I adore my son, and I’m happy I get to spend a lot of time with him but recently I came to realise that the walls are closing in on me – and I’m not even a stay-at-home mother.
Let me explain. I run my own business, with family members and after 3 months went back to work, but bringing Baby in with me. He has his own area, doting grandparents and lots of my attention too. As a solution it’s actually great. Except that there are weeks where I feel I am neither doing my job nor giving him my undivided attention. Especially when there’s a deadline, or pressure (such as trying to get VAT returns and accounts done.)
And when that happens one needs to vent to friends. Except many friends are working mothers with their kids in creches. And the response was sharp and judgemental. “You’re lucky you get to have him with you all day. I have to leave my baby in a creche.” So one realises one is not allowed to complain.
We went through hell to have Baby. Years of treatment, miscarriage and then finally a surprise natural pregnancy. If one complains that things are hard, sometimes, lonely or just a grind, there is a raised eyebrow response and the general reaction that complaint is churlish, in the face of our good luck.
Friends are busy, even the sympathetic ones. Friends are also moving onto their second or third or fourth pregnancy and that creates a distance in itself. There will be no second pregnancy for us.
And I would love to just go out, with some friends, and have a pint. Just a night out, chatting and having fun. I have had one night out like that since Baby was born (10 months) but even then I was acutely aware that once I got home, I would be “on” for the evening so it was impossible to fully relax. I also miss female friends. The people I would have gone out with before are not here. For a myriad of reasons, I am pretty lonely right now.
Now, I have a great life by and large. I have good friends and I have family and I have my lovely baby. I am not crying into my beer every night. But increasingly I have been a bit jinxed where socialising is concerned. It takes so much effort to arrange everyone and meet in the one place at the same time. Everyone is on for it in principle but in practice it’s herding cats.
I have learned over the last few weeks that being sensitive about it is pointless. In the pre-baby days if I had tried to meet someon twice and they cancelled I would have shrugged and met someone else. done something else. Now I give it a third and fourth go. I meet any mother with a child remotely Dara’s age simply because as an only child I want him to have friends, as many as possible, growing up. Now I am applying the same ruthless and relentless appraoch to my own social life.
I am saying yes to anything going (except the pity date with my sisters-in-law that my well-meaning husband arranged. I love them but really, that was just embarrassing.) I’ve become the person who rings around and arranges a night out. I’ve even on occasion employed a dash of emotional blackmail (“it’s been aaaages…”) and I try not to feel hurt by refusals or cancellations.
It’s hard. I am not naturally pushy especially where my own interests are concerned. In truth I am a shy person, who masks it with a lot of chatter. Given my druthers, I’d no more push people to meet up and I am given to a default assumption that no one really likes me. But for my own sanity I am trying. I want to look back in a few years and see this period as a blip, and have a healthy social life with friends to talk to.
I’ll let you know if I succeed 
