And I'm still very close to several from when I was in preschool and grade school. Distance and decades aside, they know me better than almost anyone.
These friendships were born of endless hours shared in a freezing cold ice rink at 5 AM, during recesses huddled in concrete tunnels on the playground discussing the cutest boys in fifth grade, (no, I'm not mentioning names) and countless hours sifting through gravel looking for "Indian Beads." The memories are indelibly etched in my brain and the people in them will always take up a huge space in my heart.
Then there are the friends you form through childbirth. The bond you instantly form with other new mothers is unlike anything else. It's not that the friendships are deeper or richer, just more intimate right off the bat.
Seriously, the discussions I've had with moms I've just met amazes me. I can't count the inappropriate topics I've covered with women before I've even gotten their name. But when you're operating on just three hours of sleep in eight weeks, pleasantries are a colossal waste of time and energy.
On some level I think mom friends are born out of desperation. After the first three hours of parenthood you realize that you need to find someone else who's new job description also includes sitting around the house half-naked and having milk squeezed from you by a machine. And unless you live on a diary farm, that means actually getting dressed and out of the house, which really, is no more difficult than defying gravity.
I wasn't able to do it alone. I joined a new mom's group through my hospital and six weeks after my oldest son was born had found a group of new moms to commiserate with. They each had the most important quality necessary in a great friend: they could spend days discussing nipple confusion. They were willing (happy even) to belabor this issue for hours on end and then go home and email about it for the rest of the night. My husband on the other hand, as wonderful as he is, felt that once in a blue moon I ought to be able to discuss something else. Like the high-pressure new job he had just started, our new home and the big city we'd just moved to.
Perhaps I was being a tad selfish. But in all honesty, I don't know that I was even aware we had moved or that he had started a new job. I only knew that my nipples hurt.
So these new mom friendships were lifesaving. When other people tried to get to me to focus my attention on something else for a split-second, these girls pulled me back down to earth and assured me that there was not, under any circumstance, anything more important going on in the world other than the fact that my son refused to nap unless he was strapped into his car seat, which was attached to the stroller, which was in our guest bathroom, which had the fan on, which emitted the perfect "white noise" to help him sleep while I endlessly rocked his stroller back and forth, making sure the front wheels bumped rhythmically over the bathmat...for 45 minutes...at which point I was convinced that he was FINALLY asleep and so I would stop – only to have his eyes pop wide open.
(I would like to point out that even after months of this insane behavior I decided not to leave my child on a street corner. This is how good mommy I am.)
But my point is this. Once you're actually out the house, connecting with other moms doesn't take much. These friendships don't require any dating, wooing or courtship. Actually, they don't even require a hello. All you need is to see another mom standing in a bathroom, holding her feces-covered baby in the air while trying to rip open a bag of wet wipes with her teeth, which also happen to be holding her cell phone and keys.
Instant attraction.
It's a medical fact that when a new mom sees another new mom struggling a chemical is released in her brain that's technically called, "Thank God It's Not Just Me." This chemical instantly bonds you to other moms who are wrestling with little people who leak massive amounts of excrement hourly.
Another great thing about meeting other new moms is that you don't measure each other up right away. (Unless the new mom is showered, her hair is styled better than Medusa's, and her shirt matches her pants, which somehow aren't sweatpants. Then a different chemical is released in the brain. It's called, "Get The Hell Away From Me Right Now.")
Actually, that's not entirely true. New moms absolutely do measure each other up. But that doesn't happen until MUCH later in the friendship. Say, after the first 90 seconds when they've already discussed leaky boobs, whether or not they had their private parts stitched up after delivery and the baby blues. (That's a nice term for "I'm seriously about to throw everyone out the window.")
Luckily this "mom-bond" doesn't end with your first baby. It continues on with moms you meet on the playground, in after-school activities, and at the grocery store as you both lunge for the last gallon of DHA approved, brain-enhancing organic milk to guarantee that your kid masters logarithms long before anyone else's kids do.
The other day in my son's martial arts class there was a mom sitting on the floor next to me holding her six-month-old baby. I smiled at them. She smiled back and introduced herself with, "He hasn't pooped in three days. I don't know what to do."
I nodded. I'd been there. I asked if she'd tried the Fleet Liquid Glycerin Suppositories. (My youngest son single-handedly kept that company afloat.) She hadn't. We spent the next hour discussing her son's bowel movements, or lack thereof. On the way out of class we exchanged names and said we'd see each other next week in class. A friendship born out of a child's inability to bear down. Amazing, right? And while it's true we may never see each other again, for that one moment we had each other.
Now that my boys are older I'm not as needy. I can proudly say I go to the grocery store without trying to catch the eye of other new moms in the aisle - hoping to discuss rectal thermometers or diaper rashes. I don't troll the Internet at night looking for chat rooms on Roseola. I can make it through the day without emailing someone about night terrors.
But I still marvel at the immediacy of mommy friendships. And at how the friendships between me and my own friends from decades ago has deepened with the birth of our own kids.
And I know it's just the beginning. My boys are just four-and-a-half and five-and-three-quarters years old. I've got decades of insta-bonding to look forward to as I meet the parents of their classmates, teammates and girlfriends.
Wait...girlfriends?
On second thought, my best friend may end up being a licensed psychotherapist.
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