One of my close friends gave birth yesterday. A little chubby cherub. I don't know quite how to feel about this. For the last half of this year, I have known she was pregnant. Six months seems like it's a long enough time to get used to the idea, especially with an ever-increasing bump presented in front of me. Yet somehow, it's still so strange.
It's the first of my friends to have a baby. It wasn't planned or expected, but it happened and now she's a real person in the real world and one of my school mates is a Mum. It's weird. None of my friends are even husbands or wives, let alone parents, so to have a mum among us makes it extra peculiar.
We're growing up. I am aware, it will be a snowball effect. This was accidental, outside of the usual course of things but in a few years' time, one by one and all at once, people will be getting pregnant on purpose. I will be gulping at the extortionate expense allocated for sequential hen-dos, all happening within a months of each other. I feel like we are quite in limbo at the moment, at this age. There are careers, there are long-term boyfriends, there are mortgages, but there are no marriages or families. All of that is soon to come, has now started, and the anticipation makes me slightly anxious. Who will end up tying the knot; who will end up breaking up? Who will be the next to get pregnant? Will the baby's parents' relationship survive on this tiny thread of life which it has developed around? What will change in six months' time? Where will we be in five years' time?
Where do I belong forever, in whose arms, the time and place?
Flitterbox: Avril Lavigne ~ My World
I really relate to this, even though I'm quite a bit older. At 36, I'm a few years older than most of my very close friends and so none of them have had children yet (although most are married now). And it's horrible to say, but I sort of dread the moment when a friend tells me she's pregnant. I'm childfree by choice, so I know that I'll never be able to join 'the club', and life changes so enormously for parents that it feels a bit like I'm losing my friend.
ReplyDeleteOops, just realised I'm logged into my other blog account. I thought I was commenting as jbistheinitial!
DeleteLuckily it served as a reminder that I hadn't added THV to my list yet - have done so now :)
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