I’ve been sitting in my car in this parking lot now for a long 53 seconds. Why can’t I leave?

Ok. I’m leaving.

Right after I check my phone to see what’s going on in Twitterville.

I know. I know. I’m stalling.

Ok. I’m starting the car now. Putting it in reverse.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

He’s going to be just fine. He’ll only be here for a few hours today. Just enough to expose him to his new surroundings and better transition him from in-home sitting to daycare.

The pitiful pout and look of confusion he gave me when I passed him on to that stranger caring for the babies in the infant room was piercing to the core of my heart.

I know it’s irrational, but I could really initiate a conference call to my senior management team and announce my resignation from this parking lot. That’s how bad I feel about leaving him. Bump that “working outside the home allows me to realize the full potential of my other talents and abilities” crap. I feel like that sometimes, but not today.

Why am I tripping? I’ve done this before.

But Gabrielle was two years old when I made this transition. She could talk. Well, sort of. At least she could try to tell me if something harmful happened to her. And if something harmful happens to my son, I swear to God I WILL BRUTALLY MURDER the perpetrator.

Why am I so paranoid? So protective? I mean I was the same way with my daughter, but this time it’s different. My son just turned a year old. He isn’t talking and we’ve shared so much during his brief tenure on earth.

I became pregnant with Michael a year after an emotional miscarriage. After the first trimester, my pregnancy was deemed high risk for still birth. He triumphed despite the prognosis, was discharged with me after a normal delivery, but we found ourselves in the hospital for a week when Michael was just two days old with an uncontrollable and untraceable case of jaundice. Doctors thought he’d have to have blood transfusion. The tiny feet of his 4 pound 14 ounce frame were so callous from all the blood draws that he had countless, visible holes all over the bottom of them. He was later diagnosed with what his doctors consider a life-long enzyme deficiency. We were exposed to the health care delivery system much more than we wanted to be his first several months of his life. Needless to say, the champion I gave birth to is indescribably dear to me.

But he’s not just the baby I gave birth to. He’s a gift we’ve been given packaged with the responsibility for me and his father to nurture and develop him into a productive and prosperous man. He can’t be my baby forever. I have to let him go and grow so he can be able to adapt and succeed in various environments with other people. That’s what child development is all about. And though he may pout or cry a few days during drop offs until he gets the hang of this, he’ll someday be a better man because of it.