My Best Friend is Having Another Baby
And I feel bereft
I know that makes me a bad person, so there’s no need for you to tell me that, but I’d at least like to explain why.
I don’t want to have my own children for many, many reasons, but the biggest one being that I just don’t want to.
So every time one of my close friends announces that they are having a baby a little part of me is sad because I feel that it means the end of our friendship — not completely — but as I know it.
I’m 34 — a ripe age (even verging on overripe) for reproduction — and I am the one who is going against the grain, so I shouldn’t be surprised when my friends tell me that they’re pregnant. And my best friend already has a daughter who is eighteen months old, so why do I feel extra bereft this time round?
It’s because the last time I saw my friend, when I went down for a weekend to visit her and her husband and babe, in the one hour we had to ourselves to grab a coffee, she told me that she really didn’t want another baby.
Whilst she loved her daughter and was clearly extremely dedicated to her, she told me that she was happier now that she was a bit older and a bit more independent.
Her baby had been born during the pandemic and due to various lockdowns had major separation anxiety as she was so used to being with my friend all of the time. My friend felt ready to start thinking about her career again.
My friend’s daughter is lovely and I spent a lot of time playing with her, talking to her, reading to her. Even though she’s still so young, she loves books, so I always buy a new one for her every time I go to visit and we read it together.
Don’t get me wrong, I am happy to spend time with my friend and her daughter.
But I also really like talking to my friend on her own, in adult mode rather than mum mode.
We have so much to talk about and always end up having the deepest and most reflective discussions when we’re together.
So to know that she is pregnant again, and that that time together, those conversations we have, aren’t going to happen for a long time to come makes me sad.
I know it’s selfish, but it’s also true.
When my friend told me that she was pregnant again, I was a bit shocked given that it was only two or three months after her saying that she didn’t want another baby.
Of course I congratulated her, and she told me that it wasn’t an accident (maybe she could hear the surprise in my tone!).
After our conversation three months before, she’d felt a panging of loss at the idea of not having another baby, and a sense of guilt that she was making a selfish decision for her, and not thinking of her daughter and potential siblings.
A couple of weeks later, she was pregnant again.
Of course I’ll be as supportive as I can be and I’m not saying the friendship is over, it’s just going through an adjustment period, and I’m the one who has to do the adjusting.
In the meantime I need to find myself some friends with the same childfree goals as me.
