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I have been a SAHM for 14 months now, decided to do it when I was pregnant. I wasn't super attached to my job and I had been out of work for 6 months before I got pregnant/part of early pregnancy and so we knew that we could live off my husband's salary. I took into consideration the cost of childcare if I went back to work and how much I would actually bring home after paying for childcare (wasn't worth it to me). And I knew that I would have a really hard time leaving my daughter, I don't think I would have been a very good worker because leaving her would just make me depressed and thinking about her all the time so I really wanted to avoid that. 2 weeks after DD was born, my husband took a higher paying job, and when she was about 7 months old, I started an at-home business with a friend, so I am hoping that I can work from home indefinitely and we are considering homeschooling and having me stay home for even longer. It is what works out best for us and I love being a sahm. To be honest there was an adjustment period where I needed to get used to the lack of appreciation/acknowledgement for what I do all day and getting my husband and I to think of it as "our money" vs him paying for everything, but things worked out

I was a WOHM until DD was 13 months and then due to DH's new job and our resulting move, I decided to be a SAHM. I am actually glad DD was in daycare during her first year. I wasn't quite ready to leave my job for various reasons, and frankly, I think I would have been totally bored at home and/or feeling guilty about DD not doing much.
Financial concerns -- We are pretty good about living within our means. I didn't make much after taking out daycare expenses, so we weren't that concerned with the finances. We were paying so much for daycare that it almost made sense for me not to work.
I did consider commuting 90 minutes to my job as they really wanted me to stay. When I told one of my coworkers (an older mom) about my dilemma, she said if I had the chance to SAHM now, do it. I won't get this time back. She also said something pretty direct which has stuck with me. She said -- "you had the kid. You raise it." I knew I agreed with her...but of course don't judge anyone else. For me, we had a really hard TTC journey and all I wanted to be was a mom. I didn't want to lose any more time with my DD. I'm really happy with my choice and I'm hoping for it to be somewhat permanent. I love doing things with her (and hopefully more kids down the line), and as she gets older, I want to be the one who greets her when she gets home from school. Who knows what will happen. Maybe in a year I'll feel completely different. But for now, I really couldn't be happier.

I just recently became a SAHM. My LO is 2 years old. My job made a lot more than daycare but my husband does very well, so we didn't need my salary to afford our lifestyle. I became a SAHM, because LO was struggling in daycare and I was struggling balancing work and home life. My husband works about 80 hours a week and I was working 55 to 60. Staying home so far has been an easy adjustment.

I always planned to be a SAHM, as long as we could make ends meet without really struggling. We talked about it before even getting married, and that factored into our timing for TTC. I was starting to get really burnt out with my job by the time we started TTC (I had been in roughly the same job for about 5 years by then) but decided not to look for something else since I knew I'd be leaving soon-- which I know really could have backfired if TTC took a long time!

Childcare is crazy expensive in MA, so most of my take home pay would have gone to day care, and I didn't feel passionate about my job that I cared about stepping away from it for several years. Me being home makes a lot of things easier for both of us-- DH works longer, unpredictable hours, so it would have been really difficult to share drop off or pick up, and he travels occasionally for work without a lot of notice. I am able to take care of everything at home, do the shopping and errands, and obviously stay with the baby when he travels.

But for us, really, the biggest thing was that I really, really, wanted to stay home. C is 1 and I plan to stay home until our (future) second baby is at least 3 or 4, so a while. I don't know how I will re-enter the work force then and I not so secretly hope that DH gets a huge raise and it's not an issue, but I'll be realistic and assume I will work in some compacity.

I am not sure if I would classify myself as a successful SAHM, I worked for 14 years, stayed home for 2 and have been back at work a year and a half.

At the end of the day, for me, at least, it boils down to money and time. If I work, I have money, but not time. If i am home, i have time, but not money. I am also very cautious about putting all my eggs in one financial basket, a large part of why I returned to work was to ease the burden on my husband. He never complained and encouraged me to stay home, but I felt we spread the risk around if we had two salaries.

My son is fine either way, he thrived when I was home, but the socialization he gets from part time care is beyond what I was trained to provide.

Good luck to you!

