Will I find new mum friends after NCT ghosting?

[VeeringSlowlyLosingIdentity]

Hi all

First up this is regarding friendships rather than romantic relationships but wasn’t sure where else to post. Posting under a different name to avoid ID.

Like a lot of people on here I’m sure, I signed up to NCT antenatal classes with the primary aim of making mum friends. I wasn’t optimistic as for most of the course people rarely spoke. However, once the babies started coming we all became very close. I wouldn’t say I had much else in common with most of the women, however the friendships were invaluable and motherhood would’ve been v lonely without them.

FFwd to when our LOs were turning 6m and the conversation seemed mostly about weaning. I was finding that stage really challenging for various reasons, and suspect I was also suffering from some late PPD. Everyone kept sharing these IG posts with influencers and the crazy lengthy efforts they’d gone to. I’d so far managed to ignore it when people were bragging and “keeping up with the Jones” but the fact that I’ve previously suffered from an ED made this content overwhelming.

I therefore asked them to if they’d create a separate chat group without me in it, in order to share recipes etc. I didn’t explicitly say I’d had an ED but alluded to MH issues being triggered as to why I was finding it hard. They agreed it was a good idea and were v supportive. I received individual messages/calls/gifts from most of them.

However, ffwd a few weeks and it’d become clear that I’d been frozen out of the group entirely. I’ve since attempted to reach out to a couple of the mothers that I was closest with, but have just been ghosted. Not sure why this has happened. I am old enough to have lost friendships before, but the rejection still hurts.

Have been feeling really down about this so am just looking for some advice on how I can either move on from this, or if it’s worth trying to build some bridges? And I guess I’m looking for some reassurance that I’ll find some more mum friends in the future? Should I be more proactive?

Thanks for reading what’s troubling my heart.

I didn't gel with my NCT group. You can meet other mums at various baby groups, I've met a few on peanut and mush. I hardly see anyone now I'm back at work full time, most friendships have drifted apart. I'm fine with that though as I've never really fit into a group dynamic. I much prefer one on one friendships.

And while I think they were a bit harsh to ghost you, you did ask to be excluded from the group so it could have been some miscommunication

This mum friend thing can be tricky. So many people didn’t have the expected experience from NCT. I wouldn’t recommend it now. It’s absolutely brutal though to feel abandoned like this and these kind of toxic group dynamics can play into every insecurity we have. It’s one more way we can make ourselves feel like a failure.

Get to as many groups as possible now, chat to people, see where it goes. You will make friends, and there are so many opportunities and stages, but also, make sure you take time to value your non-mum friends too.

And I wish I had been this strong.

I didn't join an NCT group as I adopted a 10 month old but I went to activities every day ( to keep me sane) and gradually made a friend at each activity.

When DS was two we moved to a new area and I joined a toddler group that was really welcoming. I'm still friends with the first women who chatted to me that day and now close friends with the women who ran the group. My DS is now 17 years old!

The next group of friends I met were at the pre school he went to and I still have a WhatsApp group called pre school mums even though some of the kids are now at Uni. We get together about twice a year for a catch up.

Then I made a small group of friends from the my younger DD's reception class and we still meet for dinner every few months.

Some friendships faded out and some became solid.

After a while I noticed that the friendships that were formed because our DC became friends didn't endure because kids' friendship groups are always changing and there's often fallings out that the parents get dragged into.

It was the friendships made by having stuff in common with the other mums that have lasted.

Mum friends will wander on and out of your life until your children go off to secondary school. I have mum friends from:

Baby weigh in
Toddler group
Nursery
Swimming lessons
School
Ballet
Gymnastics
Martial arts

Mostly they’re on Facebook and I don’t see them often, but the five of us in the nursery group that have stuck together for the last 16 years. I recently bumped into a friend from baby weigh in - she moved 20 miles away and we lost touch, but now we’re doing a project together! So the friendships ebb and flow, and that’s ok. You may find you reconnect with some of these mums if your kid goes to the same school, but in reality things drift when people start going back to work, have another child, etc. etc. Life takes over. Your people - your real people - are the ones you’d want to be friends with even if you didn’t have the children in common. With my nursery group we don’t talk that much about the kids these days. We talk about divorces and renovations and work and holidays - like normal friends.

This sounds both extremely bossy and pretty contemptuous of these women, who I’m willing to bet made no mention of the Dalai Lama. There will be other opportunities to make mum friends, yes, but you won’t be able to exploit any of them if you expect ‘how to nourish children’ to be blacklisted as a topic without excluding you from anything else, it’s a pretty big part of parenting right up until they’re independent. It’s sad that you have an ED but food and recipes are not toxic and nor are people that discuss them.

Just to clarify about the groups - we were supposed to be keeping the original group, there was to be an additional new group (that I wasn’t in) JUST for sharing recipes. Like a place to keep them. I was just tired of all the oneupmanship of people boasting that they’d spent all afternoon making bloody organic vegan meals blessed by the Dalai Lama himself. For someone who’s had an ED, all the online influencer stuff on what you (or your baby) should be eating is really toxic. I can avoid IG but I couldn’t avoid people sending it to me all day long and it was getting too overwhelming.

But I don't think you handled it very well? Just ignore the things that don't interest you, rather than making a fuss about it?

Yeah, you can't legislate that the other chat was strictly for recipes. These things are organic (if not blessed by the Dalai Llama) and threads just take off. No one wants to be managing two chats with slightly different groups. It sounds less like ghosting than you stepping away, especially with them giving you gifts, which sound like a goodbye thing, not what you'd do just because someone requested a separate whatsapp recipe thread.

It sounds like they have more in common and you don't really like them that much, and it's fair enough not to be into the IG thing, but then it's a good thing to have made that clear and moved on. I think it's best to accept that's what happened rather than they've been cows about it. You will find other friends, mums or not, and being a mum is not the greatest basis for a lasting friendship. You can disagree about all manner of stuff and it can get edgy.

Op I didnt get into group things. Met one or two mams as had babies around same time. It was when she started school I met more mams. Im still good friends with one (boy in her class)

Op my NCT group didn’t work out for me either. A fair number of them had stuff in common but I didn’t really gel and they were definitely meeting without me. It didn’t help that I had a very high need baby and they had much easier babies and were meeting up at trendy cafes for wine! I was at home with a baby that cried constantly and never slept.

Fast forwarding I’ve found my tribe and my tip is to pick baby activities where people with stuff in common with you are likely to hangout whatever that is for you eg baby yoga, baby massage, baby swim, music class etc. That worked for me - takes a few weeks of going along feeling nothing is happening, then someone suggested coffee and a few months later we were eventually a group.

NCT is a weird thing. You are grouped together with people and the only thing you have in common with them are you all having a baby within the same 6-8 week period.

I think it's easier to make Mum friends as your kids grow and build friendships of their own tbh.

My DS is 9 now. Only one of my NCT group has remained a firm Mum friend all this time. Have no contact at all with the others.

NCT friendships work if you fit the stereotype of mums in the area. If you don't benefit them in anyway and need a lot of support, people just don't want to know. They want a friend who is an equal or aspirational, they don't want a struggling friend.

Yes op pity but some things fizzle out. I made few friends through school kids. But with one once girls moved on we hadnt much in common.. polite chat at shop now thats it no more.

I did NCT online online during covid and the last time we saw each other was when the kids turned 1. It completely fizzled, I don't think we ever really bonded because we only saw each other face to face a couple of times. Since then I have found a wonderful group of mums and dads from a swimming group.

I had to remind myself that just because you have children at the same time doesn't mean you are meant to be best mates. Keep going to different activities and you will find people you gel with :)