
I wanted that mum-magic. I knew it was out there somewhere.
I was the first among my peers to have a baby.
I had never felt as alone as I did in the midst of new parenthood. I wanted so badly to have someone to talk to, someone to understand me and my new life.
I loved my friends, but how would they ever understand what it feels like to drive around your neighborhood in circles, crying along with your baby because he just won’t sleep? How could they relate to me at all when they were working, studying, going out — childless and free, not knowing they should savor hot meals like manna from heaven?
Suddenly I was on the outside looking in at their ordinary freedoms, the ones which had slipped so slyly through my fingers the day my son was born.
I felt a little jealous, yes, but mostly I felt lonely.
My relationship with my husband was as fine as it could be — which is to say it sucked, terribly, because we were new parents with a tiny human wedged in between our once-effortless love. It was suddenly hard to find things to talk about, and harder still to go out together. Our baby’s needs were so constant that we never ended up sleeping in the same room at the same time.
Watch the funniest things parents have done while sleep-deprived.
We would find the new pattern of our love eventually, but not yet. Not for a while.
So, yet again, loneliness it was.
The deep connection I was searching for simply wasn’t there.
Everything I read told me I needed to find a “mum tribe” or I would be relegated to a lifetime of joyless parenting. Mum friends would get it. Mum friends would bring you wine and tell you you’re doing just fine. Mum friends would hang at home or stroll in the park and never go out to meals or movies — just like you. Mum friends were the ones to whom you were supposed to spill all those dark parenting thoughts, and they would nod and say, “Me too.”
I imagined the serendipitous meeting of my new crew members. I wouldn’t even have to say a word, because there would be this intuitive understanding of what it means to be a mother — we would click, we would know, like soulmates bonded to one another before ever meeting.
I wanted that mum-magic. I knew it was out there somewhere.
