Where Was My Baby?

—on time, tenderness, and the quiet ache of becoming

Tonight, I held my little daughter in my arms after she had woken up crying. It was a familiar moment—one I’ve lived many times. But something shifted.

I paused. Not just physically, but inwardly.

And in that pause, I noticed how tall she was. It sounds silly—of course I know she’s growing. She’s 16 months old. So she has been for a while. I hold her every day. But tonight it hit differently. She didn’t feel like a baby anymore. She felt like a child.

A little human with her own will. Her own moods. Her own way of needing me—less as comfort, more as anchor. Still craving closeness, yes. But also standing in her own strange, wobbly sovereignty. And the question came, quiet but aching: Where was my baby?

Of course, I whispered the instinctive answer: “She’ll always be my baby.” But the truth is—she’s changing. Every moment. And I, in the noise and movement of daily life, had forgotten to see it.

We talk a lot about presence as a goal. As if it’s something we can finally reach if we just meditate more, parent better, breathe deeper. As if it lives at the end of a to-do list.

But presence isn’t a destination. It’s not earned. It’s not performed.

It’s what happens when we stop striving— and start taking responsibility for our own inner space.

Because presence doesn’t come from the moment. It comes from how we meet it. To be present with our child, we have to be in charge of our own mind— to know when we’re lost in thought, when we’re chasing perfection, when we’re slipping into comparison or self‑judgment.

That doesn’t mean we’re calm all the time. It means we notice when we’re not. And we choose to come back. Again and again.

And that’s what happened tonight. Not because I got it right. Not because I planned a moment of mindfulness.

But because I was caught off guard by how much she had grown. Because I let myself feel what I usually outrun. Because—just for a moment—I came back to myself. I didn’t do anything right. I just paused long enough to feel it.

And in that return, presence was already there. Not something I summoned— but something that had been waiting for me all along.

And in that pause, I saw her becoming. And I felt myself changing too.

Because that’s the part we rarely speak of in motherhood: Our children are not the only ones being born again and again. So are we.