Do you still hang out with single or childless friends?

[jec2]

Ok, I am assuming that you all just "hang out" with friends all the time. Maybe it is just the adjustment of having a new baby and not a lot of time, or desire, or where with all to do things--even just visit--with our friends. I have one dear dear friend who is single ( dating) and she often calls on fridays to pop in for a quick visit. It was great right after Finn was born, but now I just don't feel like I have anything interesting to say to her.

a couple of weeks ago we met friends for coffee. They have a 9 month old. I swear we spent an hour consumed by poop! And, we probably could have spent another hour or two on it!

[egoldber]

NO! :)

We have no friends any more that don't have children. But part of it is that we moved when I was pregnant, so all the friends we have made here already have kids/babies. I did find that when I have met up with old friends that they are really not at all interested in talking about babies. That is until they have one of their own! :)

[KMommie]

I think some of it has to do with the adjustment. Most of our single/childless friends---we do see less of them, and for me, it's been harder to keep the conversation going. But, I'm getting better at it--going back to work p/t really helped. We do have a couple of friends, who we still see a lot. We can go out to dinner, and they love playing with Kiki. These are both dating couples who don't have kids. But, these are also friends who are aunties and uncles (they have sibs with kids), so maybe that makes them more baby friendly?

Jeannie
mommy to Kiki 4/18/03

[deborah_r]

Great question!

We have 3 childless couples that we occasionally do things with; usually we bring the baby along. I think it is kind of a novelty for them now, not sure how they will feel as he gets older...like, "can't you get a babysitter??"

But it is hard not to talk about baby stuff - I feel totally obsessed with babies right now - LOL, I see one on TV and I either go "awwww" or start crying (depending on the context). I almost started crying at this show about snow monkeys, and there was an orphaned one and they didn't think he was going to make it...

DH and I don't really have friends that we do stuff with separate from eachother, and we didn't before DS was born either. Just some work friends for each of us. We've relocates many times, so we are kind of used to being eachother's hangout partner!

[peasprout]

Hmm, we must be in the minority. Almost all our friends are childless. We do still hang out with them a lot. They love DD and I think she gets more attention than we do! :) We aren't able to stay up as late as them or catch a movie on the spur of the moment, but it doesn't bother us. I do find an instant connection when I meet other moms, but my friendships with them just aren't the same as with my long time friends.

[C99]

We don't really "hang out" all that much anymore -- with anyone. I have playgroup once a week and try to do playdates with friends w/ kids 1-2x week. I still talk to my childless friends, but I probably talk to them maybe once every other week and see them maybe once/month.

[DDowning]

We have 3 childless couples that we hang out with on a regular basis. Plus, once a month we do a couples bunco - some of the couples are married, some aren't. I'm part of a ladies dining out group where we get together once a month and try out a new restuarant - there are 2 or 3 single ladies there that I've developed a pretty good friendship with. I still call my old boss every now and then and hang out with her. I enjoy my time with DS but its good to have something to talk about other than baby 24-7.

[Melanie]

Most of my friends were childess before Ds was born. I understand what you mean, we have almost nothing in common and they don't understand a thing about parenting (like why 10 pm is late and why naptime is so important).

=-(

[NEVE and TRISTAN]

We do ...none of our relationships pre baby have changed for a second, our friendships are very important to us so it was not even an effort it was automatic.
While on the subject of friends though I have felt...
I am happy that a couple in the neighborhood who I adore and are by choice (I assume) childless still want to hang with us. They like T which suprised me how much they'll complement him and all, they don't hold him but they do coo at him, but I am just THRILLED that they chose to still hang around us :)...they are very set in their ways, and I worried they wouldn't want to lunch, have cocktails etc... with a Toddler around...

I have had major difficulty not really gettign to know new moms BUT to walking away from the experience as if we really got to talk about out us and stuff. I jsut assume there is always time, but will get home and realize we never finished "that" conversation we started because it was stopped due to chasing children...
C'est la vie I suppose...
Neve
http://home.nc.rr.com/ourbabytristan
AKA "mama2be"-forgot password
and Baby Boy Tristan born @UNC
Feb 25, 2003
Brother to 3 pups "gees" and 2 kitties

[llcoddington]

I totally understand! Most of our friends are childless and we find it to be very difficult. Mostly because our friends really don't get it. And, I don't expect them to. However, sometimes I just want someone who doesn't ask my "why" when I say I'm tired or doesn't ask me if I did anything "fun" today! Seems that right now talking about much of anything exhausts me! I've apologized a few times to one friend because I can't think of a single intelligent thing to say to her!