I'm not a SAHM but I did reduce my hours at work to part-time, so hope you don't mind me weighing in! I planned to go back to work full time (I never saw myself being able to be a SAHM) but once she arrived, the thought of leaving her killed me. I still loved my job and my husband job doesn't have good health insurance, so we still needed me to work for the benefits. At first I thought it would be temporary (maybe for the first year or so), but considering we are planning to have more children fairly close in age, it just made sense that it would be permanent. It's really been the best of both worlds. I get to go to work and exercise my mind and do what I love, but also get to spend extra time with my daughter.

@MrsD2442: as an infant, 1400/month for daycare.

I wanted to SAH but planned to return to work because I made significantly more than DH and we didn't think we could afford for me to quit. I was set to return when DS was almost 4 months and we found out at his appointment that he was not gaining enough weight. He totally fell off the growth chart and it was wintertime so we were really concerned with him getting sick. My plans changed to only working 3 days with my mom watching him but ultimately it was short lived because he refused the bottle and we couldn't afford for him to lose any weight during the adjustment period. My boss was awesome and put me on extended leave and we were discussing my return when the company did cuts and I got laid off. Then I got pregnant again so we just decided that I would wait to find a new job. Ideally I would like to work a couple days a week, for both the financial reasons and my sanity. I won't lie, money has been really tight especially since we had to move once we found out we were expecting again.

Also adding that I underestimated the effort required to gather friends and get going in social circles as a SAHM. I don't regret it but it did take some time to network and make nice before I made friends! I feel like it's pRt of my job to get LO with other kids at least 4 days a week - something I didn't think about beforehand.

I do find more enjoyment out of my hobby and part time work in a sewing blog- it's my hold to a non mom identity

I am looking at taking a year off. My job allows a 1 year leave of absence and DH and I want to see if I enjoy being a SAHM. Its something I've always said I wanted to do, but because I've always worked and because I'm an attorney, DH wonders if I'll have enough mental stimulation at home with the baby all day.
If I hate it, I can always go back to work (and I can start earlier if I want to). If I love it, a year at home will show us how to handle the financial realities of being a single income family on a more permanent basis.

A serious consideration on whether I return to work after a year is student loans. We have 2 sets of law school loans and have worked really hard the last few years to pay as much of it down as we can. We live on something like 30% of our income, live in a cheap rental, put minimal amounts towards our retirement, and throw everything extra at the loans. So in reality, we've never lived on my income. That means if we pull back our payments to just the minimum balances, we can live on DH's salary just fine. BUT I don't know what it will mean for our long-term savings goals, homebuying, etc. And at the very least, it will mean those loans will linger over our heads for a really long time, which we do not want. If money is an issue, I can always come back to work part time. We have a lot of moms here working 3 days a week, and that allows them to keep their benefits too, so I could probably do something like that.

Another consideration in staying home for a year is baby getting sick. I realize children getting sick is inevitable, but the majority of the attorneys I work with are mothers and that first year is just brutal on them with the daycare viruses. The baby is sick constantly, the parents are either stressed, sleep-deprived, or sick themselves, and they are missing work constantly. This means the other attorneys, like me, are always covering for them. I don't mind helping my colleagues out, but if I can avoid bringing that cycle of doom on myself and others, I'd like to - at least while the baby is really young. I think I would feel better starting LO in daycare, if necessary, at 12 months than 2 or 3. My MIL, who's run a daycare for decades, agrees that if we can keep the baby home for a year, he will be a lot better off.

A final, more sentimental consideration is that it took us 3 years to have this baby and he was basically a fluke/miracle conception. And this pregnancy has been HARD. So its very possible he might be my only natural born child and this may be my only newborn infant experience. We are totally happy to adopt our next child, but we realize the experiences will be different and we both want to maximize this experience if its the only chance we get.

As my due date looms closer, I AM worried about having social connections and am trying to find some more SAHMs at my church to connect with and possibly have coffee or playdates with so that I wont become socially awkard. I'm actually quite happy to be a hermit, since I'm an introvert, but I fear I'll become some Shrek-like creature who wont know how to interact with humans properly if I don't force myself to go out.

We are in a pretty low/middle income range as it is and I had anticipated taking about 6 months off, but I ended up quitting my job when baby Z was 3 months old. I knew I wasn't going back because I can't really imagine anyone else spending the time that I do with her.

Leaving your kids for a difference of $400 would be super frustrating to me, so maybe you could find some at home income to make some of it up. I do online surveys, I coupon, Etsy, anything? Maybe could help make up the difference.