I have not read all the replies. But two things:
1. No one is a perfect caregiver all the time, including parents.
2. Despite how our society is currently set up, it is entirely natural NOT to want to leave your infant or be away from them much. Truly. We are mammals. I’m not saying it is wrong to be away from your baby, but there is nothing wrong with you for wanting to keep your baby close.

I stayed home until my kid was almost one. (Odd circumstances -- I considered it more of a leave of absence than a choice to SAH)

I got help from my mom (who is a veteran professional that works with kids) from 0-11 mos. Then nanny, then daycare. A high quality (and I don't mean "most expensive") daycare has been by far my favorite option.

No matter what you do I recommend:

- not knocking daycare til you've tried it. My kid had a good nanny but WFH with her there was a major distraction, if she calls in sick you're screwed, and she watched more TV than she does now.
- not staying out of the workforce longer than 1-1.5yr if you ever intend to return

This is why I stayed home.

Then when my kid was preschool-aged, I worked part-time;

Elementary-aged, back to fulltime.

No regrets.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old is your child? A 1 month old needs very different kinds of care than a 3 year old.

6 months. We are not considering daycare at all because we want individualized attention for baby. But I can’t imagine managing a nanny either. During my parental leave, I spent a lot of time at local parks and just wasn’t that impressed with level of interaction. Everyone talks about the educated trained nanny but a true Mary poppins type is so rare.

I was like you, OP. I quit working because I couldn't leave DC at daycare. I ended up on extended leave. Made a job for myself where I worked at home and got a nanny to assist while I was a WAHM. That was the only way that I was able to do it, which ended up being great in the end. Still got to spend lots of time with kids but was also able to earn a living.

I've known and seen a lot of nannies. There's good and bad, of course, like with any field. I just found it was better for my well-being to be a WAHM to oversee nanny and, more importantly, still be present and at home when kids needed me.

Best of luck

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids don’t need the “very best care” to thrive, even if we could all agree what that is. Fact is, most of what you do just doesn’t matter much in the long run and usually even in the short run. Your control-freak tendencies are no more likely to lead to a great outcome for your kid than someone else’s more laid-back approach. I think that can be very hard to see when kids are super young, but usually you realize it more and more as they grow older. This is one of the benefits of subsequent kids- you can see the importance of their own personality (for better or worse) as you parent the same, but have grossly different results.

+1

Kids are like weeds. They are very good at getting what they need from their environment, and most will develop just fine barring actual neglect or abuse. It's kind of amazing, really. And we're not really talking about that if we're talking about a good daycare center or an experienced nanny. It's natural to feel protective, but the way to deal with that is to vet your caregivers, whatever form they take, to make sure they are qualified.

Only some kids are weeds or dandelions. Some are orchids.https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/04/699979387/is-your-child-an-orchid-or-a-dandelion-unlocking-the-science-of-sensitive-kids

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone else feel this way? How did you overcome your reservations? Partly because I don’t trust anyone to take as good care as a family member would, partly because I’m a control freak. Family help isn’t an option as parents moved away.

You’re going to have to learn to trust unless you intend to homeschool your child until he’s 21.

Our nanny loves my kids and would do anything for them. From the infancy of my oldest, she’s been more cautious and calming than we were. She’s also got a degree in Early Childhood Education so she possesses a skill set neither DH nor I have. Now we have two kids and she keeps both engaged and learning all day long.

You hire the right nanny and you’ll see. I didn’t think I could leave my first until I met Nanny.

Anonymous wrote:Daycare is much better IMO.

-someone with a nanny

There is something to be said for a good quality daycare. They can keep kids on a schedule easier. They are always there from 8-6, where as our nanny flaked out relatively often. There’s also the fact that in a good daycare there is supervision. People are rarely alone with your child. There’s a checks and balances thing going on in that way. But you have to do your research and find a great daycare. They exist.

That said, I felt the same way you did, OP and had a nanny for the first year or year and a half, then moved DC to daycare. Daycare was a really positive move for us. Cost, if you find a great daycare, is not that much different in the end.

How comfortable are you going to be if you divorce with no income of your own? You need to go to work.

