My Baby Set Back My Career?

I am a relatively young software engineer.  I'm not very far into my career.  I have a great manager, and great coworkers.  Last year we launched an ambitious project to develop a revolutionary new printer.  My manager gave me two very important projects.

1. Write the bootloader for the printer.
2. Write the battery charger for the printer.


I spent 10-12 hour days at the office doing research and working on this project.  And then I got pregnant.  I was ecstatic to be pregnant!  We had been trying to conceive... and I naively believed that being pregnant and taking 3 months off work for maternity leave would not affect my professional performance.

9 months ago I was blessed with a beautiful baby girl.  She is the cutest thing ever.  But she came TWO WEEKS EARLY!  I didn't have a chance to cleanly hand off my projects to my teammate.  I believed that the two projects where 95% done and just needed some polishing.  As all software engineers know, there will always be bugs... but I really thought that the framework and design of my code was solid.

6 months ago I went back to work and have been trying to readjust to my new role of a working mom.  Well, today I got my annual review for 2010... and because of my two "unfinished projects" I was majorly dinged.  The teammates I handed off the project to said that they had to rewrite the code.  My manager also noted that the "drive and ambition" he saw in me in the early half of 2010 was missing in the second half.  In conclusion, I didn't get a raise this year.  And my overall evaluation was a negative.  If I was to get a letter grade, it would have been a C-.

I am very disappointed.  Not because of the lack of a raise, but because my professional performance was deemed a disappointment by my manager and the managers above him.  This seriously bruises my ego as an engineer.

How has becoming a mom hurt my career?
1.  I couldn't see my projects to completion and the lack of results reflects poorly on me.
2.  Taking 3 months off from work means that it takes quite a bit of time to readjust into the world of an engineer.
3.  My priorities have changed.  In the past, my job had very high priority.  I would stay at work for as long as it took to reach a good stopping point.  But now my professional ambition has been watered down.  And honestly, I'm not focused on my job anymore.  Part of me just wants to slide by on minimal effort and focus all of my energy on raising my daughter and creating a perfect home for her and my husband. 

I feel guilty that I'm not giving my company 100%.  But at the same time, I don't want to.

I wonder what will happen when I have my next baby?  Will I get dinged once more?  I hate disappointing my manager.  But I also feel very frustrated that these biological events WILL affect my professional career!  The only solution is to be like a man and NOT GET PREGNANT!  Or find a new job where the responsibilities and expectations are different.  But I think all engineer jobs are like this.

I wish I had a female engineer to be my mentor.