After a few months of your life as a new mum, your brain starts going a bit stir crazy staring at the same four walls and after taking a deep breath you decide it is time to get yourself out there and sign up for your first ever baby class. As expected, it was hard work, what with being shy, not knowing anyone and feeling like the outcast. Everyone else seems to get on really well & then your paranoia kicks in and you assume that they are all tremendous friends meeting up on a regular basis and you are still the newbie, not accepted into the group. Depression hovers, and although you arent a glutton for punishment, you decide to stick with it and sign up for the second term – the teacher is friendly and makes you feel welcome, and Little One is loving it so much, it would be selfish not to continue, and hell, it’s only for 1 hour a week – so you make a promise to yourself, if it is becomes completely unbearable, you wont go back – the baby will understand.
You start to gain confidence as a new mum, and join other baby classes and although you feel like you are really putting yourself through the paces with the same fears, you learn how to ignore the judgmental glances and keep a friendly smile on your face. You start seeing the same faces each week and some of the mums strike up conversation. You are glad you continued, persevering through the tricker times. Life gets better and a weekly routine develops.
Time passes and suddenly out of nowhere you get an invite to hang out with some of the mums outside of the baby class and even though you are bricking it, you accept and find that actually they are just as shy as you and it becomes as clear as daylight that everyone is in the same boat and your fears were all for nothing!
You begin to branch out and start trying the locally run playgroups, which before were too scary to even consider, you recognise your neighbours, friends of friends and even some of baby class Mums. Life is sweet, Little One is making friends and so are you. Happy days.
But as always, there is a fly in the ointment. One of the mum’s attends two of the same baby classes as you and so with your new found confidence, you try to catch her eye and smile but she pretends not to notice, clearly she suffers from shyness worse than you do as she doesnt seem to know anyone. After a couple of attempts her attitude comes across as rude not shy, but you shrug it off, sometimes these things take time.
Then in your quest of finding the right playgroup for Little One, you turn up to what must be her regular playgroup – she spots you in an instant and blatantly does not return your smile. You cant quite believe it, it was a clear snub. She cant possibly believe this is stalking, there are only a few ‘good’ classes/playgroups in the area, and so the same mummies turn up in the same places time and time again. She doesnt seem to have made friends with anyone and must feel like complete shite, you know all about this having experienced it first hand! So what is her problem?
You realise you see each other about 3 times a week, infact you see her more other than your mates, and now its getting awkward…so what do you do?
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