I can empathize. I went back to work a month ago now. It was/is hard to be unavailable.

Luckily, I work from home in a fairly independent role and my wife is still on leave, so we're still largely co-parenting. We could afford to have me stay at home, but we're saying that the extra I make above the truly wild cost of daycare will go to his education, financial security, and cultural enrichment.

We're also telling ourselves that daycare will be a positive/important social experience for him because we have a small friend group locally and family is halfway across the US.