Reflections on Friendship

When I was younger the things I admired in my friends were things like: always up for a laugh; or willing to bail me out of a dodgy situation.

Nowadays, as a parent, the things I crave from friendship are different. It’s not that I have anything against my childless friends, but a lot of the time they just don’t “get it”. They still have a very important place in my life, but right now the people I find myself wanting to be around are my mummy friends.

I might not have known them long, but we have shared experiences. They’ve been there, up all night feeding a baby while their partner snores. They’ve been there, learning how to love their postpartum body. These people are my tribe. We share our highs and lows without flinching. I’ve heard their most intimate birth stories and we’ve talked (in detail!) about our kids poo. No topic is out of bounds.

And it’s not just our friendship. There’s something magical about watching my eldest play with the child he first met when they were both only a couple of months old. There’s something about both understanding that when you arrange to get together with the toddlers, you won’t actually get to finish a conversation. There’s something about being able to hold half a conversation and enjoy a luke-warm hot chocolate while one of you breastfeeds and the other bottle feeds your babies with no judgement or awkward glances.

My childless friends don’t get that. They get frustrated when I have to dash off to stop my eldest from garrotting himself with some random dirty string he pulled out of a smashed beer bottle in the middle of the park. They look around, anywhere but at me, while I breastfeed my youngest, coming up with an excuse to leave the room until I’m done (spoiler: I’m never done!)

But most of all, what I seek most in friendship nowadays is understanding. Understanding when I cancel plans last minute because one of the kids has their seventy-millionth bug from nursery. Understanding when I’ve forgotten to reply to a message because I started out with good intentions then had to stop the big kid putting the baby in the washing machine. Understanding when we go months without speaking or seeing each other because we’re all busy living lives, but that when we do see each other we pick right back up where we left off, like no time has passed. Understanding that I’m a different person since I became a mum, and I quite like who that person is. I’ve found what makes me happy in life – seeing my own children happy – and I’m cool with that, whether that makes me boring or not.

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These are a series of posts based on the suggestions proffered by Jetpack to encourage me to post daily and find my blogging voice. They may not actually reflect the type of posts by blog is actually about.