THE FIVE STAGES OF NEW MOM FRIENDSHIP (American Baby)

Motherhood changes everything, including your choice of friends. But beware: much like first love, first-time mom friendships rarely last. It takes you a while to figure out that it takes a lot more than just a baby on the hip to make a friendship withstand the test of time. But like everything else, new moms don’t realize this yet. Below are the five stages of a standard new mom friendship.

The lamaze stage
– you meet the woman in your Lamaze orientation meeting who is due the same day as you and you bond instantly. By the end of the first class you're both ignoring your husbands and the teacher in order to get every last detail about your strange, third-trimester cravings (her: watermelon. You: clams), and how big your boobs have gotten. Who else can hold a 30 minute conversation about stroller brands? Certainly not your husband. Exchange numbers and plan to meet up at pre-natal yoga. You've met a new best friend. Well heck, your old best friend still cares about her career and doesn’t want to see your sonogram print-outs anymore.

The newborn phase - She calls every morning at 6 because she knows you’re up and waiting for her. You’ve got to check in with each other, after all, from the long, sleepless night. A lot’s happened. Or not. Can’t hurt to check, right? Just to see if you’re on the right track?
"How's the baby?" she asks.
"Still breathing,” you say. “Yours?”
"She's good. She had three poops last night."
"Really? What did they look like?"
Agree to meet up later in the day to discuss very important aspects of baby effluvia, assuming either one of you can make it out of your pajamas. Since she lives nearby, she sometimes drives over in her pajamas anyway, and that’s fine, since your big plans for the day involve sitting on the floor comparing labor stories, nursing, and weeping for no particular reason. Sometimes you stir things up and hold each other’s babies for a while. But mostly the two of you are just content to be together: A single, new-mommy mind – blank, exhausted…and blissfully content.

The reality phase – Every day your baby wakes up, alive and smiling at you, is like another cosmic vote of confidence for your ability to do this parenting gig. You no longer need the 24/7 telephone support of another new mom to talk you through such daily tasks as bathing your baby or administering medicines. Baby is helping things along as well, what with her sleeping through the night already and her nice little two-nap a day schedule. But along with all those returning braincells is the realization that you and your new best friend aren’t really that compatible. You’ve invited her to join your book club, for example, but she’s declined, saying it conflicts with her scrap-booking night. Another time you suggest car-camping for the weekend but she is shocked – shocked! – that you would even consider something so laden with germ potential to the girls.

You get the sense she doesn’t approve of your parenting style. She’s very much more serious about it, after all. You tried to tell her how you forgot your diaper bag that time and had to improvise a diaper using your sock and some string from the back of your car and…well, she didn’t laugh at all. And such a look she gave you! You still see each other three or more times a week, mostly at the park or at the bagel shop before Mommy and Me classes, but she hasn’t dropped by in a month. And you’re relieved.

The Beginning of the End – You met another woman. She’s clever, bookish, horribly disorganized and laughs about the time she had to use a T-shirt for a diaper. You end up talking for hours, and only a third of the conversation is about your babies. In short; here’s a girlfriend you’d like regardless of her mom status. In the meantime, encounters with your old “new mom friend” have become ever more strained.
That’s because all you can manage to talk about now is the Mommy default topic: your kids. Which means it’s now all about one-upmanship.
You run into her at the pediatrician's office and grit your teeth when she tells you that her little one never gets ear-infections because she’s still breastfed. “You know, extended breast-feeding takes a lot of baby weight off.”
“Maybe,” you counter. “But that bottle sure gets her down easy. Boy, nothing like a full night’s sleep to put a whole new perspective on things.”
“Did I tell you Susie has a vocabulary of some 50 words already?”
“No, you didn’t. Fortunately I don’t need my one-year-old to talk. I know what her needs are.”
“We’re going to be buying a bigger house.”
“Well we’ve refinanced and are going to Spain this summer.”
“Do you think you’ll have another?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I already am!”
“And I thought that was baby fat! Silly me!”
It’s not long before you both take pains to avoid the random meeting.

The End. You both know it’s over. But nobody wants to state the obvious. So instead, it becomes harder and harder to schedule a coffee klatch, much less a playdate. And let’s be honest, your mellow, easy-going kid is just an eensy bit terrified of her “high-spirited” little imp, isn’t she? Judging by the way she cowers behind your legs when you run into each other, your daughter would be happy if you never saw this woman again.
Guilt gets the better of you and you call every week or so, but are always hugely relieved to get her machine. “Call me!” you chirp, and hang up to go about your business, knowing you, at least, have done your social duty. She returns the call two weeks later. “Sorry! Got busy! Call me!” And so it goes, until the phone messages taper off and neither one of you can be bothered to remember whose turn it was to return a call.

It’s inevitable that you’ll bump into each other in the supermarket. You’ll raise your voices two octaves and air kiss. “It’s SO good to see you! You look GREAT! We HAVE to get the girls together!” You might even go so far as to write her number again even though you once knew it by heart (“The baby ate my address book….heh…”) and promise to call this very week. You both know you’re lying through your teeth, that apart from your girls, born two days apart, you don’t even share a coffee drink in common (those double half-caf soy mocha drinks of hers should have raised red flags long ago…). It’s time to cut the cord. You were once the best of friends, but your babies have grown and so have you. No regrets though, and no hard feelings. Nobody knows what kind of parent they’ll be until they become one. And at least you had each other to cling to through those scary early months before you realized you were the wrong kind of parents for each other.

...parenting can be dangerous