Friendships suffer after kids

[Rollon2012]

this was on the Wright Stuff and I do agree in some cases,

that having children can test friendships, i.e people criticising you , telling how/what you should be doing.

I've noticed its generally people who don't have kids who do this too

anyone else experienced this??

I think that sometimes it's not always the mother's side of the friendship that's the problem. I have a few "friends" who basically ditched me after I had DS (I'm the first of my friends to have got married and the only one who's had a baby). It's like they just assumed that I would turn into a "smug married" or baby bore and they decided that they weren't interested in me anymore. Which is a bit of a joke, as I'm so paranoid about being labelled as a baby bore that I hardly ever mention DS - not that they would know, as the majority of people I would have said were good friends have literally not seen me since I gave birth 18 months ago.

It's a bit shit tbh, as I made a conscious effort to keep texting and messaging old friends, to suggest meeting up, and generally to not let the friendships drift. But overall it's been really hurtful - when DS was really small I had a period of 4 months last winter when I didn't see anyone I knew apart from DH and MIL. It was just awful. And regardless of the individual people's reasons for not being in touch (like intense City jobs/suspected ttc issues in one case/general ditziness), from my perspective it added up to a really lonely, miserable winter.

I've always been someone willing to throw toys and bottles into a bag and get the kiddies on a bus and go see friends on the other side of London. After several years of this I noticed that that vast majority of my friends with DC never came to see me, because "it's so difficult to travel with children". It was always me doing to the work.

On the other hand, friends without DC were always willing to meet up, even with the DC tagging along. So I've ironically grown much closer to my childless friends (some of them even bring crayons and paper to keep 'em quiet while we chat!).

I guess you never can tell which way it's going to go!

I kind of know what you mean Zombie-
I was the first in my little group in London to have a child, and I felt pretty abandoned by my friends, especially when ds was a baby.

Last summer I was desparate for someone to go on holiday with (with ds too) and my best friend said she was up for it, so I researched holiday cottages etc for ages.
When it came time to book something she went all vague and it turned out she had made other plans! My other friend always says she cant commit to holidays because of being freelance, which is odd as she managed to go to Brazil last year!
Before you suspect anything, I must assure you that they are very fond of ds, and he is in no way monstrous-i think they just figure it wont be as much fun with a kid.
And maybe it wont, but he is a good traveller, and I am not in any way a child-bore, in fact I only talk about him if asked, and then I limit it.
Also, they are supposed to be my friends! It's really sad going to the seaside just the two of us, and if I had a friend with a kid I would do things with them, as I would see that it can be really lonely.