When I had my first child in 2010, I began a mommy and baby yoga class on the Upper West Side in New York City. All the women in the class, including me, were skittish and exhausted, and any real attempts at connection were drowned out by the cries of fussing newborns. Still, we tried to form bonds about the terrors and joys of caring for a cuddly newborn baby.
If we got a word in without needing to breastfeed or take a crying baby outside during our meet-up at Le Pain Quotidian, it was considered a success. But when my son turned 1, our tight-knit group drifted apart, some moving out of the city, others no longer needing a shoulder to cry on. I never talked to those women again.
I figured that’s how would be: You would meet fantastic women at a certain point in time. You’d swap kid hacks, compare notes on sleep schedules or weaning babies off whatever they needed to be weaned from, and when the relationship ran its course, you’d move on. These would be a series of friends centered around convenience, rather than true connection.
After all, they were mom friends! A punch line in an SNL skit, women sipping wine and sharing their woes in mom jeans. Women you went to when your kid was potty training or throwing a tantrum. They were not the friends you’d call when you were having a fight with your sister or dealing with a sexist coworker.
Mom friends didn’t count. Well, not in the way your closest friends from college did. Then my son, Harper, started kindergarten, and .
