Do This No. 4: Sailing Through the Diaper Changes of One’s Life

by Simone Eastman

Your stories about mourning and grief were perfect and gorgeous, just like you, and I’m completely overwhelmed by how much you share with me, your bitchy lesbian Jewish Dr. Phil, and with one another. Write if you have something you’d like to see me address.

A Do(n’t) Do This reader writes,

My friend is/was really smart and sharp/sarcastic and funny. Then she had a baby (planned) a little over a year ago. Now, the only thing she has to talk about is the baby (understandable, but I just don’t care). I know this will get better/lessen, so I do still try to hang out with her and grin and bear it. But lately she’s been “making an effort” to hang out with everyone again.

Unfortunately, nine times out of 10, this involves breaking the plans at the last minute because she’s too tired/the baby’s schedule got weird/etc. Why does she keep making plans? Doesn’t she realize that when we make plans with her, we’re not making plans with other people? When she is with us, she dominates the conversation with the old “how hard it is to have a child” topic while refusing to accept any of the help we suggest, because we “don’t really know what it’s like.”

How does one handle this? I guess I just have to suck the baby talk up, but is there a way to tell a lady with a baby that you don’t want to make plans with her if she’s not going to show because you have better things that you could be scheduling instead?

Oof. So your friend has a baby, which is great, and which you celebrate with her, but it seems to have made her completely incapable of remembering that other people exist or that they, too, have needs, ones that aren’t best met with the boob or a diaper change. How can you find room in yourself to accept who she’s becoming while also find a kind and firm way to tell her that you need something different from her?

So much of what I’m curious about in this busted hybrid advice slash etiquette column is understanding moments of profound life transition and change, and this is one of them. Because there’s a lot going on here. On its face, the problem seems fairly simple: New Mama has become totally myopic and isn’t being a good friend.

But there’s so much more to this. Because what it sounds like to me is that New Mama might be the first new mama, or one of the first, in your social circle. And what that means is that all of you — you, New Mama, all of your friends — are experiencing and witnessing a pretty profound life transition that is probably confusing and frustrating! How do we grow to accommodate the ways our lives change?

1. You need to understand that her life has changed in a really drastic way. And you need to make some allowances for that.

“My friend is/was really smart and sharp/sarcastic and funny” says a lot to me. Because she still is smart and sharp and funny. No “was” about it. But she spent months in a hormonal dunk tank of sleep deprivation and physical discomfort and has given up everything she loves, including probably her work, to gig as a human milk machine whose total attention has had to be devoted to keeping a small creature alive. Like, that shit’s kinda gonna dull your senses, you know? And she’s probably just as frustrated as you are that these things she loves about herself are so hard for her to access right now.

That’s the heart of the issue, actually — that you don’t know, because you can’t. I think part of what makes these sorts of transition moments so painful is that parts of our lives become illegible, even if only temporarily, to the people we love. There is a lot that you actually cannot understand and that is why you feel like you’re “grinning and bearing it” as someone who doesn’t really care about babies. And I think it’s why it can be very hard for childless people (not necessarily childless by choice people, just folks who haven’t gotten there yet) to accept that everything’s changing, maybe before they’re ready. I have certainly said some shitty things about friends who are new parents. My columns are as much directed at me, past and present, as they are at you.

It’s not very kind, ultimately, to essentially say to your friend, “So there’s a huge part of your life I just don’t care about, and I’m just waiting for it to be over so that things can go back to normal.” Because this is never gonna be over. Boring baby talk is gonna become boring toddler talk and boring kindergarten talk and boring adolescence talk (actually, this could be an awesome/amusing horror story to follow along with? stay tuned to age 13, I think) and boring college-search talk. This is part of her life now, and you have to find a way to take an interest in it.

I wonder if you could stop thinking about the baby as an abstract entity. Less like “my friend has a BABY,” and more like, “Baby Pippi is this new person in my life.” Because that’s what it comes down to. The baby is a new person in your life that you need to decide whether you’re willing to make space for. If you’re not, you’re not, and I don’t judge you for that. Your choices are your own! But it’s more complicated than grinning and bearing it.

At the same time, what you’re describing is someone who has subordinated her identity to her baby and, despite her protestations to the contrary, doesn’t seem to want to do anything to change that. Like, no, you don’t know what it’s like, but you’re not fucking stupid. Housekeepers, babysitters, postnatal yoga classes — whatever it is that you’re suggesting, I’m sure it’s appropriate and potentially really useful! There is stuff you can’t understand, but you’re still thoughtful, for fuck’s sake. She’s just refusing to hear you because you’re childless. And that’s shitty, that she won’t let you be a friend to her because of some whack idea of hers about her unique experience. Thus it’s worth saying that . . .

