how’s the baby?

apparently packing away baby clothes will make you think about some shit.

Oct 14, 2026

last saturday morning, i decided to be productive.

my son turned one last month and his wardrobe has been overdue for a little reset. so i started folding his tiny clothes into a big storage bin.

and immediately had to tell myself not to cry because i’d pick something up and remember exactly when he wore it. where we were. how little he was. how he smelled. how his entire body used to fit differently against mine.

and now i’m folding it up and putting it in a bin because he is becoming a big boy now.

excuse me??? 🥺

i kept looking at these tiny little things thinking, i cannot believe he’s one.

people always tell you it goes fast, but that doesn’t really mean anything when you’re in it.

because some of those nights did NOT go fast.

some of those nights lasted approximately 5-7 business days.

especially in the beginning…in the trenches, exhausted, learning this brand-new human while also trying to figure out who the hell you are now.

the nights can feel soooo long.

and somehow the year is still short.

i don’t understand how both of those things can be true, but apparently motherhood is just constantly discovering that two completely opposite things can be true at the exact same time.

but there i was, holding clothes that felt like he wore them yesterday and coming to terms that an entire year had passed.

and somehow that turned into me thinking about all the people who missed it.

i honestly didn’t want to think about that. i literally was just folding clothes.

but suddenly i’m thinking about how fast my baby is growing and how slowly some people have moved toward knowing him.

there are people who have never met my son.

people who haven’t checked in.

people who haven’t asked how he’s doing.

people who haven’t asked how i’m doing.

or how my husband is doing.

and for a lot of this first year, that kinda hurt me.

sometimes it still does because i think i expected people to show up the way i would.

which is probably where i fucked up to be honest.

i kept expecting a me.

i thought about how i’ve shown up for others for big life moments. how i checked in and how i tried to be present in whatever way i could.

and i think somewhere in my head, i assumed the people i loved would naturally do the same for me. for us.

they did not.

well, some did.

and i want to be really careful here…because acknowledging who wasn’t here does not mean i’m ungrateful for who was.

two things can be true.

our village may be smaller than i imagined it would be, but there are people who have loved the shit out of us this year.

people who showed up physically. who checked in from a distance. who called. who texted. who prayed for us.

people who barely had enough capacity to show up for themselves and still found little ways to remind us that they were there.

and i make sure i pour more into the people who are there for us instead of constantly staring at the empty seats of the people who aren’t.

but the empty seats still exist and pretending they don’t would be fake.

some people aren’t here because they literally can’t be. there are folks we wish could’ve experienced this year with us, but are no longer on this earth, and that kind of absence is its own thing.

some people have been dealing with their own shit and some relationships have changed with others.

i understand some people probably didn’t know how to show up and, to be completely fair here, there are people who haven’t met my son because i said no.

there are relationships where boundaries were necessary. there are people i do not feel comfortable having around my child. there are people who don’t make my nervous system feel safe, and becoming a mother has made me much less interested in overriding that feeling just because somebody is technically “family.”

so yes.

there are so many different reasons.

actually.

no.

because the more i think about this, what the fuck did my son do to you?

he was literally just born. a cute ass baby, might i add!

he came into this world knowing absolutely nothing about whatever history, tension, disagreement, distance, pride, resentment, or any other bs that existed before him.

he just got here.

and then you actually made a conscious decision not to know him?!!

wow. so embarrassing.

you guys, seeeee. this is exactly why i probably shouldn’t write essays while i’m still figuring out what i think lol

a few sentences ago i was willing to give some folks grace. but then…

a young boy in a blue shirt is running towards a group of children in a park . — Source: GIPHY

now i’m actually kinda mad.

i have spent so much time trying to understand why people haven’t shown up that sometimes i think i’ve confused understanding with excusing it.

i can understand that life is busy and i can understand that people are going through things i know nothing about.

i understand that relationships change and i understand that everybody’s capacity looks different.

and i can still say: you didn’t show up.

understanding something doesn’t require me to pretend it didn’t hurt.

there are things from my childhood that i think about differently now. times i was expected to be around someone or be okay with something simply because that’s family.

i don’t want to do that to my son.

i’m not going to make my child uncomfortable so a grown person can be comfortable.

i’m not going to force relationships onto him because of titles.

family. friend. auntie. uncle. whatever.

a title is not a relationship. and if you want one with him, there has to actually be one.

i think that’s part of what this first year has taught me.

or maybe reminded me, because honestly, i knew this shit already.

having a baby just has a very special way of showing you who people are.

who checks in. who disappears.

who loves you when loving you requires effort.

who only knows how to love you when you’re the one doing the showing up.

and becoming parents didn’t only happen to me.

it happened to my husband too.

i think dads get forgotten in these conversations sometimes. no, they didn’t carry the baby. no, their bodies didn’t go through pregnancy and birth and postpartum.

but they’re carrying things too.

they’re becoming someone new too.

they’re scared sometimes too.

they’re trying to figure this shit out too.

ask them how they’re doing.

because when i think about the people who showed up for us this year, i actually mean us.

and when i think about the people who didn’t...

i mean that too.

i used to spend a lot more time being sad about it.

wondering how somebody could say they loved us and then disappear during one of the biggest transitions of our lives.