Cautious

I am overly cautious.  I don't like to be at home with the doors unlocked...even in the middle of the day.  I don't like leaving the dogs in the car while I run a quick errand, even with the windows rolled down and parked in the shade (they are so pretty, I don't want to tempt the dog nappers).  I like to follow rules.  If I am told that I need to process things at work in a certain way, I don't like to be told that there are exceptions.  I don't like cutting in line.   I get nervous asking people on the airplane to switch seats.  I like to be on time, so much so that people make fun of me.  I once showed up at my friend Molly's birthday party a week early.  If I have ever been late with you, it has been a fluke.  Lateness makes me crazy.  When I was pregnant with Max, I read every book you could get your hands on.  I made sure not to eat things that I was not supposed to eat.  People said it was ok to drink wine, I think I had about 4 glasses throughout the pregnancy and felt weird and guilty each time.  I took my vitamins every single day.  I started looking at daycares in my second trimester.  When Max was born, I watched all of the videos about Happiest Babies on the Planet and Sign Language and Making Music with Baby and Baby Massage.  I even watched a video about how to give a baby a bath. That was where I learned to keep a warm washcloth on Max's chest so he wouldn't get chilly.  I teased my daycare that I stalked them during my maternity leave...but it wasn't really a joke.  I googled them, I called the licensing facilities, I strolled Max by the house nearly every single day.  I read Baby 911 for leisure.  I wasn't even looking up potential issues or questions.  I was reading it like a book, chapter by chapter and then going back to read it again.  I worried that someone might forget that frozen breastmilk should be warmed in a bowl of warm water and should never be put in the microwave because of the hotspots that could burn a baby's mouth.  I worried that Max's room might get too warm or cold and checked the temperature obsessively. I am the one who brought up Max's plagiocephaly (flat head) with my pediatrician, not the other way around.  I lingered when I dropped Max off at daycare and I lingered when I picked him up.

I let my guard down.  How could I possibly be next to him every single minute of every single day?  How could I and yet, I can't imagine how I could ever leave another baby's side again.  How will I go to the bathroom let alone go to sleep?  I failed my baby by not being there watch over him.  In what kind of a world do we go through a whole lifetime of planning for children, carrying this baby for 9 months, paying attention to everything we consume for the best possible outcome, birth the baby (no easy feat), breastfeed, care for, love, adore, kiss, be all-consumed with...and then just hand our own flesh and blood off to another person?  I mean, I know where we do this...here.  We all do it.  I should have been with my boy and I am not saying that I know what would have happened if he was with me that day.  In my gut, I feel he would be here with us today.  I am not blaming anyone but myself.  I failed my little baby.  I failed our greatest love.  I should have been with him.  All of those years of caution just thrown to the wind, like anything that I ever worried about before Max ever mattered.  None of it did.