Joining the Club

For the past year or so, before the pregnancy, I/we have been feeling sort of "left out" by some of our friends with children. Now, while some of these feelings are probably partly paranoia, I do believe we were looked at differently because we (still) didn't have kids like them. Some, if not most, of our married friends had kids even though they got married a year or two after we did. We were like a dying breed, the kid-less.

There are obvious reasons why we may have been left out of some situations. People with kids enjoy having other people with kids around because all the kids can play together. Since we don't have any kids, why would we be invited to a kid's play date? I get it!

This week we have started telling our closest friends about the pregnancy, and more than half of them have children. I now feel I am gaining the password to this exclusive club! Soon we will be walking into the Masonic temple in robes and reciting Latin chants, getting indoctrinated into the secret society. Along with this inclusion will be all sorts of sage advice, support and gifts that only having a child could warrant. Now that I think of it, maybe this new club is more like that movie "The Firm" where it's a club that the only way out is to be killed off, haha.

A few of the friends we have not yet told have been our "go-to" single friends without children. There's a gay couple who we always enjoyed because (among many other things) they did not have children and were not burdened by all the scheduling conflicts that will soon arise (except they have dogs, which isn't much different than children, depending on the owners). Then, we had a couple who just last week called us on their "kid-free" weekend because they figured all their other childrened friends would not be available! Little did they know what we already knew, that the hazing period had begun and we would be getting the keys to the secret door...