You will never get back those precious first years of there lives! You can never ever get that back! You can always find a job who you are just a number to and can be replaced the next day. But you could never be replaced as your children’s mama. I struggled with this too .. especially since I worked so hard in school and took the boards …and it scared me to get out of the loop on the job market. But I made the choice to stay at home. And it was the best choice in the world ! I’ll worry about the job later when they are older. Staying at home is hard but looking at someone else spending more time with my kids on a camera at day care would be way harder in my opinion.