birds of a feather

They say the best way to get help is to ask for it. What about when you ask for it, over and over again, and you get nothing? Zip. Not even an honest, "I would help, but I don't really don't feel like it." My little Bump is just about to turn ten months old -- that's eight weeks shy of his first birthday -- and all but two of my closest girlfriends have spent, all total, maybe eight hours with him. And the bulk of these eight hours are largely coincident with some "adult" social function that could easily have been Bump-less had I not brought him along. Of the other two friends, only one has continued to stay very much in my life as a friend and as a babysitter. In other words, I'm struggling with the fact that my closest friendships are cooling at a time in my life where now, more than ever, I could use a good friend.

I know my friends don't suck. They just don't get it. And why should they? They're cat owners, not mothers, and lest anybody suggest an affinity between the two I must say that as a cat-owning mother myself, the two forms of "parenting" couldn't be more different. (I can imagine putting Aidan outside for being too noisy about as easily as I can imagine one of my cats needing a diaper change at three in the morning.) Imagine how funny I find it when one of my childless friends refers to their cat "issues" as practice for childrearing. Yeah, right.

I knew what I signed up for when I decided to have this baby: my life would change in ways I knew I couldn't yet imagine. I knew my days of going to clubs, sleeping-in, and the occasional hit from the proverbial hookah would suffer a swift death. Not that I was clubbing, getting lots of sleep, and hittin' the old peace pipe all that much back then, but that's another story. It was both annoying yet difficult to avoid the endless streams of pre-birth cautionary tales from these same friends: once that baby's born, you will be an entirely different person. And, to be sure, the minute Bump was born, I was reborn. I changed from being a me-centered individual to a selfless, bloated, sleep-deprived vessel whose sole raison d'etre, at least for the first three months, was that little baby called my Bump. What the pregnancy books don't warn you about, and they damn well should, is what happens to your friendships, at least with those who don't have kids, once your baby is born.

In an ideal world, my closest girlfriends are interested in my baby. They call me frequently not only to check in on me -- you know, to see how I'm coping with this monumental life change and all -- but to see if they can visit Aidan. In an ideal world, when my friends offer to babysit, which they're very good at doing, they back it up by actually babysitting every now and then. In this world, that is, I'm able to share the crazy joys and frustrations of being a new mom with my closest female friends. The reality is that I often consciously keep my mouth shut when it comes to my baby around these friends for fear of boring them with stories about a boy they barely know.

I have a dream: Aidan, now eighteen, is chilling out with one of these friends of which I speak, getting the skinny on what his mom was like "back the in the day" and what he was like, from their perspective, during his first year of life. The reality, however, is that none of my friends really know who Aidan is. They have no idea what he's like, what makes him laugh, what scares him, how often he smiles, what makes him tick, and how truly perfect he is right now. In a few months I'll be moving from my friends, coming back to visit maybe every several months. Sad but true: my friends have (wilfully?) missed the boat.

I have another dream. Fast forward four years: one of these friends is finally with child. They ask me if I'll babysit. My response? "Sure, how about this: when the time comes, I'll babysit as much for you and you did for me."

Me? Bitter? Never!