Meetup.com

Meetup.com. Are you familiar with it? It's an international site where you can create a group based on an activity, a common like or to bring similar people together. For example, if you are learning Spanish and you'd like to meet other people who want to practise conversing in it, you can try to find a local meetup to do that with, or if you are interested in yoga, you can find like minded individuals. I went on to look for mummy groups where I could meet other new mums and X-man could make friend to play with. I was very successful! I actually found two in my local area. I immediately joined the groups and signed up for my first activity, a walk around a local lake with our babies. 3 other mummies signed up so I thought that would be a good start to meeting people.  I showed up a few minutes early and waited at the designated meeting spot. And I waited. And waited some more. The description had said that "we will wait 10 minutes for any latecomers and then get started". I decided to give everyone an extra 5 minutes. Nada, nothing, nobody showed up. I have to say that I was bummed. I had been a bit nervous when I showed up, and now I felt a bit...silly, disappointed, I'm not sure what it was. Anyway, I sucked it up and went on the walk anyway because we all know that I needed the exercise! 

A few days later, I decided to sign up for another walk and this one had 8 mummies signed up. I thought to myself that for sure, at least 1 person has to show up out of that many. And they did! All 8 of them. It was slightly awkward in the first few minutes as we gathered there with our babies. The best ice breaker was checking out each others' babies. As we waited those 10 minutes for latecomers, X-man was very well behaved in his stroller, he was just under 3 months at this point, until the last minute. I realised that he was hungry and I thought, crap, we're just about to start walking and this guy wants to suck on the boob, great. I told the other ladies that I was going to catch up to them as I had to feed him, and one of the mummies said "Oh no, you go feed him and we'll wait.", and I thought that that was so nice of her to say that. That one comment attracted me to her and we talked quite a bit during the walk, to the point that when the other ladies decided that at the hour mark they were done walking, we both looked at each other and agreed to continue walking together. That was almost 7 months ago and we have become very close. Our children our 4 days apart which makes it even better because they have been reaching various milestones at more or less the same time, however they are still so different. My new mummy friend Pats and I have gotten together at least once a week, if not more and this has been the beginning of a wonderful friendship. We have leaned on each other numerous times for moral and emotional support. We complain about our weight and support each other's weight loss journey, we've laughed at things our babies have done, we've whined about our partners and simply put, we've just been there for each other. Even though I've made a number of other friends and continue to do so, it's Pats that I message at 11pm with some stupid comment, or she messages me at 7am to see if X-man is awake (this is a rare ocurrence!).

To all the new mothers out there, I wholeheartedly encourage you to seek out a mummy group in your area and join join join. It is so nice to have other people to talk to who are going through the same experiences as you and have just as many, if not more questions than you do. Often times there are also plenty of women who have older children or are on their 2nd and can provide some advice. Whatever the case may be, get out there, meet people, sit on the floor while your baby rolls around and discuss poop and spit up!