Why do so many expecting mothers drop their childless friends?

[CaptSkippy]

It is now the second time in the past couple of years when I am losing a friendship due to a friend having a baby. It follows a pattern:

Friend I haven't heard from in a while suddenly contacts me, seemingly to catch up. She'll ask me how I am doing and when I ask her in return, she'll announce she is pregnant. I congratulate her and during her pregnancy I'll contact her a few times to ask how she is doing and I'll be lucky to get a reply.

After she gives birth, sometimes I hear she now has a baby, but often I don't hear from her at all anymore. Although these were not super close friendships, they did last for years through various events (people, moving, switching careers, etc). But when there is a baby I feel I though I no longer have value to them, even as a distant friend and it does sting a little.

Why does this happen? I don't know if I am even looking for an answer. I just want to get this off my chest.

I had high risk pregnancies. So I found it totally overwhelming. Same once babies were born. I was completely traumatised for about a year. But talking about pregnancy and babies is boring to people who don’t have them. So it was like I couldn’t talk about the most important and stressful thing in my life to some friends. So I stopped prioritising them.

I'll just have to accept that this is one of the many reasons that friendships can drift apart. You can't make people stay in touch when you are that low on their list of priorities. It's sad, but it happens.

Are you all right, @CaptSkippy?

It is extremely upsetting and it can make you feel pretty worthless, in all honesty

@CaptSkippy

I'll just have to accept that this is one of the many reasons that friendships can drift apart. You can't make people stay in touch when you are that low on their list of priorities. It's sad, but it happens.

Or you could just hang on for a while, lower your expectations and wait for them to come out of the other end? It requires patience but it's a long life, it's be a shame to discard friendships because they wobbled through the baby years.

It's up to you to set the limits on your friendships so if the above doesn't work for you then ditch them.

By way of an experiment though, why don't you get in touch with one of your friends who you went through this a years or so ago and check the temperature on things now? You more than likely find they are relieved to pick things up again and that it wasn't another lost friendship in the fire of motherhood.

@CaptSkippy don’t take it that you are low on their priorities. They will be overwhelmed, possibly having baby blues (I cried so much my eyeballs got a weird wrinkle) and just flattened by the baby tsunami that has hit them. Also after birth your self esteem and body image are often shot to shit and many people including me, feel embarrassed to meet with nicely dressed, well-adjusted friends not currently babied-up

I found it almost impossible to keep in touch with most of my friends without children after I had a baby. The ones who had children understood the demands that caring for a baby/toddler made on my time, and were happy for socialising to consist of stuff I could actually do (eg sitting in the park, going for a walk while the baby napped in the pram, coming over to eat cake while I breastfed) and expected me to be a slightly dirty, exhausted husk of a human being who thought obsessively about sleep and always had half her attention on someone else, because they were or had been in a similar situation. The people who only wanted to see me to do fun adult stuff or go out in the evenings didn't see me for the next seven or so years until I could do that sort of thing again.

My best friend didn't have children and doesn't really like young children, and I think we both hurt each others feelings a bit and miscommunicated a bit, and we've both said there were things we would do differently if we were to have the time over again with hindsight, but I think it helped that she has a very demanding, all-consuming job which which she loves and which will push all other aspects of her life to one side for weeks at a time, so we were already used to keeping a friendship going under those sorts of conditions.

Yeah, I'm alright.

I have made up my mind to send them something. The friend from the last baby did send me a card to inform them of their daughter's birth.
So, I suspect she might want to get in touch somewhere down the line. I'll leave it up to her.
The last two friends went completely AWOL a couple of years back and I have not heard from them since the pregnancy. I was having deja vu feelings.

I find the word priorities a bit loaded here. Is my baby higher in my list of priorities than my friends , yes of course, does that mean I don’t care about my friends, no. It’s just changing expectations, I did this with friends when they had babies first , I went and had tea and baby cuddles at their house rather than meeting for a glass of wine in the pub. We did get back to wine but it was less often, I think life and friendships change and evokes, not just because people have babies. Sometimes it’s difficult though when it’s not at the same pace as your life changes.

I'm sat here with a newborn and it is definitely harder to find the time to keep up with everyone but I'd rather ring a friend when baby is asleep than do the housework so I prioritise that! I have been on your side OP and it's like I didn't have anything of interest to them anymore. At the moment all I want to talk about is babies but I'm sure that will change so would still want to chat about all the pre baby stuff!

I found the opposite. I was dropped by two friends when I announced I was pregnant.

@CallMeNutribullet

I found the opposite. I was dropped by two friends when I announced I was pregnant.

My experience was much the same

I used to be friendly (but not friends) with a neighbour. After she had her baby I assumed that there would be many visits from family and close friends to cope with, as well as caring for the newborn. I asked after her when I saw her husband but kept away for ten days. When I finally called i was given down the banks for "neglecting" her. After that I scarcely saw her.

I was the friend who didn't have kids when others did, and I think it depends very much on how you approach the friendship now, and what you expect from them. Do you go round with cake and offers of help; do they know that your available to keep them company and give support while they readjust to this massive change in their lives (while they're also probably dealing with extreme sleep deprivation, recovery from birth injuries, feeding difficulties etc). Or do you want the same from them as you had before, and are you feeling hard done by because they aren't available to you as they once were? Maintaining a friendship post-babies requires quite a lot of give on the part of the childless person, I think; it's just not possible for a new mother to give very much outside of her immediate family. You have become a lower priority, for good reason; if you're feeling sore about that then the friendships are going to fade.

when you have children your circle gets smaller and more orientated around the lives of your kids and your family. It isn't necessarily just childless friends that get dropped, it's also friends with children that just live further away.

Those with children just experience their circle changing as old friends are replaced with new. Usually many more new ones in fact. But those without children just notice they're drifting apart from friends.

It's not their fault, or yours, but it is pretty inevitable.