I didn’t read all the responses, but: if you’re a control freak about your kid, wouldn’t you rather have a nanny who you are paying to do things your way, rather than a grandparent or relative who will take more liberties and a lot less direction?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids don’t need the “very best care” to thrive, even if we could all agree what that is. Fact is, most of what you do just doesn’t matter much in the long run and usually even in the short run. Your control-freak tendencies are no more likely to lead to a great outcome for your kid than someone else’s more laid-back approach. I think that can be very hard to see when kids are super young, but usually you realize it more and more as they grow older. This is one of the benefits of subsequent kids- you can see the importance of their own personality (for better or worse) as you parent the same, but have grossly different results.

I agree that looooooong term it may not matter, but it does matter in the first 15-18 years! I truly believe it does. Who the kid is around is who the kid is going to be/act like.

I can tell a kid who has been in daycare from a kid with a FT at home nanny from a kid with a SAH parent. How they act, what they expect, etc.

That is ridiculous. You cannot tell whether a teenager had a nanny or a SAHP or was in daycare. No way.

Through middle school I absolutely can.

PP, for curiosity's sake, how do you know you can? Are you observing a 7th grader, and then going up to their parents and asking whether the kid was in a daycare? Do you have some kind of "Guess Your Kid's Childcare" booth at a fair?

Right? How do you even test that hypothesis? It doesn't count if you already know the kid's care situation as a baby. It also doesn't count if you don't guess and then check on every kid you know -- otherwise, confirmation bias would totally skew your results.

DH and I are totally Type A. What worked for us was hiring a nanny who was new to nannying but a Type A person. They were open to doing everything our way, and researching the best way when we had none. Kept meticulous records.

In the first week I may have called to check on the baby five or six times. And that's on top of the nanny cam we had in the common area and the baby's bedroom. We were also lucky to have neighbors working from home or SAHM's who would tell us on weekends when we saw them walking our dog "I saw your baby out with the new nanny; she looked so happy!" or "I ran into your DD at the playground - your nanny was sitting in the sandbox chatting about their play." So I got feedback even when the nanny didn't know about it.

OP, it honestly sounds like you just want to stay home. There's nothing wrong with wanting to take care of your own infant. It doesn't make you a control freak. Yes, you have to "let go" sometime, but that doesn't have to happen when your kid is a baby. How badly do you really want to work?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old is your child? A 1 month old needs very different kinds of care than a 3 year old.

6 months. We are not considering daycare at all because we want individualized attention for baby. But I can’t imagine managing a nanny either. During my parental leave, I spent a lot of time at local parks and just wasn’t that impressed with level of interaction. Everyone talks about the educated trained nanny but a true Mary poppins type is so rare.

Quality is rare in every field.

I usually reviewed ~50 applications, cutting it down from there to do phone interviews, check references, in person interviews, and then two or three working interviews. It’s a lot of work but I wanted to keep my career and couldn’t without help. Everyone from friends who saw them at the playground to random moms in their music class or even their preschool teachers who met their nannies at pick up would always comment on how great they were with my kids.

With both my kids I was lucky to be able to WAH much of the first year. Their caregivers became family friends in some cases. I think at minimum you want to WAH for 2-3 weeks at the beginning, you’ll see all you need to see in that time. Once your child is verbal you won’t worry so much. But I think it is warranted — to be realistic, it’s a high burnout profession, it’s lonely, and it takes the right kind of person to enjoy it day in day out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids don’t need the “very best care” to thrive, even if we could all agree what that is. Fact is, most of what you do just doesn’t matter much in the long run and usually even in the short run. Your control-freak tendencies are no more likely to lead to a great outcome for your kid than someone else’s more laid-back approach. I think that can be very hard to see when kids are super young, but usually you realize it more and more as they grow older. This is one of the benefits of subsequent kids- you can see the importance of their own personality (for better or worse) as you parent the same, but have grossly different results.

I agree that looooooong term it may not matter, but it does matter in the first 15-18 years! I truly believe it does. Who the kid is around is who the kid is going to be/act like.

I can tell a kid who has been in daycare from a kid with a FT at home nanny from a kid with a SAH parent. How they act, what they expect, etc.

Tell me how those kids act, what they expect, etc. Like, give two examples and show how a child who had each childcare situation would act.

Agree that not all SAH parents parent the same etc. But it is true that kids with FT nannies typically are a little more demanding in terms of their expectations around adult conversation. Kids in daycare are able to start socializing quickly with other kids in one-off awkward settings. That’s my observation. Of course there are huge differences and lots of exceptions. But when the kids are little, the differences seem obvious.