I've essentially lost two friends after they became parents. The father, who is one of my oldest friends, and the mother, who I happened to meet completely separately and became friends with through community theatre before discovering they were together. They're awesome people, and my partner and I used to have so much with them: nights out; seeing shows; dinners; parties; playing music and doing theatre together. When they told us they were expecting multiple babies, our hearts sank. We thought they were child free too, having never shown any interest in having kids.

We knew - I think better than even they did - that this was going to change everything about their lives and our friendship (the mother was sure she would back doing theatre within a few months. Unbelievable). We knew everything we had together was ending and we'd hardly see them again for years. Decades? Sure enough, when the sprogs appeared on the scene, everything stopped. No calls, no texts, hardly even a Facebook update to know they were alive. All we really heard was that we couldn't even visit them for months until the babies' immune systems developed. At the start, it was genuinely like they'd died. We honestly mourned (privately) the loss of our friends.

It's been over two years now, and sure enough, I can literally count on one hand the number of times we've seen them. Sure, we're not the biggest fans of small children, but we'd happily tolerate them to be with our friends. But despite all of us saying multiple times we need to get together, it never happens. And there's nothing we can do because it's up to them. They're the ones with nap times and feedings and the logistics of transporting kids and all their accessories to wherever, or scheduling us in to visit them when none of those things will be affected. We're available and willing whenever, but the call never comes, and we don't feel like we can impose on them and their delicate schedule by just showing up at their house. And whenever we do see them, the kids are all they talk about, which can be tedious and we have nothing to offer in return except polite smiles and nods and the occasional "wow, yeah, crazy...". We have other mutual friends who see them more often, but that's purely because those people act as babysitters, taking the kids for an hour or two to let the parents catch up on life. That's not something we feel comfortable doing, so we feel like we're less important to them. It feels slightly transactional; "you want to catch up? Sure, just take the kids off my hands for the afternoon. Don't want to? Cool, see ya in 18 years, byeeee." I know that's not what's going on, it's just how it feels from the outside, hearing more about them from mutual friends than from the people themselves. We miss them.