On the other hand, we visited with friends with a one year old last weekend and we did the same thing you did. Talked about poop. That was annoying!

I do have one close friend who I can talk to about anything. We both have kids and she's pregnant, yet our conversation is more than that. I really believe that it's my high maintenance friends who are wearing me out. The ones who I could talk to about anything are still enjoyable to be around.

Lana
mommy to Lauren 12/5/03

[etwahl]

we've had to make all new local friends since moving here when lauren was 4 months old.

we have lots of friends who have babies, but our "best" friends so far do not have kids. BUT they love lauren. LOVE HER. they are so great. the hubby keeps telling us they're going to come over soon and take care of her while evan and i have a night out alone (or a few hours anyway) which we haven't had since i was pregnant.

i think it depends on the people...whether they have kids or not. i think as far as those who don't have kids, if they love kids, want them, then you'll have a better chance of having more in common with them still!

Tammy,
Mom to Lauren Genevieve
03/12/2003
www.evantammy.com

[bluej]

You mean there are people out there w/o kids? LOL! Seems like everyone we know has kids. But I do remember when we had Alex and it was a tough adjustment for a lot of our friendships. We were the first to have a baby by MANY years! I think our married friendships lasted b/c even though they didn't have kids and weren't going to for some time, Alex wasn't exactly a foreign concept for a lot of them. But most of our single friendships drifted apart. Not just b/c of Alex, but b/c of jobs and moving and such.

[muskiesusan]

With most of my childless friends, we made the adjustment with no problem with. Unfortunately, my best friend had a very hard time with me getting married and even harder when I had Nick. It is unfortunate, but she is still single and struggles with it, which I think is unfortunate. Sometimes when I talk to her, I feel like she thinks I betrayed her in someway. Needless to say, we rarely talk anymore, which makes me very sad.

But, I do find it a ton easier to hang out with those with kids since they understand us having to be home by 8pm, and not 2am! Most of the time, we just hang out by ourselves!

Susan
Mom to Nicholas 10/01/01
& Baby #2 due 4/23/04!!!!

[amp]

Like Susan, I sadly lost a few friends, one in particular, when I got married. It got to be too much work to talk to her. She was jealous and wanted to spend an hour talking about her single life, but didn't want to hear anything about my life. It got to be too tiresome, so we stopped talking. She doesn't even know I had a baby.

We also moved to another state around the time we got married, so we had to make new friends. We don't have a large group of friends. Mostly we hang out together and are used to that. One of the couples we hang with has kids, so they totally get the schedule. Another has grown kids, so it's harder to get together since we have bedtimes, naptimes, routines, etc to follow. We also hang occasionally with other people in the neighborhood when the weather allows, and some of them have kids and some don't. But since that usually takes place in front of/behind our homes, we are close enough to stick to our schedules without much trouble.

Sheesh, I don't really know how DH and I would actually have time to do much else. Like I said, we spend most of our time together and our hands are full w/ Jake as it is! I can't figure out where we'd carve our more time to do stuff w/ people! By the time we get to relax, Jacob's in bed!

[parkersmama]

LOL, Jen! That's *exactly* what my response was going to be!

Hey, wait. We did go out to dinner a month or two ago with a childless couple from church. But I'm pretty sure that the crying, spilling, screaming, fighting, pottying, and general messiness of having friends with kids has driven them away. Now we have distant politeness! LOL!

[jec2]

>
>i think it depends on the people...whether they have kids or
>not. i think as far as those who don't have kids, if they love
>kids, want them, then you'll have a better chance of having
>more in common with them still!


Tammy, I think you are right. I know when one of my best friends had her 1st baby 4 years ago, we still loved to hang out with them. Probably too because I have a 9 year old niece and babysat from the age of 13 up and love, love, love kids. But, like others have mentioned, the schedule and hours that we keep now are different from our childless friends. We had a friend invite us over for dinner when DS was 1 month old and he was so excited to have "the family" over. We were to be there at 7 pm. Uh, at that point Finn and I were going to bed at 8! Thankfully he changed the time for us, but one of my younger friends just invited us out on a pub crawl. Yeah, right! Can you imagine me out on a pub crawl w/ a freaking breast pump!?