Well that's just how it is.

[supernova]

Avid CFer here, and yes, that really is "just how it is."  Your life is different now--and congratulations on your new DD! 

There's something terribly wrong with new parents who are eager to dump the baby on Grandma and go out clubbing with their childless friends just a few months after the baby is born.  Your child *is* the most important thing in your life now--which means you're a normal healthy new mom. 

Your life has changed; it is different now.  And vive la difference!  You have a wonderful new priority in your life, you're taking on new challenges and new experiences, and you have a chance to make new friends with similar priorities (mommies group, day care, etc.).  Your clubbing friend would be bored to tears with hearing about your new DD's sleeping schedule and feeding schedule; and you'd probably be bored to tears hearing about her shopping excursions, dates, office intrigues or whatever when your heart and mind are with your new DD.

Let the friendship drift for now.  She's not really trying to understand your life right now, so she's not really being a good friend, despite what she says.  You're being a good parent by understanding that you can't take a newborn (or a hyper toddler) to French Laundry for a three-hour $200 dinner, or spend all day with her in the spa while you're still BFing.

I may be a CFer but I'm supportive of my friends who have children.  Heck, I even babysit.  A good friend understands when priorities change, and celebrates your joys with you as well as holds your hand during your sorrows.  (Did she even send you a card or call and say congratulations on your new arrival?)  A good friend doesn't say "Ditch the kid and let's go paaartay!"

     - saphie

[Cellardoor14]

As the first to have a child in our group of friends, I have to say I've had most of the experiences posted
AND agree with what the others have said:

I ended one friendship when at the Boo's christening she came into his room (he had started to fuss after four hours of good behavior, and I had quickly removed him from most our guests to calm him down.) said "God, babies are annoying. Dump IT in the crib and get back to the party."

I still can't believe she called my son,whose christening she had come to voluntary, "IT".

My advice is to try and make friends with other moms. 
You still keep in contact with old ones but it might be best to do it via email/text/phone for a bit.  Certain friends may complain (as a few of mine did).  I just told them to think of it like starting a new job, but instead of it being 60 hours a week it was 24 hours a day.  But you still wanted to make a good impression with the boss. 

[Cellardoor14]

[quote  My friend, straight out said, dump them. Startled I asked him to repeat himself. He said, dump them, you're lives are completely different now and they won't want to do anything but deal with the baby, they won't be able to go out and they'll talk about nothing but the baby.  I have to admit I laughed, but it was also kind of true.[/quote]

Again, this is just my experience but:

I recently meet up with some old friends for drinks. 

The women talked to me about anything and everything, but very little about Boo.

When I tried to start conversions with the men, they always turned it back half-hearted to the bambino.

I tried to have a normal adult conversion (meaning strong language and slightly off-coloured topics, as is common in that circle of friends) with one old male friend and he got very uncomfortable.
 
Finally, I asked what the deal was and he pretty much said that I was a mother now shouldn't talk about such things.  Apparently, having a child immediately regulates you to "the little woman"!

Auggh! I went on the night out so I wouldn't have to talk about motherhood and baby!

My female friends seem to understand this, however I has VERY dismayed to find my male friends had labeled me as "mother" which equaled "boring and uninteresting".

[kiero]

IT's interesting.  We're the first in all our circle of friends to have a kid.  (We are 23 and 25 with university degrees and good jobs - so we're very young, but established)  And see how our different freinds have handled it has been facinating. 

We still go for supper with quite a few of them.  And our closest friends have adapted quite nicely - no appatizers, desert only if the baby is still happy.  One of DH's best freinds (his BM at our wedding) even came up with the idea to bring takeout and a movie to our place the one night we called to cancel because DD wasn't in a mood to take out.  But we've also seen some friends fade.  And then there's this one who has informed me that she isn't interested in doing anything with me on my terms - only her terms. 

[freakyfemme]

I see both sides of the issue....of course the baby should be the priority for any new parent, but from reading all those posts, I'm really, REALLY not looking forward to all my friends getting pregnant.  I've already been shunted aside by far too many people in favour of boys, sororities, and the drinking/partying crowd, and I really hate it.  I don't want the same thing to happen again when the first of my friends start having babies.

