Mom Dilemma: Making Time for Non-Mommy Friends

Ever since Baby C was born, I’ve met a lot of amazing moms and dads. I love chatting about our baby experiences, parenting techniques, our love for babywearing, breastfeeding struggles and successes. It’s definitely great to be able to connect with other parents but it made me think…what about my non-mommy and non-daddy friends? Do my friends without kids care about teething, late night feedings, fussiness, being the 75% percentile for height, when they started solids, when they started sitting on their own or crawling??? The answer is most likely not.

I remember before having Baby C, I would tune out those conversations. It wasn’t because I didn’t care about my friend’s children; it was more because I had nothing to contribute to the conversation.

I went out with one of my non-mommy friend’s the other night for dinner and I caught myself talking about Baby C and what a great eater he is. I proceeded to go on and tell her about my baby food adventures and noticed she was becoming more and more disinterested. She wasn’t trying to be rude but I realized she really didn’t care if Baby C was eating sweet potato, yams, avocado, bananas…she just wanted to spend time hanging out like old times.

That night, I started thinking and I came to the realization that ever since I was pregnant I haven’t been as close to my friend’s without kids as I used to. I am not going out to party and drink with them like before but does that mean our friendship needs to be impacted?

What I gained from this experience and a little reflection was there was life before baby and I have to remember that others might not be interested in every little detail (even though my husband and I can talk for hours about how cute our little pumpkin is!). It is definitely hard to not think about my little one almost every minute of the day because I have so much love for him but it’s important to maintain the balance in all of my friendships.

How do you make time for your friends without children?

About CJ –  A Celeb Baby Laundry Contributing Author: I was born and raised in Hawaii, I moved to Los Angeles seven years ago. I met my husband playing co-ed softball and we got married two years ago. We have two sweet dogs and welcomed our first child in November 2012. We love outdoor activities, traveling and spending time with our family and friends.