I can't do this!

I can't do this! I can't put my baby girl in daycare while I spend 9+ hours a day, 5 days a week working and leave SOMEONE ELSE to raise her! That puts me home about 6pm and gives me just a couple hours a day to really be her mother, I don't want to be a part time parent. I don't want to hear about her first time rolling over, crawling, pulling herself up, walking, words, etc. from a STRANGER, I want her family to be the ones to see these things! I want her daddy to hear her first giggle, her grandparents to see when she discovers her feet, I want to be there as she sits up on her own!

My husband and I for some crazy, unknown, and not-so-smart reason got into a discussion about child care as I was driving to work - and I ended up in tears thinking about these things. What do I want? I want to be able to stay at home with my daughter for her first year, I want to be the mother that MY mother was, to be the one who gets to experience these things that PARENTS should experience. In a perfect world I would be able to stay home, but we don't live in a perfect world and there is no way we can afford for me not to go back to work. And it sucks. Sucks big time. I hadn't realized until this morning just how much our situation upset me. Day care is just that, child care provided during the day. While I'm working. While my husband is sleeping (peacefully I might add). While my daughter will be awake and learning to live. The evenings will be spent as a family and the nights will be my husband working, and my daughter and I sleeping and dealing with whatever comes with that. Me and her. Her and I. Alone. And I'm scared. Scared about being able to soothe her, scared about getting enough sleep to be functional, scared about all the noises that go on in a house at night and how I will be the only protector. Then comes morning, where I need to not only get myself ready, but also prepare my daughter to take to daycare where the cycle starts all over. I don't know how people do it, I don't know how I can do it, and it really makes me sad. I guess its time for my husband and I to sit down and really work out all the details on just how we are going to do this. I know from a retirement standpoint, I could go part-time for a few years and we'd still be on track for our goals - but can WE afford this with our normal expenses? Is this something my job would allow me to do? Can we find childcare with people we trust on a part time schedule? These are all things we don't know. I have a feeling this is going to turn into an emotional time for me and the time is getting such that we can't put it off any longer. Stay tuned for updates.