When I was younger, I always used to wonder why my parents had no friends. I mean, looking back, I guess they did have a few – a neighbor or two, maybe a golf buddy for my dad – but really, they didn’t socialize much. I sort of thought they were kind of lame in that regard.
Now that I have a kid, I totally get it. At least for the baby years. Given Henry’s 7:15pm bedtime, getting out and doing anything social on a weeknight means a quick, rushed dinner, and so it is usually reserved for special occasions. On Friday nights, I am TIRED. This leaves the weekends, which frankly are more tiring that the weekdays. Then there is the planning aspect – it’s difficult to plan things with other people, because I never know when exactly is going to be a good time – when Henry will not need a nap and I won’t need to pump and I can use our car and blah blah blah. Plus, many of my friends have their own kids, so they have all the same problems.
We usually manage to do one social thing every other weekend. Last weekend we did a quick 5:30 Sunday dinner with friends. This weekend it was more or less just us. The weird thing for me is – I’m getting to the point where my husband is really my best friend.
Now, to some extent, he’s been my best friend for a long time. But the thing is – I’ve always ALSO had a girlfriend filling that role – and now I’m not sure I do. For a long time, I’ve had a best friend, T. She lives in Australia (she relocated there years ago, but we were roommates together right out of college). T is the person I could tell ANYTHING, no matter how embarrassing, how gross, whatever. We Skype once a month and used to do a yearly trip (I would visit her, she would come back to the US, we met in Fiji once), plus email. But now that I have Henry – it’s hard to keep up with any of that except the Skypes. Sometimes it takes me a week to respond to a basic email – I see it, and I mean to write back, but I have so many little things to do that it just doesn’t get done. I still consider her a good friend, but you lose something when you don’t make the effort to keep up as much. And that’s all on me.
And then I have had a local best friend, A. A and I had a rough time last year – she said something that really hurt me about how I was “wasting energy” by being sad about my miscarriages. She apologized the next week, but I never really got over it. I mean, I understand that she didn’t mean to hurt me, and I forgave her for that, but what she said is so much a part of who she is and how she thinks about things. It makes me want to keep my guard up around her. Add that to the whole being exhausted/scheduling difficulties thing, and we don’t get together much right now.
So … is this how I become my parents? I wonder if they just lost touch with all their friends when they had babies and then never managed to rebuild the relationships or create new ones. I don’t want that to happen to me.
I can totally, totally relate to ALL of this. Not just how difficult it is to get out and do things, the desire to stay home, the isolation, etc, but also the comment about your friend. Those moments and words can be on an endless loop some days, can’t they? It makes it difficult to move past the hurt we felt before baby, and it is fairly impossible to discuss with people afterward. Also, I *love* your son’s name, so we have that in common too.
First off, let me say that your son is ADORABLE.
I am already seeing this in my own life, and I’m only 17 weeks pregnant. Between the all-day nausea and sheer, bone-crushing exhaustion I had the entire first trimester, I’ve hardly seen my friends. (Even had to skip a bridal shower due to being sick.)
I can only imagine how much worse this is going to get when our twins arrive.
We’re not social very often either (even without the complications of having to work around a baby’s schedule). I’m not much of a phone person so I’ve lost regular contact with most of my old friends from before I moved to Chicago. Now I have friends from work and church but we don’t hang out. I still have this dream that when I had a kid, I’ll magically meet cool people to hang out with, so don’t rain on my parade!
I just wanted to say that i am so there with you. I don’t want this to be how it goes for the rest of our lives, either. I keep hoping that with their mobility will come more of ours…
It’s interesting how kids affect social relationships. There have been times when I’ve had a hard time making friends when moving to a new duty station because all the socializing seems to actually revolve around kids – play dates and classes and kid friendly outings. Of course, that’s not quite the social life you’re missing. I think it’s probably unrealistic to think that somebody can carry on their existing adult life once a baby arrives, but if it’s purely the grown up contact you’re missing, maybe it’s worth pursuing a different breed of socializing? Even if it means making new “mom friends”…
I’m kind of antisocial so I haven’t really missed our social life… in fact it’s been sort of a good excuse to turn down invites, lol.
Clara goes to bed by 6:15 so we can’t ever go to dinner – no one wants to babysit a sleeping baby!! (well, none of the people I’d want to stay with her, anyway. we’re not yet comfortable with having a college student or whoever sit her)
I think once Henry is a year old, that would be a good time to take steps to resume a social life…. just force yourself to make plans once a month or whatever and you’ll probably be so glad you did that you’ll do it more and more. You’ll be too tired to stay out late often, but that’s ok. It will still be fun
I am so uniterested in making “mom friends” in real life that I wouldn’t do this, but you could always try to combine interests by having cookouts or whatever with other families. then you can relax and kick back a cold one while Henry plays with other babies and requires minimal supervision…
I think maintaining close friendships in adulthood is a challenging thing to do. It was easy to do in school when you were with people who were at the same stage of life as you for 8 or more hours a day. It’s a lot different when you spend most of your hours each day with people who you don’t necessarily have much in common with other than the company you work for. (The team R leads used to consist of him and 3 women, 2 of whom were old enough to be his mom. He’s still one of the youngest ones at the company – most of them are his dad’s age.)
But I also think you go through seasons with things like this. I had a period of time that lasted a few years when I felt like you, but lately I’ve developed several close friendships. It wasn’t really a conscious effort so much as our lives were kind of at the same stage at the same time, and that made it more possible than it would have been at a different point in time.
I bet as Henry gets a little older, you’ll find yourself developing friendships with other moms who can relate to the stage you’re at in your life.
Ha ha, I’m with the camp that should have had a kid earlier, because now I have an EXCUSE not to socialize. Before Penelope, I was just weird
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Hello there – I found your blog when I was googling (which I should not be doing!) chronic endometritis as I have recently been diagnosed with this following a miscarriage and D&C back in May 2011. Just 3 days ago I had a hysteroscopy procedure to remove some stubborn retained placenta which has been in there since that D&C in May and hence I now have this chronic infection
I am being treated with 2 strong antibiotics but I am petrified about what this means for falling pregnant now as I have no other children. This pregnancy was my first and hopefully won’t be my last. Anyway, I would love to hear what happened with you with your endometritis. I see you now have a beautiful boy – congratulations! My email is carlyjoy75@hotmail.com. If you could please email me that would be much appreciated. Thanks, Carly
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