Why you need parent friends. NOW.

Sure, if you are lucky, all of your closest friends just happened to get pregnant/adopt right around the same time as you and you have lots of wonderful baby playdates.  Or perhaps you had one of those awesome Lamaze/prenatal yoga classes and you are all still in touch.  If so, I applaud your foresight, or at least your luck. But let’s face it, for most of us, it is not quite that easy. And shortly after having a baby you find that you are going to need to find some parent friends.  

Not convinced you need any parent friends?  I get it, I didn’t want to be one of the mom’s that lost touch with friends that didn’t have kids, and I didn’t see myself as someone that had nothing to talk about except babies.  I had other interests too darnit!  Sure you do, and that’s great.  But trust me, you can find parent friends that also share interests and have lives outside of kids, and you don’t have to give up your baby-free friends. But you are going to need at least a few parent friends to get you through the months ahead. 

Here’s the thing, if you are doing the kid thing you should enjoy it, and part of enjoying it is sharing the wonder and joy of this amazing little person in your home.  And that wonder and joy  gets old very fast for people that don’t have kids.  Heck, it even gets old for people whose kids aren’t the same age. 

But let’s face it.  Having parent friends isn’t really about wonder and joy.  It’s about having someone to talk to when your kid still isn’t sleeping despite following every piece of advice in the book.  It’s about talking about the mixed feelings of having your parents “help out” with the baby.  It’s about railing about the inequities of shared parenting.  It’s about getting those random pieces of advice that you didn’t even know you needed.  Like it wasn’t until I was following around my little guy picking up all the raisins he was dropping that someone introduced me to these bad boys.  Who knew someone have invented something so genius?!  There’s a lot you just can’t get from books. 

So – you are going to need friends, and fast.  But you're in luck.  My next post is all about how to pick up your new friends.