Friends old and new

These are our lovely NCT friends, whom we met at ante natal classes. At the time we were heavily pregnant first time mothers with nervous husbands. Now look at us! Having that little group of friends, in the same part of London, all going through similar trials & joys of a little baby has been great. Me & Zoe miss them all and are jealous the babies are all going swimming together now without us (hello ladies & babies!!!).

As far as I know there is no similar organisation here in the US, nor are there facilities comparable to Sure Start centres. In Boston Isis Maternity is a company that has centres in and around the city that sell baby equipment and run classes and groups for expectant and new mothers. It seemed like the ideal place to meet some new Bostonian friends and babies of a similar age to Zoe, much like our NCT group.

On Tuesday we had our first "Next Steps" mom & baby class. At first I was a bit concerned as the course materials (!) were 38 pages long (!!), and included song lyrics for nursery rhymes I had never heard of. I was kind of hoping the sessions would pan out like an NCT meet up, which tends to involve a lot of coffee and moaning about in-laws. However, they seemed from the materials to focus on developmental milestones and doing perplexing activities with the babies like tripod sitting (?) and parallel play (??).

In fact, after some parachute play (which was actually AWESOME & Zoe just loved it) and some singing (or in my case miming), there was an introductory discussion about how our lives had changed after having our babies, what we enjoyed & found hard, and our experiences in general.

One thing that I found interesting/alarming was the US attitude to maternity leave and returning to work. Apparently it varies from state to state but, in short, if you get 3 months off you are extremely lucky (and don't imagine for a second you'll get paid for it either). In fact, many women go back to work after just 6 weeks. That's right, 6 weeks.

Now after 6 weeks I still had trouble getting up & down the stairs, let alone felt able to leave my tiny baby in daycare and go back to the office*. And you can throw in the fact that most mothers here breastfeed (nursing), which means they spend much of their free time whilst not caring for their baby, or indeed working, milking themselves so that their baby has enough to eat whilst they are out at work all day. I still find it hard to put it into words how I feel about that, suffice to say that the word BARBARISM springs to mind. The only alternative I guess is to quit your job, if you can afford to do so.

Anyway, I discovered the things that worry and charm new mums are universal and mainly centre around sleep (or lack thereof) and your baby's ability to hold their head up. Although now I understand why each meeting has to have a structure and a topic, because these girls cannot afford to waste time sitting around gossiping all day; they have to get back to work, breastpumps in hand like the superwomen they are!

In the UK we are lucky we have a bit more time to spend with our little treasures. I am lucky I have had the time to spend entire afternoons hanging out in cafes across north west London doing not a great deal other than making new friends and drinking an eyepopping amount of coffee. Hopefully now I will be doing a bit of that here in Boston too (albeit to a background of pumping).

*Although I suspect my boss would think this an excellent plan. ONLY JOKING THEO.