[NYGirl100]

I see both sides of the issue....of course the baby should be the priority for any new parent, but from reading all those posts, I'm really, REALLY not looking forward to all my friends getting pregnant.  I've already been shunted aside by far too many people in favour of boys, sororities, and the drinking/partying crowd, and I really hate it.  I don't want the same thing to happen again when the first of my friends start having babies.

Freaky, I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but just with anything involving friends, it takes both sides.  If you and your friends are willing to work on the friendship, even if you end up doing something different, I don't think anyone will be shunted aside.  The problem in the case of new parents and their friends comes when the parents refuse to do anything with their friends, and when the friends expect that the parents will be able to do or want to do exactly the same things that they were doing before they have children.  There are options that can work for both sides, such as watching a movie at home and eating takeout, or taking the baby to kid-friendly restaurants with the understanding that the parents might have to leave, etc. 

[ninja710]

When I was quite young and had my first baby, I often invited friends over to watch TV, listen to music, play Scrabble, have dinner, whatever - I didn't like leaving my daughter AND I couldn't afford a babysitter terribly often.

This makes me laugh - my sister's DD objected *loudly*when my sister tried to play Scrabble with us (her sisters) while breastfeeding DD.  Guess she was used to undivided attention.

[Brentwood]

When I was quite young and had my first baby, I often invited friends over to watch TV, listen to music, play Scrabble, have dinner, whatever - I didn't like leaving my daughter AND I couldn't afford a babysitter terribly often.

This makes me laugh - my sister's DD objected *loudly*when my sister tried to play Scrabble with us (her sisters) while breastfeeding DD.  Guess she was used to undivided attention.

My first baby was so easy, after the three months of colic. By six months old, I'd put her to bed at 6:30 and she'd sleep right through 'til 6:30 in the morning, waking once on occasional nights for a feeding.

My next two - well, not so easy.

[MsEva]

I guess I have been lucky. Since we are more...um...mature parents, most of our friends' kids are between the ages of twelve and twenty. Everyone has been quite understanding of how our lives have changed. Many had even taken great delight in explaining how this would happen when I was pregnant  

The best part is that since none of them are grandparents yet they get their baby fixes with our girl. The worst part is when they ask when is a good time to come visit because they miss Anna - we (mom & dad) don't even rate anymore.  

[Nyte]

Personally, i don't agree with how the OPs friend is acting.  (Sheesh, she should practice a little thing we big people call Common Sense!) and what I am about to say really doesn't apply to this...but i ask that y'all hear me out

over the span of a decade, my large circle of friends all settled down, got married and proceeded to have many wonderful children. Everyone except me (long story...)  So now i find myself the only single, non-mommy that i know.  And well, it hurts a little when one of them says "Oh, we didn't think you would want to come to the New Year's eve party...it was all couples and most everyone brought their kids"   

So when your single kidless friends politely ask if you can spare some time for coffee or whatnot, even if you can't spare the time...let them know that they are still important to you. 



 

[MsEva]

Personally, i don't agree with how the OPs friend is acting.  (Sheesh, she should practice a little thing we big people call Common Sense!) and what I am about to say really doesn't apply to this...but i ask that y'all hear me out

over the span of a decade, my large circle of friends all settled down, got married and proceeded to have many wonderful children. Everyone except me (long story...)  So now i find myself the only single, non-mommy that i know.  And well, it hurts a little when one of them says "Oh, we didn't think you would want to come to the New Year's eve party...it was all couples and most everyone brought their kids"   

So when your single kidless friends politely ask if you can spare some time for coffee or whatnot, even if you can't spare the time...let them know that they are still important to you. 



 

Aw, Nyte, that's just awful. I was the single one for so many years and the times that did happen to me it really hurt. I never minded being the only single one in a group. It usually bothered the coupled ones more. I wish everyone would learn not to make decisions for other people, but instead to offer the inviation and let the invitee decided whether or not they would want to attend.

