How did you build a village?

[NinaGeiger]

Hi,
I've got a toddler and newborn and I really want a 'village' - a network of friends I can ask for practical help when I need it, and obviously give help back as well.

I realised I don't have enough of a network when I was pregnant with my 2nd baby and very sick (hyperemesis) and really needed help but didn't know who to ask. It's due a combination of

• most of my closest friends are people I met before I moved to the city where I live now
• we've moved around a bit within this city as well but are settled now
• family live elsewhere
• finding it hard to ask for help

I watched a YouTube video where a girl who had a baby with a sperm donor and she talked about having a group of friends who were also single mums and if her baby had a stomach bug they'd come and take her laundry away do it and things like that.

There were weekends when I was pregnant and my husband was working, and I was so sick I was in and out of hospital and just couldn't look after the toddler on my own. I found it so hard to ask friends for help but when I did bite the bullet, it didn't work out as they lived too far away and had their own kids etc.

I'm hoping we're on the right track - we recently moved to a new house and there are a few families with small kids on our street who we're getting to know. I have friends from my first maternity leave who I'm still getting to know better and I did a sort of antenatal refresher so am getting to know new mums.
I'm a therapist and I find it pretty easy to get to know people well enough for us to open up about our feelings and struggles etc but find it almost impossible to ask for small bits of help. And it seems like on the rare occasions I do ask, it doesn't work out.

Does anyone have any advice? What worked or didn't work for you?

Nursery.

Almost all of my really good friends came from nursery. We got to know each other at parties and nursery events. Our children became friends, and we did too. Because the children were young, the parents had to stay at parties; unlike school, where they were more inclined to drop and run. And because the other parents were all working (like us) we had more in common with each other.

Good luck.

I think keep doing what you are doing, get chatting at toddler groups, swimming lessons, parties, anywhere you bump into other parents. Nursery didn't work for us in that respect as everyone was dropping off and picking up at different time and rushing to and from work, but as I worked part time I took them to other groups on my day off and gradually made friends in different places. Volunteering to help at groups is good too although be careful not to over-commit. Perhaps invite some of the others in your street round for coffee with their DC, they might reciprocate and gradually you get to know them, their friends. We knew no one in our town before we had DCs but that village did form over time, through primary school and extra-curriculars even at secondary school age.

I would say though that ours tends to be more moral than practical support as with most people working and having busy lives with their own DC it just wasn't always possible to have someone else's DCs at short notice or whatever. One of my friends had imagined this scenario of a group of us all sharing the load as it were but it basically meant a lot of us supporting her and not getting anything back in return as she was always busy/disorganised/didn't have proper childcare arrangements.