One night when I was about six months pregnant, I was talking on the phone with one of my non-mom friends. She made a comment about how many of her friends changed once they had babies. She said the babies were all they talked about. Their Facebook statuses were all about the babies - the babies’ poop, the babies’ spit-up, how little sleep they were getting, etc. She said it got really boring after a while.
Not that she didn’t love her mom friends and their babies, she clarified. It was just that she wished they could still talk about other stuff too, like they used to. She said it was a shame that her friends became consumed by motherhood and seemed to have lost their identities.
I laughed. I totally knew what she meant, and I promised her there was no way I was going to get like that once my little one was born. I told her if I ever posted a single status update about baby poop, she had better call me on it.
Technically, at that point, I was still a non-mom. I didn’t know.
A few months later, Quinn was born, and I was in love. Nothing in the world has been more important ever since. I quit my job to be Quinn’s full-time, stay-at-home-mom. Now my days are filled with baby toys, singing songs, playing on the floor, tickling and giggling. There’s also some fussing, crying, whining and frustration.
Our activities are scheduled around nap time and feeding time. A mom friend will invite us out for a walk or a play date or to see if we’re going to Mom & Baby Yoga. I always tentatively accept and say “D.Q.N.” – Depends on Quinn’s Nap. My entire life is D.Q.N. But they’re moms, too, so they completely understand.
My mom friends and I all “live in the –ish” together. Everything is 2:00-ish or 4:30-ish. You never really know when you can get out the door or how long it will take. It depends on when the baby goes down for nap, how long he sleeps, how long he takes to eat, if he will eat at all, if he has a major Code Brown and needs yet another diaper change.
Mom life is vastly different than non-mom life. So when I made that promise to my non-mom friend on the phone almost a year ago, I was naïve and had no idea what I was promising. Quinn is all I have to talk about.
I’m hesitant to call my non-mom friends as often anymore. As much as I love my new life, I know they might not love it. They may find my life and anything I may have to say about it to be completely boring. So rather than be rendered uninteresting, I stay quiet instead. I would love to talk any one of their ears off about Quinn and gush about him for hours, but I know their eyes would glaze over on the other end of the phone and they’d quickly tune me out.
My Facebook status updates are all Quinn-related now, another part of the promise I failed to keep. (Although, I don’t think I ever posted an update about Quinn’s poop, one time I did post that he farted and then laughed about it. Come on, that’s funny.)
If I do post something that’s not about Quinn, it’s usually just a daily link to my blog… which is usually about Quinn.
My deepest apologizes to everyone who thinks, “Okay, Mel’s kid is cute, but GEEZ! Does she have anything else to talk about?” The answer is no, and I’m sorry. I know I used to be more interesting.
To make my Facebook updates a bit more bearable, I usually take a picture of Quinn with my phone and post that instead of just text. Here’s the one I posted yesterday before we left to meet Hubs for lunch.
Seriously, how cute is that? Can you blame me that there’s nothing else more joyous in my world that I’d rather talk about? Perhaps this stage will pass and a little of my non-mom-self will come back someday. But I’m not a non-mom anymore, so I hope that you’ll forgive me and like me anyway.
