Keeping friendships, making friendships and letting go of others

In my experience when you get married things change in your relationship with your single friends. When you have a baby things change even further and your single friends will do one of 2 things;

•  they will make an effort to get to know your husband and newest member of the family really well, understanding that you can no longer talk for hours on the phone or get that you can no longer go out sporadically for cocktails, rather needing at least a few days notice, or alternatively 
• they will insist that your life has not changed so dramatically that you can't pack up the car at the last minute and head away for a weekend of dinners, brunches, drinks and shopping at high end retail stores, insisting that they are JUST as busy if not more so (given their hectic social life) than you are.

You will quickly learn the difference between single or childless friends that are in it for the long haul and those that can not get past the fact you now have a very different life to the one you had before baby arrived.

I am fully aware that this post may offend or irritate some people. However I suppose individuals who take offence will probably do so because it strikes a cord, or perhaps this is just my experience and I have it all totally wrong......

Since Cooper was born I have embarked on an amazing journey and I'm proud to say along the way my friendships with some have grown much closer, I've reconnected with friends I thought I may have lost and I've made some amazing new friends in the process. Sadly though I've also had to let go of others that I thought would be around forever.

Realising that once you have a baby you no longer have time for the drama and toxicity some friends bring into your life is a tough lesson, and one that took a lot of tears, angst and repetitive disappointment for me to learn. For me the realisation that I needed to let go came around the same time I went back to work and discovered that in my 8 months of maternity leave I had only received a handful of phone calls to see how I was coping and 1 visit, where I had travelled interstate 2 or 3 times to visit with Cooper in tow, it was when  no matter how I was feeling or what was going on in my life, their lives were always far more dramatic, tough, busy or woe is me than mine. It was that they did not like communicating via email or facebook but I just couldn't dedicate more than 5 or 10 mins to talking on the phone without Cooper needing my attention or having to finish a chore before he woke up.

I don't deny that single men and women have busy lives, in fact some of them would have far busier lives than I do, but to compare the kind of busy a full time working mum is to that of a single socialite is naive and undermining. They are two very different kinds of busy and one more forgiving to running late than the other.

When you are a mother there is a priority list, child, husband (it's debatable which order these first two should go in; a post for a later day perhaps), family, friends, yourself and other, you will soon discover exactly who understand the order of the list and those who don't.

To keep a friendship when your number one priority is your family you really have to put in the effort when it matters, be honest, have something in common, but most of all you have to be genuine. My closest friends know that just because I may not call every week does not mean that I am not interested in their life, they just know that life is busy, it's hectic and there isn't always time to call. My closest friends and I can go weeks without catching up, but we understand each other and we know that months could go by between visits but if ever we needed advice, a shoulder to cry on or a good b!tch session about work, our husbands/partners or  something that's given us the pips we could just pick up the phone and we'd have the support we need. Judgement and critisism free. I love my friends for that and if they are reading this tey should know who they are.

There are days when I wish that I could email or text the people I have let go, but much like before I wonder if I will get a response. I wonder if things have changed in their lives over the last 5 months, whether they are happy, still single or in relationships and if so whether one day they will understand the daily juggling act that is work, childcare, house work and taking care of a family. Deep down I hope they do and that one day we will be on the same page and able to mend what is currently broken.

My best friend, support system and Coopers' (fairy) Godmother with her beautiful daughter.