True Friends
True friends are hard to come by. When you move house and relocate, it can be difficult to leave friends behind and build new ones. This is just what happened to me, so I thought I’d share my own friends story too.
When we got married in Dec 2006, we relocated and didn’t know anybody in the area. A couple of months later saw those terrible 2007 floods and yes, that was us. Our new home flooded, I was 7 weeks pregnant, in a location I knew no one.
I started a new job a few weeks later (they didn’t even know I was pregnant) and life was incredibly difficult. We lived in a caravan on the drive, with no heating through winter, throughout my first pregnancy and first year of marriage. I think that was the most challenging year of my life!
Throughout that time, we had no friends in this location, so when we had the opportunity to attend NCT classes, we jumped at the chance. It was fantastic, we met lots of people, which gave us a chance to make new friends.
There were eight couples and all due around a similar time. If anyone finds themselves in a similar situation, wanting to make new friends during your pregnancy, I would highly recommend NCT classes.
Following these classes, all the mums-to-be arranged to meet for coffee in our local bookshop/coffee shop the following week. This was the beginning of some wonderful friendships. From then on, we all met weekly in this coffee shop, on the sofas, first of all with bumps, then gradually each of us returned minus the bump, but with our beautiful new additions. Our little group grew.
I loved these coffee mornings. I had wonderful new friends to share our baby moments and to talk about our new parenting adventures with. We chatted about anything and everything, from all those cute little baby moments, to labour, birth and sleepless nights. We laughed a lot, supported each other and I think there were a few tears shed too. That’s what friends are for.
As the weeks went on, we enjoyed more and more coffee moments together, cementing some great friendships, until eventually the time came when we had to admit defeat, the babies wanted to be crawling around, not sat on our laps or in the buggy, so we started meeting at each others houses where the children could play. This continued until the children started pre-school and the group unfortunately shrank a little.
Then came the second round of babies, and third in my case. We all got to meet up again, until people started returning to work etc.
However, I still meet with two friends every week after school and we also meet as a group of seven of us every so often for a girls night out. Those coffee mornings were one of the best things that happened to me.
It gave me the opportunity to share moments and make long lasting friendships, which is so important, especially in those early days of parenthood.