Can new mums really not ask 'how are you?' anymore?

[Curiousbananas]

Tell me mums. Does having a baby really and truly mean you completely lose the ability to ask a very close friend 'how are you?' and make space to hear the response, even just occasionally? Can you be so very sleep deprived and focused on your child that you simply can't muster any interest in your friends anymore? Are we friends of new mums just expected to have a one sided friendship because you're a mum?

For context...
I have a couple of very close friends who have recently had babies. I've been a dream friend, I've batch cooked, I've had the babies so they can sleep, I've checked in on my friends mental health, I've bought gifts. The works. Babies are approaching 6-7 months old. Every minute of time together since babies were born has been on their terms, at their homes, and I have been so understanding of this as they've been adjusting. BUT I'm starting to get fidgety. I've also been through a personally shitty time in the past 6 months, miscarriage, bereavements etc and I want my friends back. Is it totally unreasonable of me to expect that I should be offered more than a "hope you're doing ok" every now and then? Can my friends truly not cope with the effort of directly asking me 'how are you?' like they used to, and inviting me to respond? Am I unreasonable to start to expect a 'would you like to come over for some dinner and a catchup whilst partner watches the baby so we can spend a minute just the two of us?' Or 'fancy going for a walk? Or a coffee?'

I am pregnant again right now, the last of my close friends to have a baby and I'm wondering, will motherhood make me suddenly, inexplicably, completely unable to show genuine interest in my friends and their lives when it hits me?

Am I being unreasonable to expect that friendships should continue to be semi two sided after the initial adjustment is over? Hit me!

I think your friends are being incredibly rude.

I had a high needs baby (later dx'd with all kinds of disabilities) and at one point, PND after baby number 2, and i STILL made a point of checking in with my friends.. they were like my point of sanity in a storm that i didn't know how to navigate.. i'd have been lost without them.. and this was 12/15 years ago when we were still using skype/Aim and text messaged to communicate!!

With my first two babies, I would have been totally on the ball to ask my friends how they were.

But my 3rd is a different story. He's 16 months now and I'm only just coming out of the insanely overwhelming feeling of extreme sleep deprivation and anxiety. No way would I have had the mental capacity to even contact a friend, let alone check up on them. DS3 has been a huge challenge, rarely happy until recently, always crying or moaning and slept terribly. Having another person crying 24/7 and not sleeping for more than 2 hours at a time and 100% relying on you = survival mode, I'm afraid. My good friends knew to not expect anything from me. Thankfully, he's coming out of that awful phase now and I'm able to give some time to my friends.

OP you are entitled to feel how you do but in reality many mums are still really struggling at the 7 month mark . I do remember listening for hours to a friend with marriage problems - but she reached out to me - I doubt I had the energy at that point to make contact myself so if she hadn’t phoned me I wouldn’t have known she needed an ear .

I remember sitting having coffee at work and thinking that I couldn't process the fact that the conversation was not all about my baby. It is very overwhelming. Another factor, I think, is that you do get a lot of feedback when you are out and about with a very young baby that tends to reinforce your feelings that it is indeed vey special and very important. (Before I was a mother, I got this wrong, I tended to look at the person pushing the pram and ask about them. I found out that this was not correct from a mutual friend who told me that a pram pusher had complained about my lack of baby-love).

Sorry, haven't read the end of the thread so sorry if I'm repeating.

They do sound a bit shit but I know I've been a shit friend since my DC were born. Between work and small children I just have zero time and zero head space. I hope I haven't been as bad as your friends but in truth there have probably been times where I have been.

The other thing is that when I was on maternity leave I literally had nothing to say that wasn't about my children, and I was boring myself. I couldn't follow the news, wasn't at work, had no time for other interests. If I knew a friend was TTC and had had a miscarriage I may well have given them some space in case the absolute last thing they wanted to hear about was my baby and how hard it all was.

A close friend was like this with me when she had a baby and then suddenly after a year of almost radio silence out of the blue she contacts me, all ‘hiii how are you??’ but I’m afraid we’ve grown apart now. I didn’t want our friendship to fizzle but I was putting in so much energy and getting not much back and feel like again she’s decided now that I’m worth bothering with but I’m not going to let myself be used like that. Friendship isn’t just in her terms. It takes a few minutes to send a message, even if it’s when you’re in bed and that’s the only time you have.

YANBU I was on my own but with my mum’s support as I was living with her and immediately after coming home after birth I was out viewing 5+ houses per week yet doing all the feeds. Then after 4 months of non stop viewings I was decorating & furnishing the house. Yes I did have my mum looking after baby but only for a max of 2 hours per day. I did all feeds and everything else.
I’m not looking for any praise as I massively, massively regret it. I wasn’t emotionally there and feel I missed out on a very precious phase of my only child’s life but my point is, it is possible to spare time to ask how others are. Your friends could surely spare ten minutes to ask how you are? Even if it was just a phone call once a week? That would absolutely be achievable, unless they have other children of course. I don’t so I have no frame of reference on parenting multiple children

Perenially childless friend here and in my experience over a long time (a lot of my friends children are now fully grown adults), I think some women go this way and some don't, and you can't predict in advance who it will be!

I had one friend who had a very clingy baby and a husband that worked long hours, and I provided a lot of support in the way of popping in with food after work, taking the baby for an hour so she could eat and shower etc. Obvs we talked a lot about the baby, and when we saw each other was very much dictated by what she could manage, but she was still my friend and we still talked about other things and had a laugh together.