[kiero]

I see both sides of the issue....of course the baby should be the priority for any new parent, but from reading all those posts, I'm really, REALLY not looking forward to all my friends getting pregnant.  I've already been shunted aside by far too many people in favour of boys, sororities, and the drinking/partying crowd, and I really hate it.  I don't want the same thing to happen again when the first of my friends start having babies.

We didn't try to 'shunt' her aside.  In fact we tried to come up with many different thigns we could all do together.  She just refused to do anything that didn't require leaving DD all evening.  I was even willing to meet her for coffee without DD (she would be with DH) for an hour or two.  But she claimed that it would be too short of a meeting and not worth while.  We go out with out childless (one is childfree) friends all the time.  We just have to go to slightly different places at different times.  

Please don't think that once your friends have kids that you can't do anything with them.  Just be flexable.  After the first few weeks to months (depending on the people) they will love to do things with others again.  And then with some creativity - you can all plan a get together which meets everyones needs and is pleasant.  I should also add that it's really hard to keep track of time in the early weeks.  It really helped when people called us.  I know that some people don't like to call new parents - but it ia far better than waiting for us to call.  

[kiero]

Personally, i don't agree with how the OPs friend is acting.  (Sheesh, she should practice a little thing we big people call Common Sense!) and what I am about to say really doesn't apply to this...but i ask that y'all hear me out

over the span of a decade, my large circle of friends all settled down, got married and proceeded to have many wonderful children. Everyone except me (long story...)  So now i find myself the only single, non-mommy that i know.  And well, it hurts a little when one of them says "Oh, we didn't think you would want to come to the New Year's eve party...it was all couples and most everyone brought their kids"   

So when your single kidless friends politely ask if you can spare some time for coffee or whatnot, even if you can't spare the time...let them know that they are still important to you. 



 

I would never make decision for someone.  Well - to me there are two classes of events. If something was really really child oriented I probably wouldn't invite my childfree friends.  And I mean something like a kids exhibit at the museum.  But I would invite everyone to things like my Christmas party.  I would make sure to mention the fact that there would be lots of kids - so it wouldn't be some sort of fancy cocktail thing - but I would still let the people choose if they wanted to attend. 

I am sorry that your friends exclude you.  Have you tried to make it clear that you would want to attend such an event. 

[kingsrings]

I can see both sides of the situation. I went through a lot of the frustration myself with my friends who are parents. For a long while there, it seemed like that was the majority of my social circle. And it was very frustrating because they weren't willing to do a lot of the social activities that I wanted to do, because of their kids. Some of it was completely circumstantial, but a lot of it was just their plain unwillingness to find a sitter or teach their children how to behave in public so that we could all dine out together at a restaurant. All of our social activities ended up just being get-togethers at various houses, and that drove me crazy after awhile. Not only that, but the kids ended up taking over the whole activity, whether it be physically or conversation-wise. But I didn't just want to dump these friends outright because I had gotten attached to them. I just found another social circle at my new church of just other singles with very few to no kids involved, and it's been a lot better now. We can do all sorts of activities and go places because there are no kids to worry about, and our conversations are about topics that we can all relate to.

[wetblanket]

To the OP:  Your friend is being insensitive.  It's only natural you want and need to be near your baby at this time.

General comment:  New babies, like other major life changes, put a lot of strain on relationships of all kinds. I've seen it go both ways.  As single woman with no kids, whose peers are at exactly that age when they have young kids and babies, I have more experience with new parents who kind of forget that there is a whole big world out there.  All of a sudden, nothing - NOTHING - is as important as the baby and the experience of parenting.  I've even known new parents who responded to info about my life as if it were celebrity gossip - amusing but trivial.  Some parents, especially mothers, sort of stop taking you seriously as an adult because you haven't done the grown-up thing and brought a new life into the world.  So what if you just competed in your first triathlon?  You don't have a baby!

I don't know what the answer is.  I usually just let these friendships slide.