It was organised chaos, but then it was always going to be… and we wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
Last week eight little girls were celebrating (nearly) turning one amongst squished sandwiches and abandoned soggy cucumber sticks, with parents doing all it took, no matter how silly (baby shark do do do do do do), to get them all facing the same way for just one precious photo.
The party was about the girls but, just as importantly, it was also about celebrating the wonderful, crazy bond of our group of ‘mummy friends’- women who, only a year ago, were thrown together by the simple fact that we signed up to a course that grouped our due dates in the same six week window.
The NCT course was worth the cost a million times over. It wasn’t for what we learned as, to be honest, giving birth happens how it happens (though it did get me the confidence to challenge the care and advice in hospital if needed), but because these women have been my absolute rock these past 12 months and I’m confident we’d all say the same.
I knew they were special from the icebreaker start, ‘I’ve been in a Bollywood film’, to us popping out girl after girl with no baby boys in sight (the odds are 256 to 1 for eight girls in a row my husband reliably informs me).
These women are wise, funny, supportive beyond words and women I always want in my life.
I’m not naive; I know that as we’re starting to return to work and leaving our baby bubble it will get more challenging to keep what we have going.
I’m emotional just thinking back to what we’ve been through together.
Those tentative first meetings for coffee where we were just rabbits in the headlights, proud we’d even made it at all, never mind being 30 minutes late. Black Friday at a Costa Coffee on a retail park was a brave move indeed.
Those 3am call outs on WhatsApp for proof you weren’t the only person in the world up, and getting into a big group chat about whose baby was being the biggest b*gger.
Having absolutely no shame with no topic out of bounds, from post partum pelvic floor ‘issues’ to periods. No judgement, no worries.
Finally making it out for the night and being those women who ‘don’t get out much’ dancing to Whitney in a near empty club.
I shall leave the (almost) final words to a fellow blogger (Life with Lola x) who summed it up perfectly and brought tears to my eyes when I read her post back in July.
…And that’s where my mummy friends stepped in. They too were crying over lost socks and the dishwasher not being loaded properly. They laughed with me. They cried with me and most of all they made me feel normal.
At the very beginning I just didn’t know I wanted them. Or how much I needed them.
A group of amazingly intelligent supportive women, right by my side ~ no clique, no judging and no bashing. Just winging it together….
Class of September 2017. Thank you. I salute you and here’s to many more years of friendship.
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Mummy Musings 