Births and Babies - *Sigh*

OMG*. One of my best friends, A.K.* just sent me a text message today that she had just given birth to a bouncing baby boy. I stopped dead in my tracks when I got the text. A myriad of thoughts went through my mind. First off, I called her back right away, although I thought she would be crazy to be picking up her phone on the same day she gave birth! So I left her this garbled message, sounding all excited and not knowing even knowing what say. The journey of the last nine months with A.K.*, talking every other day or week through it all, still didn’t prepare me for the reality that hit home today when I got her text. Don’t get me wrong, this is not my first friend to have a baby. I have a godson whom I love very much; son of another dear childhood and long time friend. But for some reason, this does feel like the first time that this phase of life – marriage, motherhood, and compromise – is really settling in and seemingly here to stay. Being almost 30, or being 30 and over (the general age demographics of my friends and I), this is the likely reality for some of us. But of course, right? Another reality that makes me nostalgic (and this may sound selfish, though I don’t intend this to be) is that with the onset of this phase of life is the loss of a certain element of a once carefree friendship, where time and the spontaneity to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted existed. Each time I send a good friend off down this road I’m going to call ‘reality’, I feel like a certain part of them which I had indefinite access to, is lost to me forever. I’m left feeling like I have less of a right to my friend – it’s a bittersweet feeling. Crazy sounding isn’t it? More than half the time, this is the sort of reality – the happily ever after type, a great husband or wife, cute fat children, the house on the hill – that we fantasize about, secretly long for even. And then some of it happens and you’re happy, but you’re left with this nostalgic feeling of loss. Contradictory, no?
But there’s nothing like the joy of watching someone give life and spend the rest of her life nurturing it, often at the expense of her own. It’s a beautiful blessing. *Sigh*………….