Friendships and Being an Older First Time Mother....

Becoming a mother is quite the adventure, and there are many things that are quite difficult.  From being responsible to a living, wiggly human to dealing with ups and downs of hormones for the first few months, there are so many things that make you feel almost like a different person.  I suppose in some ways you do become a different person.  You become a mother.

I became a mother at the age of 36.  Old by some folks standards.  It's not like I put it off.  I just didn't find my husband until later in life, so I had lived a single person's life for a quite awhile.  Since I haven't ever been a young first time mother, I don't want to say it is easier, or harder, but there are things that I noticed or think about being a older first time mother.

You are kind of in between worlds of different groups of moms.  Many of the moms that are my age in our area have been moms for 5, 10 or sometimes 15 years and so have 3, 5, or maybe 8 kids.  So although they are my age they have a vastly different life experience then me.  They have things to share, we can be friends, but our life experience are just so very different. In addition, they have established their routines as moms, and have their solid group of mom friends which sometimes can be hard to break into.

Then there are the moms that have their first babies in the last year like me but are a lot younger.  They got married during or right after college.  Again we can be friends but our experiences of life are as different as the first group. It is sometimes hard to hang out with folds that are a lot younger than me. I find myself stuck somewhere between these two groups of people when trying to find moms that I can share my thoughts and mom experiences with.

I am lucky to have friends that are also older first time moms, but we sometimes find ourselves wondering how to break into the groups of other moms where they seem to have their set of friends firmly in place. 

Then there are my single friends.  I have many strong relationships with my friends.  Some of them are married with kids but many are not. I was single along with many of them in my adult years until I got married at the age of 35. Even though now they are not living the same kind of life as me now, we have such a strong bond that we have stayed friends.   It is neat to see these relationships evolve as they come to love my family and not just me.  I definitely have seen different sides of my friends when they interact with Dominic than when we are all hanging out with only adults around.

This is just my experience of becoming a mom when I was older.  I am sure others have different stories of how their life changed when they became a mom and how it was effected by where you live, how old you were, or whether or not you work or not.   I was reminded by my spiritual director that I do have awesome friends that are sharing my experience, and how Dominic has blessed the lives of my single friends who find much joy by sharing his life with them.

 I think this has been a lesson for me learning how to live that saying "Bloom where you are planted."  Because if I had my way, I would have gotten married earlier in life, but this is where God placed me, and this where I am supposed to be touching the lives of those who have been planted where I am too.