I checked my phone for the 23rd time that hour. Still no message. Hmm. Was the screen going to flash to life with a confirmation that I’d been liked back? Checked phone again: no. Crushed.
This sad scene wasn’t me as a teenager texting a potential boyfriend. Instead, I was a mother of two, in her late 30s, texting a potential new partner. A “mom friend,” to be exact.
I had met this woman at a baby music group with my seven-month-old son. In between blasts of Old MacDonald and Peter Rabbit Had A Fly Upon His Nose, we got to talking. We were both struggling with the carrot-puree relentlessness of weaning, and when she rolled her eyes during the hokey cokey, I caught a hint of a kindred spirit.
At the time, I had been living in a new city, Bristol, for less than a year. With two children under two and my husband working all hours, the days were long — especially as all my good friends were ‘back home’ in London.
I was, in short, on the hunt for company. So, at the end of baby music group, I asked for her number. “Oh, sure,” she replied with a smile. But when I texted her suggesting we meet for coffee and a “play date” later that day, there was no response. Hours passed, days passed, no response. I texted again: “Hi! I was wondering if you got my message? x” The icy silence continued.
“But I thought she liked me!” I whined to my husband.
His response: “Maybe she thinks you’re creepy. Who asks for someone’s number half an hour after meeting them?”
Part of the idealized modern motherhood is having a group of new friends who are in the same boat to hang out with
With horror I realized that he might be right. I had often asked fellow mothers on playgrounds and in playgroups for their numbers, and taken the mildest kindness as a green light to befriend them.
I was the platonic equivalent of the office whore, or the strange guy on the bus who asks you out to dinner after two minutes of conversation. I had come across as the most repulsive thing: desperate.
So after years of unworthy, and often failed, advances like this, I’ve given up completely. Having a bunch of “mom friends” just isn’t for me.
Why was I so excited about it in the first place? Because part of the idealized modern motherhood—along with getting back into your jeans three days after giving birth and baking sugar-free muffins for your brood—is having a group of new friends who are in the same boat to bounce back with.
I’d absorbed the idea that motherhood automatically comes with a maternal tribe: a Sex And The City-style gang that runs not on late-night Manhattans, but on mid-week lattes.
Well, I’m now pregnant with four babies and it hasn’t happened yet — although God knows I’ve tried. My first approach was to join a group run by the NCT (National Childbirth Trust), which brings together couples in the final months of pregnancy to learn about childbirth and newborns.
I know several people who made lifelong friends in their own NCT: one of them still goes skiing with her group ten years later; another is godmother to the son of an NCT friend. In our case, the group never met again and the whole thing fell apart.
‘I tried to project a bit of Mary Poppins positivity, a sugar-spoon façade that’s as authentic as Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney accent in the film,’ says Clare Foges
When my first baby was six months old we moved to Bristol and I realised that Operation Mum Mates needed to step up a gear. I was almost pregnant with my second child and vowed to do the baby group circuit.
I’ve done them all: coffee groups in draughty church halls, sing-alongs in libraries, buggy-fit classes, that awful thing called ‘messy play’ where your babies sit in blue mush and get dirty. While my babies were having fun, I got chatting to other mothers.
Perhaps, in retrospect, I wasn’t quite myself. I was aware that many of these women seemed to be sailing through early motherhood and tried to project a bit of Mary Poppins positivity, a sugar-sweet façade that was as authentic as Dick Van Dyke’s cockney accent in the film.
Although my role as a mother sometimes took me further than a cup of coffee or a play date in the park, these budding friendships fizzled out after a few meetings.
Sometimes it was because working moms went back to the office and stay-at-home moms like me had to find new friends.
Sometimes things just don’t get past baby talk. How are you feeding, sleeping, weaning, rolling over? How are you doing with the terrible twos? How is the transition to one nap?
While these are all fascinating topics at this stage of life, the source of conversation quickly runs out. At times I felt the lack of mother friends acutely.
One day, when I was pregnant with my third child, I took my two oldest children to a small park. The only other people there were about ten mothers and their children celebrating their third birthdays.
There were streamers hanging from the trees, blankets on the ground, prosecco popping and homemade fairy cakes spilling out of Tupperware. In the late afternoon sun, it looked Instagram-perfect.
Then I recognized a face… and another… and another… all these women had attended a baby gym class that I used to go to in the early days. We had gone for coffee, had a WhatsApp group.
In the intervening years, as I went to parks and soft plays on my own, they had all become firm friends. When one of them waved at me, I felt embarrassed: a lone ranger in the face of this golden circle of friends. I waved back and turned quickly, aware of the stinging in my eyes.
Why, I wondered, was I Mummy No Mates? The most obvious explanation had to be that I was an unlikable prick (which is entirely possible), but then again I found it easy to make friends through school, university and work. So maybe the problem was more fundamental.
I didn’t really click with anyone on the baby group circuit. Previously, female friendships began with the intensity of a crush: cocktail-fueled nights out, scandalous confessions, almost instant intimacy.
And in the land of CBeebies chatter, such women are hard to find. I’m sure they must be out there; it’s just that many women, like me, drape a cloak of wholeness around themselves once they become mothers. Technicolor personalities become muted; maternal; acceptable.
On the rare occasions when I tried to break into the mom conversation with a confession or complaint about how boring I found raising children, I was met with questioning looks, as if I had pulled off my Poppins mask to reveal Cruella de Vil.
Still, when baby number three came along, I vowed to give it one last try and downloaded an app called Peanut, which is essentially Tinder for moms. Like the dating app, you scroll through profiles. “Katy, 33, loves crafts and gardening, looking for a coffee date and walks in the park…” Swipe right!
At first I felt a Tinder-like shiver. Messages were exchanged, dates were set. And then something strange happened. I realized I was ghosting myself, canceling meetings or not bothering to respond. After years of wanting mom friends, when it came down to it, I didn’t really care anymore.
Like me, many women drape a cloak of health around themselves when they become mothers, writes Clare
It dawned on me: all those years I had been pursuing my mom friends because I thought I had to have them. Suddenly the idea of just being friends with someone because she had a uterus and happened to be in the same stage of life as me seemed a little weird, almost sexist.
Eight months ago I had my fourth child. This time I didn’t go to baby groups or give my number to random women.
Even though it gets lonely sometimes, my friends are always on the other end of the line.
There is a sense of liberation in this shift. As in so many areas of life, thinking too much about what we should be doing can blind us to the beauty of what is happening in the moment.
These days, the company of my drooling eight-month-old is enough for me.
