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The hardest thing about being a working mom isn't really about finding a balance between work and home, or finding time for yourself or all of those other things that you hear working moms say in magazine articles.  It's figuring out what to do about child care.

There are about a million variations on each theme.  For the youngest children, there's a question of day care versus babysitter. 

If you choose day care, do you choose in home or at a facility?  And what kind of a facility?  And for how long? 

If you choose a babysitter, do you opt for an au pair?  A live in?  In someone else's home?  In your home?

Making the decision can be painful.  I should know.  I am making it... again.

With my first child, the decision for me was easy:  I took her with me to work.  I own my own business, a decision that I made very purposefully.  I left a number of opportunities in Center City "big law firms" in order to open my own firm with my husband so that I could control my own destiny.  It was important to me to be in control. 

When my second child was born, the decision again seemed easy:  both Amy and Katie went to work with me.  At that point, the firm had expanded a good bit and our office was much larger.  I was able to create a play area.  It was big, with two windows, a TV and VCR, table, crayons and toys. 

When Katie turned three, we decided to put her in preschool.  She needed constant interaction and that was nearly impossible at the office.  At first, it was just three days per week.  But it didn't last long.  I didn't like Katie laying down, screaming, that she didn't want to go in.  It was painful.  I kept telling myself that it would get better.  It didn't.  It got worse.  And then one day, it happened.  I had a bad experience at drop-off (I saw a group of boys fighting who were unsupervised) so I yanked her out.

Last year, when I found out that I was pregnant with my third child, we decided to hire a nanny.  It was, for more than a year, the perfect arrangement.  She started out as part-time but eventually evolved into full time.  We affectionately referred to her as SuperNanny because, well, she was.  Katie started Pre-K in fall.  Shortly thereafter, SuperNanny started watching both Amy and Charlie (I had been taking Charlie with me to work while he was really young).

At the end of February of this year, SuperNanny left for a job in the publishing world.  I had expected the children to be upset, but I was probably most devastated of all of us.  I had come to trust and depend on SuperNanny to take care of the most important people in the world to me.  And she wouldn't be around anymore.  It's really hard to just replace somebody like that.  Trust me, I've tried.

We're still looking.  We've thought about a bunch of different variations on a theme.  Amy is three now, so we've thought about preschool for her.  She's so different from her sister, though, so I'm just not sure.  And I'd still have to find someone to watch Charlie - or put him into daycare.  I've placed an ad or two looking for a new nanny and haven't been thrilled about the responses.

For now, I don't know what will happen.  While we figure it out, I've changed my routine so that I can work from home and watch the kids at home - except for Katie who is still in Pre-K.  We'll see how long that lasts.

But this is the real difficulty in working and being a parent.  At the end of the day, I'm okay if I haven't been able to get my haircut or had that cup of coffee that I feel I deserve (hey, don't get me wrong - I agree that finding time for yourself is important!).  I don't mind being smeared in goo while wearing my good clothes, doing a bazillion loads of laundry in between client letters or even whipping diapers out of my briefcase in the middle of court conferences (yes, it's happened).  I do mind the time that I spend worrying about my children, whether the choices that I've made for them are the best choices that I could make.  Which, of course, makes me curious...  What do you do?