Reply to It takes a village and I have no village

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Dear OP,

Same situation here re: no village.

Here is what I did:
* actively seek out other mothers without a village.  You are prib attracted to nice smiley women with families in the area who help.  They are lovely, but they are not your village.  Look for women who don't have a village.  Candidly discuss trading childcare.  It works.
[/quote]

OP here. I  totally agree with this.  And actually I do seek out women to be friends with who don't have any local family here/are new to the area, because they have more time to get together. than those who do have family in the area.

I'm not looking for childcare help.  I'm looking for warm, caring friends who care about me.  Here's the kind of things I do for others: send care packages if they've had a major illness/been in the hospital, take my friends out for lunch on their birthday, bring by a Mother's Day gift on Mother's Day, bring home-baked cookies on Christmas, check in with them daily by email/text if they or their kids are sick, host baby showers, host holiday meals.

I feel like they don't do anything in return, and it bothers me.  I don't need babysitting help, I need a friend who cares enough to check in and see how I'm doing the day after surgery when they know my DH is on a business trip.

Here's another example: a few years ago I was in a car accident.  DH was on a business trip, so I had no one.  I posted a FB message from the ER asking if anyone could pick me up so I wouldn't have to take a cab home.  No one responded.  Do you know how terrible that made me feel?[/quote]

OP: In the nicest possible way, I think you may have overblown expectations for friendship in the context of parenting a young family. We are in DC with 3 children under 5, two FT+ jobs and no family anywhere nearby; my family is 4ish hours away, but little help practically-speaking, and DH's family is on the other side of the world. For practical help, we have a nanny; we couldn't do it otherwise. She watched our older children for a few nights when our youngest was born, for example. She can also come early or stay late if we have work conflicts or an evening event. If we were trying to manage around daycares + babysitters, I don't think we could do it. We are lucky that we have a few of my college friends in the neighborhood who we can definitely reach out to as needed; similarly, we have become close to the family of our oldest DD's BFF and wouldn't hesitate to reach out to them for kid-related stuff. None of those people bring me random gifts or take me out to lunch for my birthday. However, one did respond to an SOS text by driving an hour, in the evening, to a nearby city to pick us up when we got locked out of our car in the winter. She is awesome. But she would never check in with me daily if my kids were sick. She has her own 3 kids! Who has time for daily check ins with anyone? Ask for the help you need, but don't hold it against people that they don't spontaneously show up bearing gifts. Don't assume you have no village because no one saw your FB message in time to pick you up from an ER; ask specific people via text to do that next time. Lots of people won't volunteer for the annoying favor if it looks like lots of folks could do it (even assuming they happened to see your FB message, which isn't a great assumption); many people will step up to the plate if you ask them to specifically.[/quote]

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