Nicole Richie Can Balance It All and So Can You

Celebrity Momster Nicole Richie is the cover girl for the March 2012 California Style magazine.

Celeb Baby Laundry reports that she talks about balancing motherhood and career in the issue.

 “I can’t sit here and say that it’s easy all day long. I’m just figuring out how to make it work. But I really don’t have anything to complain about. I have a very supportive family and husband [Joel Madden] and that makes it so much easier. My parents live here. They’re each 10 minutes away from me, and they’re very eager to come over even when I don’t want them to.”

I think that just about sums it all up—trying to figure it out as we go along. I suppose I have this fear that I actually am making it work really well right now and that one day I’ll wake up and realize how well I managed it all and be like—why didn’t I recognize that and enjoy it all more?

I think I waste too much time worrying about not doing everything as best as possible, even as I’m probably doing pretty well at the balance.

Maybe we need to give ourselves more credit as mothers for doing such a good job of balancing it all!

January Jones Juggles Career and Motherhood

I’m really wishing all mothers could be treated like Celebrity Momsters when it comes to balancing work and baby.

January Jones talks with Us Weekly about her struggles with motherhood, which granted, do not sound too difficult.

"I was back when the baby was only 6 or 7 weeks old so it was difficult," the actress, 34, told Us Weekly about her return to the set at Mad Men's Season 5 premiere in Hollywood Wednesday. "It was difficult to be a working mom and just juggling all of that. But everyone made it work and it was great."

But luckily for both Jones and her son, 7 months, the team at Mad Men was more than willing to make things work for the first-time mom.

"They made it baby friendly for me, because I'm the first female on set to have a baby so I got to bring him," she said. "He had his own room and I was able to work around it because I was nursing."

It is probably statements like Jones’ that frustrate regular working moms. Jones describes what sounds kind of like an ideal situation to a lot of mothers: being able to bring baby to work, having people around you make sure everything is working for you, and even giving your baby his or her own room to hang out in so you can nurse when it is time.

Of course, this is not to say that everything is easy for Jones by any means, just being a new mother can be a stressful time regardless, but perhaps we can use her example to put our own situations in perspective, we can find new appreciation for the blessings we have in our own lives when it comes to those around us who help make balancing our careers and family a reality.

Uma Thurman Balances it All

Uma Thurman is all about balancing career and motherhood.

Celeb Baby Laundry talks to her about how she does it.

Again, we hear it from Celebrity Momsters, the key to balancing it all is being able to drop work when we need to, but not completely.

“I have booted my career to the back seat for an amount of time but I have always tried to never let it go,” says Thurman.

“I try to get back to work and that is good for me too. When I am ready to go back to work I do. I think work centers me in a certain type of way that almost nothing else does.”

Of course, for regular moms, that is perfect in an ideal world, but for moms who have to work, it is not so simple.

How do you handle the pressure of having to work when you’d really rather just be with your kids?

Madonna is Just Like You and Me (Well, Almost...)

Madonna is the latest Celebrity Momster to join the it’s-so-hard-to-be-a-mom conversation.

I read readers’ comments with great interest and while there were a few voices of wisdom pointing out that Madonna has as much a right as “regular” moms to voice her difficulties, the majority of opinions were—how dare she go there?!

According to Celebrity Baby Scoop, Madonna told The Sun, "I'm not going to lie - it's hard work having four kids and doing all the work I do. Everybody has something to say about the way I live my life. At the end of the day I'm doing my best. If people don't like it, then that's really their problem. Sometimes I cope with it very well, sometimes it's a struggle. It's a challenge juggling everything - multi-tasking is my middle name."

Readers’ anger came from Madonna saying it’s hard raising four kids when she can hire all the help she needs and wants. They also point out that she can always make the choice to scale back on her work load. While all of this is true, I think we need to also notice that she is facing the same struggle all moms face.

How much work do we pursue as opposed to how much actual in-the-trenches child-rearing do we tackle? It’s a very real question for many moms—even those who don’t have the luxury of making the choice of working or not. Regardless of our financial situations, we are all struggling to balance the demands of work and motherhood.

And we need to take into account that Madonna also has a whole host of other concerns that us “regular” moms don’t. And I don’t think Madonna sounds like she’s complaining at all about her situation; she’s simply being honest.

It’s not to say that one situation—Celebrity Momster or regular mom— is better or worse than the other. It’s just to say that a lot of mothers have the same struggle at heart. How do I balance it all? How do I satisfy my greatest needs and desires as a person separate from being a mother?

Gwen Stefani Talks the Nightmare of Balancing Career and Kids

When I was young, my mom had a coffee mug with a cartoon super mother flying through the sky multi-tasking as she went. I remember the poor disheveled carton figure looked like she’d been side-swiped by a low-flying airplane.

I now understand how true that silly mug was. As I think most moms do. The whole balancing thing is kind of hard when there are literally not enough hours in the day to complete everything and make everyone happy.

Celebrity Baby Scoop talks with a Celebrity Momster sharing her take on balancing career and children.

"I've never been able to balance being a mum and my singing career - it's a nightmare," Gwen, who has kids Kingston, 5, and Zuma, 3, with her husband Gavin Rossdale, tells Closer magazine. "I love my boys, so if there's a decision to make, they come first."

For a lot of moms, work demands cannot be put off until tomorrow to just spend time with the kids.

The goal for me is to balance all aspects of life as well as I can and make sure my kids know that it’s not that I don’t want to spend time with them; I just sometimes can’t! (Oh, and I do also love most of my work, except for my inbox filled with Final Projects waiting to be graded…)

This is probably the ideal for a lot of families. But, of course, while Gwen Stefani can afford to be choosy about turning down work obligations, how do regular mothers handle that challenge?