I used to think my biggest mom problems would be things like public tantrums in Target, fighting over nap time, and stressing about preschool wait lists.
I was wrong.
One afternoon, I came home early and found my three-year-old son alone in his crib.
The babysitter was gone.
No warning. No goodbye.
Just a letter with my name on it.
And a truth I never saw coming.
I never thought I’d be the woman posting on Reddit about her missing babysitter.
But here I am.
My whole world is my son, Caleb.
I’m 34. American. Suburban mom. I drive a minivan that smells like snacks and wet wipes. I can cut dinosaur-shaped sandwiches in my sleep and sing every nursery rhyme without thinking.
My whole world is my son, Caleb.
He’s three years old.
He loves dinosaurs, peanut butter sandwiches, and making me read the same book every single night until my voice is completely gone.
He has my husband’s eyes, my stubborn chin, and this little head tilt he does when he’s thinking. Every time he does it, my heart melts all over again.
We fought hard to have him.
I miscarried once at 12 weeks.
Years of infertility followed.
Needles in my stomach.
Blood draws before work.
Quiet crying in the bathroom so no one would hear.
At night, I’d whisper into the dark,
“Please. Please. Please.”
When I lost that baby at 12 weeks, I thought I’d never be the same again.
I thought something inside me broke forever.
Then one day, a nurse handed me a baby and said,
“He’s here.”
That baby was Caleb.
I thought that was the whole story.
I was wrong.
“Hi. I’m Lena. Thanks for having me.”
That’s how she entered our lives.
Caleb was six months old when I opened the front door and saw her standing there.
She was thin, with tired eyes. She wore a simple thrift-store dress and held a cheap canvas bag tight against her chest like it was her anchor.
“Hi,” she said softly. “I’m Lena. Thanks for having me.”
Caleb was behind me in his bouncer, kicking his legs and drooling all over a plastic dinosaur.
The moment Lena saw him, she dropped to her knees like it was pure instinct.
“Hey, buddy,” she whispered. “Wow. Look at you.”
Caleb stared at her for a second.
Then he broke into the biggest gummy smile I’d ever seen.
It was like watching two magnets snap together.
From that day on, Lena was our babysitter.
And she was… incredible. Almost unfairly good.
She was always early.
She never sat on her phone.
She’d sit on the floor with Caleb for hours—singing, reading, stacking blocks, knocking them over, then stacking them again.
Sometimes I’d come home and find her on the rug, her back against the couch, Caleb asleep on her chest. Her hand would be resting on his back like she was anchoring him to the world.
My husband, Mark, saw it once and nudged me.
“She really loves him,” he said.
“Yeah,” I replied. “We’re lucky.”
I meant it.
Looking back, there were small, strange things.
Lena never talked about her family.
If I asked, she’d shrug and say,
“It’s just me,”
then quickly change the subject.
She always wanted to work on Caleb’s birthday.
“You sure you don’t want the day off?” I asked once.
She shook her head.
“No. I like being with him. If you need me, I’m here.”
Once, Caleb scraped his knee on the driveway. It was tiny. Barely a scratch. A normal toddler meltdown.
I jogged over with band-aids.
Lena got there first. She scooped him up—and burst into tears before he did.
“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m so sorry. I hate seeing him hurt.”
I didn’t think, Something is very wrong.
I just thought, She’s sensitive. She’s a crier.
I did not think my life was already falling apart.
The day she disappeared was a Thursday.
I kissed Caleb’s head before work and told Lena I’d be home around five.
“Text me if you need anything,” I said.
She smiled.
“We’ll be fine.”
Around two, my last meeting got canceled.
I decided to surprise them. I stopped at the grocery store and came home early, my arms full of bags.
“Lena?” I called. “I brought snacks!”
Nothing.
No cartoons.
No toddler yelling.
No Lena singing.
Silence.
My stomach dropped.
“Lena?” I called again, louder.
Nothing.
I dropped the bags and checked the living room.
Empty.
Backyard.
Empty.
Bathroom.
Empty.
My heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
I went to Caleb’s room. The door was half open.
I pushed it.
He was asleep in his crib, one hand wrapped around his stuffed triceratops.
Alone.
No baby monitor.
No sitter.
Cold rushed through my body.
Then I saw it.
A folded piece of paper on the kitchen table.
My name was written on the front.
“Megan.”
Neat. Careful. Slow.
My hands shook as I opened it.
“I can’t stay here any longer,” it began.
“The truth about your husband and your son Caleb is eating me alive. You deserve to know what really happened three years ago.”
I whispered,
“What?”
I kept reading.
“If I see him, I won’t leave. Please don’t think I don’t love him. That’s why I have to go.”
Then the words that made the room spin:
“The truth is… Caleb is my son.”
I kept reading through blurred vision.
She wrote that she gave birth at the same hospital as me.
Alone. Broke. Terrified.
She wrote that she heard I’d lost my baby.
She said Mark came to her. Offered money. Help. A “better life” for the baby. He promised I would never know.
She believed him.
She wrote that watching me love Caleb felt “like a gift and a knife at the same time.”
She wrote that if she stayed, she would take him.
She was leaving so he could have the life she wanted for him.
“Please forgive me,” she ended.
“Please love him enough for both of us.
—Lena”
I realized I was making this low, broken sound.
I ran to Caleb’s room.
He was still there. Still breathing. Still warm.
“My baby,” I whispered.
“I don’t know if you’re mine anymore… but I love you.”
The front door opened.
“Meg?” Mark called. “Why are you home ear—”
He froze when he saw me.
“Is Caleb okay?”
I held up the letter.
“Is it true?” I asked. “Yes or no.”
He read it.
The color drained from his face.
“Yes,” he whispered.
My chest cracked open.
“You knew?” I said. “For three years?”
He told me everything.
How the doctor spoke to him first.
How he thought losing me would break him.
How he told himself it was like an adoption.
“You walked out and bought a baby?” I asked.
He cried.
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“You lied to both of us,” I said. “You stole my grief. And you stole her child.”
That night, I packed a bag.
I took Caleb.
“I’m his mother,” I said. “And I’m keeping him safe.”
It took two weeks to find Lena.
A disconnected number.
An old address.
A rumor about a laundromat.
I climbed the stairs with my heart pounding.
She opened the door.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I hugged her.
She collapsed into me.
“I just want to know he’s okay,” she said.
“He is,” I told her. “And he loves you.”
Nothing was magically fixed.
We got lawyers.
Therapists.
Rules.
We told Caleb a simple truth.
He shrugged and asked for a snack.
Now, on Sundays, Lena comes over for dinner.
Caleb runs to the door yelling,
“NENNA!”
One day he called her,
“Mama Lena.”
She looked at me for permission.
“It’s okay,” I said.
My son has two moms.
One who carried him.
One who raised him.
Love doesn’t divide.
It multiplies.
And sometimes the bravest thing a mother can do is walk away.
And sometimes the bravest thing is saying,
“Come back.
We’ll figure it out.
Together.”