2. Not all new parents act like this — not all new parents “lose themselves” in the way you seem to be describing.

Your friend is making a choice about who and how she wants to be in the world, but she’s not bringing you into that process and what it’s like for her or maybe even really taking responsibility for it. Breaking plans nine times out of 10 is really not acceptable, baby or no. I mean, yeah, some flexibility on your part is really crucial, because babies . . . act like babies a lot of the time (SURPRISE) and are unpredictable little vectors of disease.

I know people who parent differently. There are other ways to blend these lives together, and she’s choosing a particular, inflexible path. There is, in fact, a way to put one’s child at the center of one’s life that doesn’t require either asking other people to come with you or leaving them behind. (DISCLAIMER: Sometimes one’s temperament or the baby’s needs make the kind of flexibility I’m about to describe impossible. I know that. If you are in that number, I am not judging you, okay?)

I am friends with a really rad couple who have Pizza Night at their house every Saturday, where they make pizza (and ice cream, Baby Daddy makes ice cream!) and their friends bring over beer or cookies or whatever and talk to them and snoogle the baby and her enormous cheeks. Or they strap on Baby and bring her to the park or to the science museum or whatever. Or, at the very least, they make clear that plan-making is on a contingency basis and don’t expect other people to organize their schedules around the family’s unpredictability. And there are plenty of mamas (and dads) out there who show us all sorts of ways to be mothers. Do you think she’d be interested in hearing about them?

And, emphatically, being a new mother does not require you to become someone who can’t think about other people’s feelings. Having bracketed all of the above, she is also being inconsiderate and rude. And I guess part of me wonders whether you need to consider whether . . .

3. This transition might be helping you to see and understand things about each other that have always been there and that you don’t really like all that much.

You may just really not like kids. You may not want to include Baby Pippi in your life. You may not even have known how much you don’t like kids! And she might REALLY LOVE being a mama and a houselady. It may be way more fulfilling for her than she ever thought it would. And that’s totally fine! All of it’s fine! We choose our own jams on the tape deck of life. Or maybe she’s always been inconsiderate of your time in one way or another, maybe she’s always been focused on herself and her special snowflakeness to the exclusion of consideration for others, and it’s just been less obvious to you. Maybe it’s not the baby at all!

This might mean that you’ve both bumped up against stuff you didn’t know about each other, didn’t even see coming — and you might not like it. It might hurt. It might make you wonder how well you knew her or how well she knew you. Sometimes these profound moments of life transition have this effect on us and our friendships can’t bear that weight. I have no idea if this is the case for you or not, but if it is, let yourself grieve it. If it isn’t — or if you haven’t decided yet . . .

4. You can, and should, have a conversation with her about how you can make friendship work for all of you. If she really matters to you, it may require you making some changes, too.

I wouldn’t start with a conversation about the fact that her behavior has annoyed you, because you’re going to run up against that partially-correct, partially-incorrect “YOU JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND” attitude, and the conversation’s gonna get shut down. (Ugh, can we talk about how much I love “Ess That Dee”? I am fanning myself.) What I would say instead is what I think you’re actually feeling: that your lives are changing and that you don’t know the best way to keep her in yours while she figures out who she is as a mom.

I would pitch the problem with canceling all the time in a direct but gentle way — like (and I know y’all hate my scripts, but whatever) “I love seeing you and spending time with you when you can get away and get some time to yourself! But when you cancel at the last minute, even if it’s for a good reason, it can affect my day and I end up feeling like I’m not that important to you.” Or you might try, “When you express your frustration about the pressures of new parenthood, I’m not sure whether you want our help or you just need us to listen to you. It’s hard to see you struggle and I want to help you, but it’s pretty hurtful when you reject our suggestions because you think we can’t understand. How can we help in ways that work for you?” Invite her to do some creative thinking with you about how she could still be “one of the girls” in ways that work for ALL of you. Maybe you just need to move the boozy potluck brunch over to her place? If none of that gets through to her, like I said, this might not have anything to do with the baby or the fact that she’s a mother. It might just be who she’s decided to become, or who she’s been all along.

And remember that Simone loves you. And your babies. There, I said it. It’s true.

Previously: Do This No. 3: Help a Grieving Friend.

Simone Eastman is a cat lady.