Last week I wrote about all the ways you can expect your friendship to change when your friend is pregnant and you aren’t. This week I wanted to follow up with a more personal recount from someone who isn’t expecting, but someone who was once and who has been there. The benefit of my experience may help you as I hope it helps me now… I was the first among my group of friends at the time to get pregnant and have a baby. While it was an exciting time, being the first one was tough. Nobody really knew what I was going through. None of them really understood or related. They were all still living life as it was while I was taking a path unknown to us all.
Of course, they were behind me all the way. Trying to stay beside me on my path while their own verged off in different directions. Some weren’t too far behind, and I got to be the friend that they could relate to, while others were happier to travel the world and not settle down as such. But as much as they tried, motherhood took me into a whole new life I was relatively unprepared for… and a whole new world filled with all new things.
While those friends still wanted to talk about dating and weekend plans, all I had to contribute was the latest poop or feeding schedule. If I did manage a social outing it was a movie at mums and bubs, which let us feel like we were still people with lives, although we were all too busy with babies to see any of the actual film. It isn’t a surprise looking back that many of my pre-baby friendships didn’t last the distance.
Yes, I used this twice (once last week and again this week) on purpose to show how it is applicable both ways.
Now I am blessed with a pre-teen and a teenager, and finally am enjoying friendships, a more active social life to an extent, and the kids are old enough to stay up late enough to attend parties, if we have to bring them. Social freedom tastes sweet. Many of my closest friends at this stage are in the same position, and the excitement about the light at the end of the tunnel is palpable amongst us all.
However, along the way, I have become close in particular with a single childless woman. This woman has helped me raise my children and been there for me in the trudges of motherhood in unexpected ways. She is a natural mother, mothering me, my children, her nieces and nephews, the children in her field of work and her fur babies. However, as chance would have it, she has not been blessed with children of her own, and she longs for one. My heart honestly aches for her. It is in the essence of her being, she was born to be a mother, and yet, her journey has not taken her down that path. It is not a lie to say I want more than anything for my friend to fulfil her dreams and become a mother.
However, I can’t lie, I have wondered how it will impact our friendship when she does become a mother. Even thinking about it is tinged with a sadness for me. I will miss her. That is not to say that I won’t support her. I will, of course I will. I owe her that much. She has helped me and been there for me with my children and I hope to love her children just a fiercely and actively. However, just as I walked a different path from my friends at the beginning of my pregnancy journey, she will walk a different path to mine. Her world will be filled with new mothers and baby movies, while I am talking of travelling and date nights!
She will no longer be available for our comedy nights or escape rooms or shopping trips. No longer will she come here and help the children with homework while I prepare dinner or casually stop by after work. She will need me to be the one going to her. Listening to her talk about poop and feeding and sleep. Helping her with the baby so she can tend to the endless washing. Wrangling the dogs so she can manage the pram. Showing up at her house with coffee so she can sleep through our girl’s night in, face mask and all.
And I have to admit, already I mourn the life we have now, although we still have it. In many ways I want it to end because it is at her expense if it doesn’t. I will not be happy if she is not happy and she will not be happy without a baby. Whether she will be happy with one, remains to be seen. Because I have been there, and I know it has some dark days. I am not filled with joy at the prospect of going through it all again, even if it is vicarious.
However, on the bright side, at the end of the day, the child, and most of the burden will be her own. I can feel the kicks on the outside, not on the inside. I can help for an evening and return to my freedom. I can support her knowing how hard it is, without assuming responsibility for that sacrifice. And I know her journey as a working mother will be so different to my own. In some ways harder, in many ways easier.
Our friendship will change, and I expect that change. That is what I expect. But the onus is going to be on me to still make her life happier and easier as she has done for me. The onus will be mine to make the connection meaningful and to be forgiving and understanding when she does not have the time and attention to give, or to wish her well as she ventures onto this new world and hope she finds me again when the smell of freedom finds her again in 10 years or so!
Meanwhile all I can really do is continue being as supportive as I can be, while making the most of the time I have left with her undivided time and attention, well, the time and attention I share with her phone that is…. Maybe it won’t be so different after all! Haha
❤ Love,
Your Best Friend ForNever
xx