Another friend went down the rabbit hole and never came back - all she could talk about was her baby, it was like there was nothing else in the world for her apart from her child, absolutely nothing else mattered. Every time I saw her I'd try to talk about something, anything, other than her child but she wasn't having any of it, we'd be talking about shoes or something and you she would always cut the conversation short with something like 'did i tell you what little Jonny did today at playschool welll......'. Even when her child was a toddler, and my relationship broke up after 15 years and I was a mess, she interrupted me sobbing down the phone to tell me something about his bloody toilet training and that was it for me, we are no longer friends. Total tunnel vision.

YANBU but I’m pretty sure I was like your friends too in the early days
Your time is not your own when you’re stuck to a little one and it’s pretty hard to see beyond the end of your own nose a lot of the time.
Like other posters have said, give them a gentler nudge x

Being a mum changes you completely. To be honest for the first year after each of my children I was in a bit of a mental fog and my friendships didn't take a priority. I know where your coming for but sometimes after kids it does just change. I'd not take it so personally x

Mumsnet is some weird paradox where typically if you post AS a first time Mum you're dragged through the mud and made to feel terrible for just about everything whereas if you post ABOUT a first time Mum they are saintly who do nothing wrong.

YANBU to expect more from your friends. All I'd say gently is don't completely write them off, it is overwhelming and yes, can make you a bit "selfish" (for want of a better word) because you're so focused on your situation and your baby which is totally all consuming.

Would you feel able to have an honest discussion with any of them about how you're feeling?

@babyhaha you sound like a shit friend

Some friends get consumed by motherhood- OP you clearly have quite a few of those

@YesILikeItToo Eh? You’re not supposed to ask how the woman is? Wtf? Why? What is the etiquette?

Op the face you are presenting to them is that you are fine.
You have batch cooked , been there, gifts and offered to look after their babies.

Why would they ask if you were ok if they didnt have a reason to think otherwise?
Maybe time to dial back the perfect friend stuff and just be yourself.
Im in the " its too much" camp.
I would fine it all quite overwhelming to have people popping up with food etc

@babyhaha are you sure you’ve actually got any friends and not just acquaintances? You don’t ever see them much regardless of whether or not you have a baby, you don’t have much to do with each other’s lives, you not in contact much. Maybe you are just friendless and that’s why it wasn’t an issue for you 🤷‍♀️

6-7 weeks, maybe. 6-7 months? Totally inexcusable. Unless you’re talking about PND or equivalent, to stop caring, to be so self-absorbed, tells you something about your friendship.

Having said that, 6-7 months in with a first baby, your time if not your brain is still consumed with “wtf do I do with this creature? Do I give it water? Food? What kind of food? Is it sick? Why isn’t it sleeping?”, and it can be a time of massive insecurity and uncertainty. You think it’s all life and death, that you might break the baby or damage it irreparably etc. If you haven’t had a baby yet yourself, your friends will be aware how mental they sound talking about these things with you, and also be aware you have minimal interest in such things. So they try to talk about other stuff…except there’s nothing much else going on in their life because baby. You’d think therefore that the ideal thing would be to take an interest in your friends. It’s the perfect topic. And you miss them, and your old life, and you want to feel normal again. Which is why I say 6-7 months in, your friends are showing you what your friendship is to them if they can’t even be bothered to resume their interest in you. These aren’t friendships based on each other, perhaps, so much as common interests or lifestyles etc

@LuckySantangelo35 I’m sure you can ask in passing, but the most important thing is to make a fuss of the baby. Peering into the pram is the top priority!

YANBU it's ridiculous the way some people go on. Find some free spirited friends. You can keep the helicopters just get some who aren't in bubbles too.
I bf ds1 yet managed to go to a friend's 30th at a club where he was a few weeks old. Dh just gave him one of those gold cartons. I wasn't out of town so he could have brought him down if desperate

When*

@YesILikeItToo I think it should be an equal of your attention when meeting a woman and her new baby. The woman is no less important and worthy of interest/attention than the baby.

@BiscuitLover3678 - thanks for your thoughts. No, when i'm there, I rarely talk about myself. Most often I play with the baby whilst mum has a nap or a shower and then we talk about the baby and then I go home. I don't think I am full on, but that doesn't mean someone else wouldn't find me overbearing! :)

It really depends on your friends resilience, babies personality and the health of both. Also factoring in breast feeding if they are back at work, have much family support. I think most people tend to settle into a steady routine around 6-18m so I d forgive them for now.

[quote LuckySantangelo35]@babyhaha are you sure you’ve actually got any friends and not just acquaintances? You don’t ever see them much regardless of whether or not you have a baby, you don’t have much to do with each other’s lives, you not in contact much. Maybe you are just friendless and that’s why it wasn’t an issue for you 🤷‍♀️[/quote]
@LuckySantangelo35 pre baby, my friends and I all had important careers or most of them were in education. We didn’t have time to meet up once a week like some people do with their friends. We all did what worked for us as we had very busy lives. Then Covid happened, then I had a baby during the pandemic. Not sure how we were all meant to see each other much anyway. I’m certainly not friendless but okay. Not sure why you sound so pressed either as if you’re one of my friends😂 everyone is more than happy with the set up