Thursday 6 November 2014

Our First Baby Group Experience

I'm not one for making friends. I usually feel rather awkward in social circumstances. I'm fine when I'm with my friends and people I'm comfortable around but I care too much about what people think of me, therefor when I'm in around people I'm not comfortable with I begin to overthink what I'm going to say which means I usually don't say much.



We spent a lot of Logan's first few months at home. Up until he was 5/6 months old he was being fed every 2 hours, very tiring for me but it also didn't leave a lot of time for other activities. Eventually I got pretty lonely. On facebook I would see other mums going to classes and going out trips with other mums and their kids and I felt like I was missing out. Don't get me wrong, I have friends, who I see often but they don't have kids and work full-time so I didn't have many people to socialise with during the week.


Once Logan started on solid foods he was going a little longer between feeds so I started looking into classes in our local area. I quickly realised that there wasn't really an easy way to find all your local groups, I'd seen women online saying their Health Visitor had given them a list of local groups and classes, I wish my health visitor had told me this! I used websites like www.netmums.com & www.babycentre.co.uk but I found most of the information pretty outdated. Eventually, thanks to Facebook, I found a locally run Baby & Toddler group, just 5 minutes down the road.


I was pretty nervous about going but for Logan's sake I bit the bullet and off we trotted. The first week was a bet nerve wracking. Its not a very large group, there's only 7-8 other mothers and their children but I still didn't enjoy it much. It felt like the other mothers all knew each other and although they were all friendly enough they all seemed really comfortable with each other so I felt a bit like the odd one out. It was a bit of a test for Logan because I knew he would start to get tired and hungry and that usually equals a complete meltdown, but as all the other kids had their snack Logan fell asleep on me. Usually unheard of! The next 3 weeks however were not as successful. Although I did realise not all the mums were as close friends as I first thought, Logan would last about 45 minutes before losing his shit. He has started napping quite consistently around 9/10, the group runs from 9:30 - 11:30. I even left early one week because he was just inconsolable with rage because he was so tired and no matter how hard I tried he would not fall asleep on me. We've been going for about 6 weeks now and I can finally say yesterday was a lot easier. He had a quick nap before we left and although he started getting tired around 11am he didn't completely lose the plot.

Wrapped up warm for his walk to toddlers
Although you cant see it, I promise he's dressed like a pumpkin





















I'm really glad that I persevered with it because after week 3 I was ready to quit. I just need to remember that its more for Logan's benefit than mine. I want him to get used to being around other kids and be more comfortable around different people.


Did you have any similar experiences when going to new groups?

2 comments:

  1. You are so right it is for the babies sake and you've made me think and I'm going to start taking my daughter to one. I never have as like you they are in the middle of his nap time xx

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  2. We try and have a mini nap before we go then he has a big one once were home. I guess it's worth disrupting his nap time one day a week xx

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