It's funny what becoming a parent does to friendships. In some ways it has made my friendships much much deeper. The friends who are at the same stage in their life and who I can hang out with during the week when time does funny things such as making days last a very long time whilst simultaneously rushing by, those friends are saving my sanity by empathising and understanding and sharing their own tales of tiredness and snappiness and paranoia and joy. And the friends who clearly take joy in our baby, loving her because we are their friends and she is our child, we hugely appreciate them too.
Then there are the friends who continue to invite us to parties, and who understand that coming to our house is easiest for us at the moment, and who are nice if we have to cancel arrangements, they are great too. And even those who ignore the seismic event that happened in our life when our baby was born, we value those friends too as a reminder of how life was. In fact all our friends are great, and appreciated, it's why they are our friends.
But in other ways having a baby diminishes friendships, finishes what falling in love with your partner started. Because though I would be sad to lose a friendship, in some cases very very very sad, actually all that really matters to me right now is the safety and wellbeing of my own little family. Which means that though I now have a major vulnerability, I also have a key new strength, a superpower that in many ways makes me untouchable, because as long as my husband and daughter love me and allow themselves to be loved by me, nothing else matters.
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