"Why becoming a mum has made me a terrible friend."

I am not going to mince words here, becoming a mum has made me a really terrible friend.

I know a lot of mums also feel the same. I cancel things last minute, I bail from events early, I turn up late to everything and if I do manage to make it to a party, I miss the majority of it as I am busy chasing my kid around, making sure he doesn’t break anything or leave grubby fingerprints over their pristine white lounge, or he doesn’t drop sticky food remnants all throughout a child-free home. It is for this reason that I have slowly drifted away from my childless friends and have made a lot of new mum friends. Not only can we sit and bond over sleepless nights, the colour and consistency of poo, how crap our partners are at following our well established routines and how much we don’t care about the fact our kids eat McDonalds several times a week, but we also understand when we get a message cancelling our play date 10 minutes before we were meant to meet. We understand when we can make ourselves available after receiving a text at 8am saying, “hey, today is going good, I got out of bed and managed to feed the kid and actually brush my hair, let’s get coffee in an hour”.

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Don’t get me wrong, I still love all my old friends and very occasionally we do manage to line our schedules up so we can get lunch and catch up and it’s great. I miss them all terribly, but I am hopeless. I am hopeless because the other thing that happens when you become a mum is that you forget everything. As a mum, you have a million and one things on your mind at all times. You are juggling your child’s weekly classes and commitments, perhaps your own paid job, paying the bills on time, feeding the zoo, remembering to hang that load of washing out that you have had to put on the rinse cycle at least twice because you keep forgetting about it.

Then, to add friendships on top of that is a big ask. Sure, I use the calendar in my phone, hell I even have a weekly calendar on my fridge, but this doesn’t help when you are needing to set a daily reminder to check said calendar. I literally forget everything, from nappies and snacks in the nappy bag to actually turning the oven on when dinner is in there.

This week I really thought I had my sh*t together. I mean, I baked a goddamn vegetable slice. I meal prepped, remembered to get all the groceries and then found the time to pretend to be a decent mother and cook my kid a healthy slice full of grated veggies. I made so much that the freezer is full. So here’s me, thinking I have smashed it this week as a human when I find myself mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, where I happened to see a photo of two of our friends getting married. WTF? When the hell did this happen and why weren’t we invited? Then I realised we were…

Back from family vacay ???? ???? ???? Happy belated 2nd birthday to the most special human in my life, Oakland. We had so much fun that our next cruise is already booked!

A post shared by Carly Naughton (@thg_wyf) on Aug 18, 2017 at 8:46pm PDT

Well, technically we were invited to their engagement party which they sneakily turned into their wedding, only one of the most significant times of their lives. With a sick feeling in my stomach I went through my inbox and read the messages between us from a few months ago, and there was a giant photo of their invite, and my reply saying “oh course we will come!”. Yep, I had forgotten their engagement party, which meant we had missed our friends getting married. I guiltily wrote her a message congratulating her and trying to explain that I had forgotten. That was it, that was my piss poor excuse, I forgot. It was an honest excuse but I don’t think it is a passable one. Just another example of when becoming a mum has made me a super horrible friend. Just another example of why I hang out with other mums, who probably would’ve gotten a laugh out of this had it been them whom I had forgotten.

So now while I sit and decide whether to like all their photos, or consider if that makes me look douchier, I can only wait until to see if one day they have children of their own, so can understand and giggle at us missing their big day. I am sorry guys.

If you have kids, you might be able to forgive us (if you remember)!

Carly Naughton is one half of a same-sex relationship that created a little life in 2015, after two and a half years of fertility struggles. You can follow her blog here, her Facebook page here, her Instagram here, or her YouTube channel here. 

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