When your friends have kids, everything changes

I’M not having kids — never wanted them, never will. That doesn’t mean I don’t like other people’s, though. In fact, I really like meeting all my cute little cousins and holding friends’ babies, even though they will inevitably pull your hair while simultaneously mashing half-eaten banana into it, or do sneaky little pukes on your favourite black cashmere jumper.

At my age, the invites to wild 30th birthday parties in pubs with drugs in the cubicles and shots at the bar have become a thing of the past. Now instead, I get invited to the park on a Sunday afternoon to sit on a rug (which also features half-eaten mashed banana) and drink warm wine to celebrate those well past thirtysomethings’ kids’ birthdays instead.

It’s weird watching how your friends’ lives change after they have offspring. I mean, to me it all looks pretty awful from the outside — the toll on a woman’s body from the decimated vaginas to nipples stretched to the size of saucers. Then there’s the lack of sleep, the dirty nappies, measles, chickenpox, endless crying and living in a home where every surface is sticky with some sort of child goo. Once your friends have kids, your friendships change forever too. Some disappear for years becoming “too busy” to respond to a message or talk on the phone (yet still able to chronicle every new baby outfit daily on social media). Others want to keep in touch but only so they can update you on how their gifted three-year-old is already showing a flair for the arts (which means they have glued pasta to the side of a cereal box).

think they’ll all come back to good old Aunty Katy eventually though, once the parents need a night out or their grown-up kids need an adult to take them to get a piercing, or need a fake ID. I’ll still be here.

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