by: Emma Aguirre
Our new mommy group is expanding beyond the little back room at TMC and will now take place in the larger educational room close to the front desk area. We plan to take it to the floor and sit on comfy cushions and let the babies continue to roll around on a large mat. It’s a real warm, fuzzy feeling when the room is bustling with several conversations and it leads me back to something we discussed a few weeks ago in the group.
Earlier this week, CBS Houston voted TMC one of the best places to make new friends with kids in the city. I’m not surprised and I completely agree! Until now we’ve always had the security of our ‘work friends’ or ‘college friends’, but how do you go about making new mom friends? All you have in common is that you’ve had a child in the last several years or months and your life has done a total 180. We decided it’s a difficult, daunting task. You have your life-long friendships that will never fade no matter what. But it’s often hard to connect with them when they aren’t married, or they aren’t a parent yet, or they live far away. That’s where our work friends that you see every day and sit across from really come in and new friendships are often built that way too, especially if you’re not from Houston. When you replace those consistent faces with a screaming baby, life can become incredibly lonely. I’m not from Houston myself, but my husband is. I have those life long friends that are planted all over the country, the world. Most are not married and certainly don’t have children yet. I moved to Houston when I met my husband and I quickly made strong ties at work. I consider several of those girls now my closest friends, but we’re all in different places going at different paces in life. I love them all nonetheless, and I think when you get married and especially when you have a family, you really learn who your true friends are.
Which is why the warm, fuzzy feeling that I get from the new moms group is one that I look forward to every week. It’s part of my routine with my daughter and it’s just fun to watch the babies interact, as they’re mostly the same age. Sometimes we put the world to right, other times, like this week we simply chat with the person next to us about whatever is on our minds. There are no rules and there are no judgments. And that’s really what being a friend to a new mom is about. We’re looking for someone to chat with over lunch, or at the park, about our kids and new lives and the challenges we face. We are just hoping to find someone else in our shoes who we can relate to. Hopefully one or two of those friendships stick and we find another life-long friend, but if we don’t that’s ok too. It helps just the same.
