My husband and I have been married for a little over two years, and we just found out we’re pregnant with our first baby. I’m really excited about it…but my friends don’t seem to be as thrilled. I’m the first of us to get pregnant, and already I can feel some of them pulling away from me–acting awkward about me not having anything to drink with dinner, or not inviting me to things I would have gotten an invitation to in the past. What can I do to convince them I’m the same person? I never thought I’d lose my friends over this; it hurts that they can’t be supportive.
-The first to expect her first
First off, can I please just beg you not to perpetuate the “we got pregnant” thing? You guys didn’t get pregnant as a pair; YOU got pregnant. Just you. Wills and Kate will both parent the next baby prince, but only she is going to vomit profusely every day until he arrives.
Anyway.
The short answer? You should probably just accept that you’re going to lose some of your friendships, or at the very least, lose the version of them you’re used to.
Not because your friends are awful–they may be, but nothing in your letter really suggests that. Just because you’ve made a life-altering decision…and they haven’t. You are totally ready to move on to the next phase, where you suddenly have non-theoretical opinions about nursing duration and whether or not a baby belongs in a certain restaurant (actually, all our opinions are equally valid on that second point).
But they’re not there, yet. Some of them may never be there. And just like other major-life-changes, this one is going to have some friend fallout.
Think of other major life moves: when you chose a college hundreds of miles away from some of your high school friends, did you stay equally close with every single one of them? When you graduated said college, and half your classmates moved to cities all around the country, did you have the exact same relationship as when you lived in the same dorm room?
Of course not. And you’re making a similarly terrain-shifting decision here; your friends aren’t pulling away because they don’t care or because they’re bad people, but because already you have less in common with one another than you did pre-pregnancy.
If that hurts, make the effort to find time for them now, and make an even bigger effort post-baby (without the assumption that any get-together is children-welcome; that’s just not true).
It sucks, but it’s also likely that in a few more months, you won’t have time to think about it, and you’ll realize you feel the same way: that you just have less in common with your childless friends than you used to.
That’s sad, but it’s no one’s fault. And if you’re ready to dive into parenting, a few weekend parties is the LEAST of the sacrifices you’re going to find yourself making soon.
What’s your problem? No really, I’m asking–tell me here:
