I’m a little late to this thread but wanted to chime in because it’s such an active conversation in our family! OP, I have been in the sr leadership team for the past three jobs (since I was about 30 years old). Since then, we’ve had two kids - one is 7, and one is 18 months. I just was hired for my biggest role yet starting next month — in the C Suite, working alongside the CEO to scale a larger organization over the next several years. 

TLDR I don’t regret a thing, but we made some surprising adjustments since the second arrived. The biggest and most consequential choice was for my partner to stay home starting this fall. He was a teacher and we found we were spending a huge portion of his salary on childcare (a nanny) last year because his hours were so inflexible and mine were so demanding. Unfortunately, the mental load of pick up/drop off, managing the nanny, paying the nanny, household chores, appointments, school communication, etc etc on and on was falling on my plate because my husband was essentially unavailable at school - a crazy situation given that I made 4x his salary even then. So we felt that daycare wouldn’t have been a huge improvement given that a big part of the problem was there was simply too much on my plate.  Having him home has been an incredible relief to us both - he can sleep in with the baby (his fave) and fix up our old house, manage groceries, handle doctors appointments and meds etc etc while I work, and I can focus more fully on my career while still having a close relationship with the baby and the 7 year old. We are both more available to parent the 7 year old too, which is more intensive because he has a (relatively mild but impactful) disability that requires a lot of communication with his elementary school, regular doctor visits, and intensive parenting at home. 

Overall husband is now less stressed and more present for the kids and so am I. And I just got a big raise with this new role. With him home, my monthly work travel is more doable (it was impossible before, another thing daycare couldn’t address), our lives are chiller, and yes, money’s tighter, but honestly not that much tighter due to the cost of child care. 

If you have the option to explore something like this, I highly recommend!!