills have to be paid. The future has to be provided for. In the absence of an inheritance or a lottery windfall, I've got to go out and rustle up a paycheck. Ditto for every woman I know - and every man. It's just harder now to leave the house, and for the first time in my life, I feel the pull of conflicting priorities.

For the past month, I've lived unmoored from the calendar and the clock. I've lost track of days. Whole afternoons have slipped away. I had no idea that taking care of an infant was so consuming. A feeding can take an hour, and by the time you change a diaper and marvel over every square inch of your newborn, well, it's time for another feeding. And so on, till each day blends into the next. I can't even blame sleep deprivation for my foggy sense of time. Everyone who does morning drive radio is sleep deprived and frankly, I'm amazed to report that I've found caring for Olivia to be restful compared to my usual schedule. Who'd have thought that having a difficult birth filled with complications and nursing a newborn could seem like a vacation? Well it has, and like any proper vacation, we've tried to document it by taking lots of pictures, and having lots of adventures. We want to remember everything. I'm driven to document her babyhood for two reasons. First, I may never get to do this again and I want to savor every bit of it. And second, every parent that I know has answered most of my questions about their children with a vague, "Hmm. I really don't remember. That was a long time ago." I don't want to forget the details, and I don't want these precious days to be lost to time.

As I prepare to return to work, here are some of the things that I want to remember. I want to remember the way that her head fit into the cupped palm of my hand, and how warm and soft it felt the first time I cradled her in the hospital. I want to remember how silly and surprised she looks when, in the course of waving her tiny fists about, she conks herself in the face. I want to remember the satisfied little coos she makes while nursing, and also the panicky grunts and squeaks that signal her impatience with my inability to latch her on properly right this very second. The way she sleeps, sometimes curled into a snug little ball, other times sprawled, arms outstretched, the very picture of relaxed slumber. Her cries, all different, from the enraged squall that means hunger, to the pitiful, wounded little yelp that means she isn't ready to be handed off to the next set of arms. The way she smiles sometimes while napping - I know the books say that those smiles mean gas, but I like to think that she's dreaming, maybe of that place where all our babies wait until we call them to earth. The look of her fingers, perfect graceful miniatures, splayed out on her blanket. The way she squeezes her face with both hands while nursing, as if in fierce thought or concentration. The loopy, milk-drunk face she makes, one eye squinched closed like a pirate, her lips pooched and cheeks flushed. The way she sticks out her tongue, then curls it, her dimples appearing and disappearing. I like her solemn, dignified posture in the bath; like all babies she seems more wise and ancient than brand-new. And when she sneezes, she sounds just like Donald Duck. I'm dazzled by her because she's mine, and because I can't believe she's mine.

Am I ready to return to work? No, of course not. Emotional issues aside, I'm anemic and tired and sore. Then there are the feeding logistics: I've only just begun pumping and introducing a bottle each day, in preparation for the time when I will have to be gone from her for more than an hour or two. For now, I'll have to nurse Olivia during the show, no matter how much that freaks out her poor Uncle Bob. I'm just glad and grateful that my morning commute will only consist of heading up the stairs and to the left. I wish that every new mother had the opportunity that I have to blend work with family, even for a short time. Corporate America probably wouldn't come to a screeching halt if we made it a little easier for parents to do their jobs. I wonder if we might actually become more productive if we didn't have to treat our pregnancies like inconvenient diseases, and our children like nuisances that distract us from the bottom line.

Women today live in a world crowded with choices, and while that can be a wonderful thing, it's also true that many of those choices are hard, and many are made for us by circumstance and timing. It may seem lucky to never have to choose, to never be forced to pick one kind of life over another. But that's not reality. Since nothing truly worthwhile in life lends itself to simple decisions, we all get stuck making messy, often frustrating compromises. And somehow, the hours and days and weeks fly by, and soon what we thought was so very hard becomes the stuff of memory and anecdote and nostalgia. At least, that's what I think now, as I sit in a darkened house in the middle of the night, feeding a tiny baby and fighting sleep. I tell myself, don't wish this time away - it'll pass soon enough, never to be snatched back. If my only choice is to enjoy every second, then I choose that. And if the worse thing that ever happens to me as a mother is my having to go back to work, then I'll be the luckiest mother in the world.