Bad Friend

I freely admit it: I've been a bad friend lately.

And I'm not making excuses, but I must say that things -- including friendships -- get harder after you have a baby. On top of it all, I've been ill, and I'm going it alone during the workweek.

I'm tired. Like...really, really tired. I come home from a full day at work, and I take care of Andrew for a few hours. If I'm lucky, I eat a hot dinner, but it's usually a sandwich. After I put him to bed, I do chores, all to prepare for the next day, when I wake at 5:30 a.m. to do it all again. Andrew wakes me up at least twice during the night.

I'm expected to be the same active, energetic professional I always was at work. When you're not pregnant anymore, people assume your life has gone back to "normal." Nothing could be farther from the truth. I don't take a lunch break anymore; instead, I take three 20-minute pumping breaks during which I stuff lunch or snacks in my face and do work emails.

During "spare" moments at home, I somehow find time to do chores -- last night I stuffed and ran the dishwasher and collected the trash and recycling -- but most of it has to be done on weekends, when all I really want to do is rest.

I'm not living a glamorous, exciting life here. I love my son, more than anything in the world, through all the drudgery and sleep deprivation and spitup and poop. I'm doing all of this for him, and I'm doing it the best way I know how. Everything else, I'm afraid, needs to take a back seat.