Whether it’s the cast of Friends lounging on the couch in Central Perk, The Sex And The City girls sharing dating woes over brunch or an ensemble cast from a Richard Curtis movie – the message was clear: your friends can be your chosen family. Throughout our 20s, especially for women, our friendship circles were often our lifelines. 

They were our safe haven to retreat back to after a terrible breakup or a horrible day on the low rung of a shoddy job. Wild girls’ nights out or cosy weekends away made everything better. Female friendships often are our family – until we start having families of our own and everything changes.

I remember how the conversations started to change on those girls’ nights as we reached our late 20s. Questions like Do you think this Groupon voucher for a fish pedicure is legit? switched to Should I freeze my eggs? I was so grateful to have these women in my life to ask these big questions – of ourselves and each other. 

We were all still there, helping each other find answers. Then (slowly at first and then almost all at once) everyone started having the babies we’d discussed so much, and it felt like our friendships had passed the theory test but failed the practical, and we all started losing a grasp on each other.

I didn’t become pregnant with my first child until I was 36, so I had a fairly balanced insight into what it’s like on both sides of the child divide and why friendships might suffer. I definitely struggled to truly understand the new restraints on my postpartum friends. Any mention of lunch was met with a look that said ‘Are you insane?’ because, of course, that’s when kids have their ‘big nap’.

That year was a significant career year for me, and I remember feeling let down when loads of people RSVP’d ‘no’ to my book launch party with excuses like “Sorry, but they can’t get down without my breast” or “The babysitter fell through at the last moment.” I understood, I really did. But there was a tiny part of me noticing that they’d then drag themselves to a fellow friend’s wedding or baby shower, implementing whatever pumping hell or childcare timetabling required to celebrate that life achievement but not my less traditional one.

When I became a mother myself, I winced when I remembered past me. Maybe it was karma for my previous judgment, but my baby basically didn’t sleep. At all. In fact, she famously broke the sleep trainer I hired out of desperation. She also refused to take a bottle so I exclusively breastfed for the first year.

I became a very bad friend for quite a long time. I missed so many meet-ups because I could hardly get dressed, let alone get on a train to London. Yet I was too embarrassed to admit this, so I would send flaky ‘Whoops, date clash!’ messages instead. I would usually be more open with friends if I was struggling, but there was something about motherhood that created a huge stumbling block.

My friends who were already parents were either also beyond capacity or seemingly coping with motherhood so much better than me that I was too riddled with shame at my ineptitude. I didn’t want to panic any of my friends who were pregnant, so I kept telling them how excited I was for them rather than being honest. I also had many friends who were desperate to have children but were struggling with infertility or unable to find a suitable partner. I didn’t feel I could open up to them for fear that they’d think I was ungrateful. And finally, I worried that my friends who were child-free from choice would judge me, even though, after a full night’s sleep and without mastitis, I knew that wouldn’t be the case.

Here seems to be the crux of the issue: when it comes to motherhood, women seem to stop talking to each other about what they’re going through, and it weakens our bonds. Some of it is due to good intentions, some of it is due to shame, some of it is due to jealousy or feeling left out and some of it is due to the fact babies require an almost-ridiculous level of care that leaves very little time left to do anything else. And, in these gaps of communication, like in any relationship, resentments can sink in and we start making assumptions about each other: Oh, I won’t bother inviting her; she won’t be able to come anyway. She only cares about her mum friends. Or Oh, I won’t tell her any of my baby stuff; she’ll find it boring.

How do we come out the other side of this time with our precious friendships still intact? I believe we have to give ourselves grace and acknowledge this is a difficult and triggering time. With that in mind, we may have to be selective over who we spend time with in order to protect ourselves. This doesn’t mean we don’t adore our friends; in fact, maybe we’re protecting our friendships by stepping away from these triggers for a while.

Childfree women may need to hang out with other childfree women, not a friend who’s darting home to do a dream feed at 10.30pm. Or a woman struggling with fertility may feel it is too painful to go visit her friend’s new baby, and that’s OK too. These realities – and societal pressures and judgments – won’t hang over our heads forever, dividing us into the haves and have-nots. We just need to hold on enough until the noise isn’t so loud and work together, as women, to celebrate all life achievements – not just the more stereotypical ones.

We can’t empathise with a friend’s ‘game face’ or total silence. These are your friends, remember. The ones who held back your hair while you puked at the bus stop and held your hand through that awful relationship. They have loved you for years. Of course there is an ease in spending time with women who are on the same life course as you right now, but there is also something so potently magical about spending time with the women who knew you when you were young. Every path has its wins and its hardships – there is no right or wrong, harder or easier, just difference. A difference that can be overcome and understood if we can be open and honest with one another.

Shop So Thrilled For You by Holly Bourne (Hodder & Stoughton) at Bookshop.org, £16.99

Image: courtesy of Beth Steddon