Hello! Will you be my friend?

The struggle is real.

Making new friendships as an adult is tricky. Making new friendships as a mum is even weirder. Groups of wildly different women all brought together by the common thread of growing and birthing a tiny creature. But is this vague bit of common ground enough?

I’ll be honest, I’ve struggled to make new friends as a new mum. It’s been made even more problematic given the fallout of COVID meant NCT classes weren’t running when I was pregnant, other prenatal groups were really limited and there was a very real ‘stranger danger’ vibe in the air.

Since giving birth, I’ve met about 30-40 women who’ve had babies at similar times to me, some I’ve seen nearly weekly since Freya (now 6 months) was 6 weeks old. And yet there’s only been 2 people I’ve swapped numbers with and kept in touch with. One a friend of a friend, and one from the perinatal mental health weekly walking group I’m a part of. None from the coffee mornings, mummy meet-ups or postnatal pilates classes I’ve invested in, hopeful of building a much-needed support network around me.

For starters, I’m rubbish at small talk, especially the top-level observational stuff so rife at mum & baby groups. I also have limited interest in other people’s babies (family and folk I genuinely give a shit about is different). But when I’ve heard the same story about someones darling offspring 7 times, retold by the mum whenever someone new joins the group (and it wasn’t that great the first time round), my patience wears thin. Then there’s the similarities with the social hierarchy of school, which I struggled with enough the first time around. The gossip, the judgement, the cliques, the conversational narcissists, the packs sticking together defending against any infiltrators. It’s intimidating, tiresome and honestly, aren’t we all better than that crap now?!

I’ve quite often found myself to be like a bit of a socially-inept labrador. Bright-eyed, waggy tailed and eager (maybe too eager) to make new friends, only to realise I’ve forgotten how to progress a normal conversation beyond a “hello” as I’m so out of practice speaking to other adult humans I’m not related to. Then as soon as I’m in the safety of solitude again, I circle down the plughole of replaying our entire interaction, plagued with paranoid self-criticism, over-analysing if I came across too keen, too boring, too weird, too try-hard. Did my face do something strange? Did I stink of desperate loneliness? Did I stink in general? The post socialising anxiety is real!

And don’t get me started on taking things to the ‘next-steps’ and awkwardly asking for a phone number or Instagram handle to keep in touch. This shit is worse than dating.

Then, there’s my pre-baby friends. Between COVID and having the baby, my already small social circle has dwindled down to next to nothing and I’ve barely seen any of my friends over the last two years. Beyond the initial pop round to see the newborn nugget, everyone has resumed service as normal, juggling their own whirlwinds of work, families, businesses, weddings, houses, and so the plans loosely spoken of never come to be, despite the best of intentions. These days it feels like you have to plan about 8 months ahead with written warning to have even half a chance of a social engagement happening.

It’s fine, that’s life. But it doesn’t stop the feelings of loneliness, like a goldfish in a bowl watching the world go by while my own life is a broken record of nappies, naps, and feeds - rinse and repeat. Or feeling like I’m being a needy pest reaching out to folk, reminding them I still exist and would like something a bit more than a quick coffee. As much as I’m sure we all feel like it sometimes, having a baby does not equal having a lobotomy and losing the ability to talk about anything non-matrescence. Give me proper conversation and connection, no weaning or wake windows chat, please! 

I’m grateful I’m not completely alone. I do have a few friends who have had babies within the same few months as my daughter; an old housemate and some online pals. Frustratingly, they’re all at least 2 hours away so our support is mainly restricted to WhatsApp and DMs. But it’s better than nothing.

Maybe I’m a bit too picky? Maybe I’m a bit too intense? Maybe I need to get a bouncy castle and cocktails and invite a load of people round for a playdate. Whatever the answer is, this ‘making new mum friends’ malarky isn’t easy.