To wonder if your NCT group are still friends?

[whereilived]

Ours was pretty tight but now the year before school I can feel is drifting. It’s sad but a bit inevitable I suppose! Has anyone managed to maintain friendships?

No

Yes 12 years on, most of us keep in loose contact and a few are still very close.

Only for the first year. I would have liked to but no one else seemed to make the effort.

Covid pretty much ended ours

Not me, no. I was the only one who went back to work full time and the others all had second babies at the same time, before me. So they were very happy to meet up during the working day which obviously I couldn’t do.

Nowhere near - that WhatsApp died in the first year. I kept in touch with a couple of the girls sporadically but haven’t spoken in years now and I know a couple more kept in touch with each other. I’ve got friends with 10+ years NCT friendships though - it definitely happens.

We had someone within our group who had quite a dominant personality which stopped me wanting to join meet ups really, and I didn’t want to suggest meeting up without her so it just didn’t really work out for me

I've been in two groups - one I'm good friends with one of them, Xmas cards with a couple of the others, the other I see a couple of them rarely a little bit but our children are all mid twenties now. I think it's natural for it to tail off when you go back to work and then they all start school as more difficult to meet up.

No, I’m still on mat leave but I can already sense the drifting.

however, there’s a couple that I’m very close to so I can see that continuing post mat leave

Year 2 now and some see each other more than others - either because they live closer or kids go to same out of school clubs just by coincidence. All kids are at different schools (London). But no one is best of mates or anything. We do have a mums meet up about once a year which is lovely - everyone makes an effort apart from one mum. That meet is always nice as we do reminisce about the baby days we had together.

Not really - I meet up with one woman fairly regularly but the rest of the group dropped off as people went back to work but other people I know meet up all the time so definitely a mix

Four years on, I still see two of the mums from my NCT weekly. I'm a SAHM though. I'm not sure how I will be able to see them regularly when I return to work.

No. We didn't have much in common beyond the very early newborn stuff. We ocassionally share a Facebook comment around their birthdays. But we didn't really ever "click". Thankfully I had other friends I met along the way that I had things in common with. One mum with a similar aged baby we used to meet to to debate a philosophical or political question because we were so bored of baby groups 😂 I'm still in touch with her 10 years later and she came to stay a couple of months ago.

Yes. 4 families - we celebrate the kids' birthdays with a joint birthday party every year; additionally we meet up with the kids a couple of times a year (whole families, Sunday lunch for example); we meet just adults (mums) for dinner 3/4 times a year; and we go away for a weekend together (just the mums) annually.

Kids are 15 in the spring. They are the best friends I've ever had.

Mine was very cohesive until the start of school, when people started moving away, etc. We still met up occasionally for a few years after that, but now it's just individuals who keep in touch. I think it's lovely if your group is part of your first year as a parent, but anything after that is a bonus really.

That’s so lovely @SwanSongMoggy . I kind of hoped that might happen with ours but I think we’re just too spread out geographically and our hours are too different - some part time but different days and some full time.

That closeness has gone which is a shame.

Yes. We're still friends after more than 30 years.

Yes. 26 years later

Not all the group but some of us are still close friends 23 years on

Eldest DCs are 3.5yrs. We generally see each other around the DCs birthdays and maybe 1 or 2 mums nights out per year? A couple of the group have moved away. We've all had second DC at slightly different times so there hasn't been a big overlap of second mat leaves. I lived slightly further away than the rest of my group, so I always found it harder to meet up. I didn't really make one close friend but everyone is perfectly pleasant.

17 years on and we are loosely connected. All meet up occasionally.

It’s harder to keep the contact going when the kids get older and start school; different schools, different after-school activities, different weekend activities, kids making new friendships at school, house moves, parents returning to work/changing jobs/working days and hours etc.
To be fair, we did have a second wind when we all started having second kids as there was a second round of maternity leave which saw us all back together again.
I happen to see some more than others just due to the proximity of where we live and our work hours.

We just didn’t like one another. I moved away when DS was about seven months, but we’d stopped communicating months before that.

None of mine have had seconds 😭

Yep 19 years on we are still friends.

Yes, 18yrs on. We meet up in the school hols. All the teens come along a couple of times a year, we play mini golf in the summer.

No all fell out by the time the kids were age 3. Wasn’t helped by some very strong characters including an ex toxic friend of mine who I should have never agreed to join a group with.

My parents are still friends with their equivalent baby group nearly 50 years on! All of them still married to each other and they meet up regularly.