By some strange miracle, I recently managed to get out to a friend's birthday drinks in a super-hip gastro pub in the city centre, minus my family, of a Tuesday.
That almost never happens to me these days, but I was in town for work anyway and the person who I was with reminded me of the party nearby, and so I thought it would be fun to pop my head in.
'Who the eff has birthday drinks on a Tuesday?!' I hear you cry, and I am with you. Well, people who don't have kids, mostly, as I took a quick scan of the room and registered that all of my mates present were child-free.
Did I feel a little bit jealous of them, getting stuck into the cocktail list and placing wild orders for chocolate martinis with jaeger bomb chasers without the threat of a teething baby keeping them up all night to stop them in their tracks? Did I yearn for the freedom to frequent a place like this more regularly, where I could lounge on the red leather couches by the fireside and shoot the sh*t until closing time? OF COURSE I DID.
But then something happened. Someone said to me, 'We haven't seen you in so long. Sooo long. Why don't you come out to see us more often?'
I know that might sound like a lovely compliment to some but I found it sort of.. annoying. As if I'd deliberately withheld myself from being available for 'Tuesday Night Drinks' for the last few years. As if nothing important had happened that might scupper me from going out on the lash willy-nilly as they can. As if I didn't have two small kids at home.
I explained how I'd had to be home by 11 pm anytime I went out because Jacob had night terrors for almost two years and wouldn't be soothed by anyone but me. And then I waffled about how the midwives at my antenatal classes had terrified me into believing that my second baby would come early, so that I was afraid to go too far from home for the last two months of pregnancy. And THEN I started to joke about how the journey from my house to town versus from town to my house, was actually equi-distant and that they knew where I was if they wanted to find me.
And that's when it twigged. I took another scan of the room and noted that not only had I not seen these old friends in a long time, but that only ONE of them had ever made an effort to come out to see me since I had kids! None of the others had come to see the babies or had any idea of what I'd really been up to since we'd last met, apart from maybe what they saw on Facebook (and we know that isn't real life, right?)
So I said my goodbyes and quietly took myself off to sneak into bed beside my sleeping family. I thought about how much has changed in the last few years, and in particular about how some of my old friendships have probably changed forever.
I think that people's big life events like birthdays, weddings, new job, new play, new house, new boyfriend etc are all a big deal and always try to mark the event, even if it's just by sending a little card (sometimes it goes about two month's late but it gets there eventually).
Equally, having kids was kind of a big deal to me, and so I also think THAT deserves a chocolate martini with a jaeger bomb chaser. You can bring it directly out to my kiddie-filled house, please and thank you.
Do your kid-free friends 'get' that you're a parent now? Send us in your stories to Sharyn.Hayden@HerFamily.ie
