It's OK, just pull your strap, man. A happy childhood will not buy itself. Having children ought to be hard, otherwise population of Earth would grow much faster.
While true in itself I find that it is mean to say this to someone who is going through a crisis. Having children is not easy but not super hard either if as a parent you have things in order. However, sometimes without doing anything wrong things go off track. I burned out in the past and while at it , it felt like a place of no return. I now look at it from a place of insight, I learnt to never go down that path again and avoid it at all costs. But I was not expecting a child during the crisis and am aware how this would've made the situation worse.
Things turned out slightly differently for me and could see the OP taking some useful cues from it. When I burned out I eventually quit my job(the sooner the better or an extended vacation with the possibility of returning just for safety). I then took a complete break from anything technology related, in all honesty I was forced to, my focus was all over the place. I walked a lot during those days and tried not to linger in static helplessness but do something minimal but with a purpose. I figured that I wanted to walked our friends dog, as stupid as it sounds it helped. My mind started clearing of negative thoughts after about a month and some hope started creeping in but was still not able to simply jump into another job, that required about 3-4 months. That's when I found out I was going to be a dad and though a bit stressed out some new determination kicked in. And some luck too, someone, an old manager I had moved to a new company and looked for me for a job. I explained I was going to be a dad and in addition to congratulations there was some promise of work-life balance. And it actually worked out, i'm still here now 5 years later.
The takeaway is that time is needed to recover and that this process can be extremely scary but could be eventually overcome by most of us. The reason I did burn out was because I did not have the intuition to quit that job earlier but at the time I did not know what that messy stressful job was about to do to me, now I know.
> Having children is not easy but not super hard either if as a parent you have things in order.
I wish it to be super hard and not cool tbh. If you want to get that kind of coolness then go 996 and stop complaining, please. Somebody might be disgusted about overpopulation of the Earth, btw.
Things turned out slightly differently for me and could see the OP taking some useful cues from it. When I burned out I eventually quit my job(the sooner the better or an extended vacation with the possibility of returning just for safety). I then took a complete break from anything technology related, in all honesty I was forced to, my focus was all over the place. I walked a lot during those days and tried not to linger in static helplessness but do something minimal but with a purpose. I figured that I wanted to walked our friends dog, as stupid as it sounds it helped. My mind started clearing of negative thoughts after about a month and some hope started creeping in but was still not able to simply jump into another job, that required about 3-4 months. That's when I found out I was going to be a dad and though a bit stressed out some new determination kicked in. And some luck too, someone, an old manager I had moved to a new company and looked for me for a job. I explained I was going to be a dad and in addition to congratulations there was some promise of work-life balance. And it actually worked out, i'm still here now 5 years later.
The takeaway is that time is needed to recover and that this process can be extremely scary but could be eventually overcome by most of us. The reason I did burn out was because I did not have the intuition to quit that job earlier but at the time I did not know what that messy stressful job was about to do to me, now I know.