Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.- Elizabeth Stone

How true this statement is. I want to hold him close, protect him. He is my heart, my pulse, my innermost being, a permanent part of my soul. How do you let something that treasured go out into the world without you standing right beside him, holding his hand? How do you let someone you don't know influence his every day thoughts and actions? How do you expose him to people who don't get it? Who don't understand what a precious gift he is? Who don't know what you've done to get him to this point? How do you let that little life spend day after day away from his cornerstone, his rock, his mother? How do you go out into the world and "work" only to come home to someone who needs you beyond explanation, who has had to survive the day without your loving arms and your grace? How do you give up being a part of those tender first years of growing and learning? How do you take a piece of yourself, just as much a piece as an arm, and walk away from it every morning only to feel it ripped from you? My answer is that you don't - no matter what the cost. Because the alternative is the great cost of his future.