Friendships After Baby: Making and Keeping Friends as a New Mom — Postpartum Together
Making and Keeping your Mom Friends
Having a baby can create changes in friendships. When you are parenting a newborn, you need different kinds of friends to support you. Making and keeping mom friends almost feels like dating. Below we discuss the ways friendships change after a baby and making friends as a new mom.
Watch the video and read the transcript below!
Looking for a place where other moms GET YOU? Check out the group offerings we have coming up and find the group that best fits your needs- automatic mom friends!
Video Transcript:
In the taboo ABCs of postpartum, F is for friendship. Friendship can feel so different after a baby.
Maybe you’re asking yourself if your friendships are going to change or if it’s normal for new friends to come? And how do you even make new friends as a new mom? And what to expect from some of your old friends after the baby? There are so many different parts to this
-How we make new mom friends
-What kind of friends we need
-How this looks different after baby?
How do we expect our existing friends to show up for us how our friends can help us after baby?
What it’s like to have friends with babies themselves and with friends who don’t have babies?
So we are looking at all these different changes in friendship after the baby. When it comes to your pre-baby friends, there are some questions that you’re probably going to ask yourself:
Do you still have common interests?
Are you able to align your schedules?
Are you able to enter some of the places that you overlap to maybe that was your work friends, or you’re going out friends or hobby friends?
And do you maybe have the same kind of approach and values and styles?
And when you become a mom, you’re likely going to make new friends. This might be because your children are the same age or maybe you’re running in a similar circle. Maybe it’s a playgroup, maybe it’s a hobby group, maybe it is work or a daycare setting, you might be making a new friend because you have a similar parenting style. And maybe because you have some common interests,
I hear from a lot of moms that they didn’t expect it to feel this lonely, you feel like you’re the only one struggling with something. Maybe you’re trying to keep up with so much and there are all these different changes. Friendships after a baby can be more difficult, but they’re also still extremely important. I encourage my mom clients to ask yourself a few things.
There are a lot of different kinds of friends that we need when we’re new moms. And I want to give you a couple of examples of those.
Examples of Mom Friend Types
You might need the listener, the person that you can call up whenever, however, you need to show up and they’re just going to listen, you may need the wisdom friend, this is the person who probably already has kids. Maybe they’re a little older or they’re in a stage that’s a few months or years ahead and they can be the person to help you gain that wisdom and feel comfortable and confident.
You need that keep it real friend, the friend that you can talk to about anything, nothing’s off the table. Nothing is too taboo
You need a nurturer friend. This is the person you can turn to when you just feel heavy and hard and you need someone to wrap you up in some love and encouragement and be nurtured.
You need the advocate friends, that friend who is going to help you to find your voice and use your voice and be your own advocate.
You need the cheerleader, the one who reminds you that even when it’s really hard, you can do this.
You need a fun friend, the person who encourages you to get out and do something fun, even though it takes more time to get ready. It’s harder to prepare to leave when you have a baby and there are all these roadblocks. You need a fun friend too.
And then you need a friend who has kids who are the same age or with the same interests or parenting styles so that your kids can connect and there is this kind of natural flow.
Ways to Connect with Mom Friends
So how do we even go about making and keeping friends as new moms? Here are a few tips for you:
1. Start the conversation. Don’t be afraid of being a little bit awkward. Don’t just talk to or through the baby. Oh my gosh, she’s so cute. What’s his name? How old is he? Alright, yo, we have to move past this and we have to talk adult to adult and establish this relationship with the other adult.
2. Relax because not every friendship is going to be forever. You’re not going to hit it off with everyone but you’re never going to find your people and your close friends unless you take those chances and you try. You have nothing to prove. Okay. If you have to prove too much, it’s probably not a good friendship for you.
3. Pursue interests. This may be virtual or this may be in person. What are some things that make you feel like yourself, that make you feel human, that make you feel connected, that you can be a part of? Maybe it’s an online book club, maybe it’s a group that gets together too, maybe it’s a baby mama yoga class, because you really enjoy yoga, it’s likely that you’re going to be able to find some of those people that you can connect with when you’re in spaces that already feel natural and interesting to you.
4. Relax because your hair, your car, your house, all these things don’t need to be perfect in order for a friendship to happen. And if they do, it’s probably not the friendship for you. Find the people that you can let down your walls with and relax enough to just take a deep breath and connect.
Ask yourself what you need out of friendships in this season, and what you have to give to friendships in this season. This may be continuing to connect with some of your pre-baby friends, this may be filling the gap with some people that come from different walks of life. And again, not every friendship is forever. Not every friendship fits the same purpose. We have different kinds of friends, different ways that people fill our cups and different ways that we are able to be that friend in other people’s lives.
If you are watching this or reading this, and it is still COVID season, I want to give you some of my favorite ways to stay connected during COVID.
- House party, this is an app where you can have more than one person, you can see all the video screens and they even have some built in games that you can do while you’re video chatting, takes away some of the pressure makes it easy, lots of laughter, it should be fun. You can also do something similar with zoom and jackbox games. So you can use zoom to do these games virtually and just have some fun playing with some friends. Maybe it’s after bedtime, maybe it’s while the kids are so crazy, maybe you understand that there’s going to be some crying in the background. That’s just the way it’s going to be.
- Get a group text going. Maybe this is with people who have kids of a similar age, or just a group of friends that you know, you can turn to whenever you need to get that group text going.
- Other apps: Marco Polo is another awesome app where you can actually video record videos to send back and forth so it’s kind of like text messaging, but it takes it to the next level because you can send those videos back and forth. And another similar one is Voxer which is a walkie talkie back and forth. So I love this when I am taking my kids for a walk or maybe I am waiting for the groceries and the pickup line. I don’t want to make a phone call but I can send a boxer pretty easily and walkie talkie and hear the voice hear the inflection and really be able to connect with people that way. It’s okay if your friendships change after having a baby.
Remember, you are changing person and it’s natural for some friendships, to come some friendships to go some friendships to change, but don’t be afraid of seeking out those people who are going to make you feel fulfilled and connected as a new mom.
- Looking for a place where other moms GET YOU? Check out the group offerings we have coming up and find the group that best fits your needs- automatic mom friends!
Originally published at https://www.postpartumtogether.com on November 18, 2020.