Last week I was driving my mid-sized SUV to Target at 11 am on a weekday and it occurred to me I was officially a stay-at-home-mom, with all the stereotypes and implications that go along. Not a happy moment in my life, actually. Not that I have anything against SAHM’s – it’s always been my plan to get here eventually – but I sort of fear becoming this lonely, frazzled person in sweatpants and a ponytail who only speaks in baby talk and eats strained carrots for lunch. With a 9 week old baby, the ponytail is already here and the sweatpants have started to sound reeeeeally good.

To head off the baby talk, I tried to go to a mom’s group on Friday, meant for babies 6 months and younger. No one showed up. Figures. I finally decided to try and meet mother-type people and no one wants to participate. Not to be deterred from the socialization, I went back today for the breastfeeding support group, held at Papoose in Norwich (that overpriced hippy tofu organic all natural baby store I’ve mentioned in the past). I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that they are NOT an overpriced hippy baby store, but they’re not. Yes, they advocate natural births and cloth diapers and organic baby food and products, but they’re also super nice and helpful and sell nice, useful things. During the meeting today everyone was talking about their amazing hypnobirth experiences – including one home birth – and I was a little afraid of being shunned. My love of epidurals is well documented and the shunning of drug-loving mothers can be harsh. But no shunning came and instead they were just happy I was happy. You know, exactly the way you hope other moms would be! Yah for choices! Yah for support! Yah for no shunning!

Since the group was meant for breastfeeding mothers, I came totally prepared to whip out my boob and let Baby Evan have his lunch. I was actually looking forward to it, since becoming comfortable with breastfeeding out of the house is something I’d like to work on, and a quiet room surrounded by support and a couple of lactation consultants seemed like a good place to practice. But by the time we got to the store he was sound asleep. Even the transfer from his car seat to the sling didn’t wake him up, and he snoozed happily through the whole hour and a half I hung out. (Actually, he’s asleep again. Growth spurt I guess. He’ll probably wake up an inch taller and won’t fit in any of his clothes.) It was still a nice experience and I plan to make it a regular part of my schedule, at least until they try recruit me for their hypnobirthing cult. Haha just kidding. I won’t really quit. I’m sure the brainwashing will be complete by then.

I’m afraid none of these moms are going to be the cocktails-in-the-afternoon kind of friends, but they could be the meet-at-the-park kind of friends. Since right now my only friends are the live-far-away kind, the I’m-a-damn-baby-care-for-all-my-needs kind, or the friends-because-we-made-a-promise-to-God kind, ANY new ones would be awesome.