Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Keep reaching out. Tell her what you told us, that she is one of your favorite people, she was a rock for you when you needed someone, and you would love to help out if you can. Don't necessarily ask to get together with her, ask if you can watch the older kid, or run errands, or make dinner for her, or something.

From the outside, one doesn't often know what is going on.

This. She (they) are struggling. Offer to take her oldest on an outing. When you pick the kid up, take a meal or some healthy snacks. On your way over, ask if there is anything she needs from the grocery store/Target. Forget trying to get together right now. She has been a good friend to you, and you can still be her friend without you guys getting together.

This, but/and keep in mind that struggles of a working mom are different. I’m a working mom of two and we did not reach out so much to friends to get help, sometimes turned down offers of help because it seemed like too much to coordinate. Things I appreciated — social invitations once baby got to be about a year, packages from friends with things for my older child to do/read, offers from friends to ship a used clothes wardrobe for the season so I wouldn’t have to shop.

It's hard. We lost some friends when we had our second, but our priorities and interests changed too. (We quit drinking and that changed our group of friends.)

I work long hours in a demanding job and my husband travels for work 50% of the time. My kids are still small, I had them just under two years apart, and both are very high energy. I basically collapse into bed at the end of the day and am constantly exhausted... I have nothing left over for friends. I'm guessing your friend is in the same boat.

One is like a pet. Two kids are like a zoo.

The title seemed obnoxious but the whole OP was clearly concerned and caring. OP recognizes she can’t recall that stage well so she is legitimately asking, even if a bit inartfully.

Agree with posters saying to try to help out where you can and keep reaching out with things like a simple text that you saw X today and it made you think of her - it will keep the connection but requires no effort on her part, not even a response.

The title of your post is obnoxious. The answer is that having a second (or first or third or any number) can be very difficult for some people. Check that attitude and then why not just do something nice for her without asking something in return? Drop off dinner or tell her you will pick up the older kid for a few hours on Saturday for a playdate. She is obviously not in a place where she can make plans right now so be there for her in a way that requires nothing form her.

It doesn't really matter how hard two kids are for other people, your friend is struggling.

Give her some space, reach out in ways she can manage, and go from there. Maybe offer to have them over for bagels and playing on a rainy Sunday morning. Something simple like that.

I find I want to cocoon with my kids sometimes on the weekends. We work all week, my kids are tired, we all need some downtime. I don't always want to rush them an event, even if it's a FUN event, because we just need a slower pace.

As everybody says, every family/baby/parent is different. What's also different is that she has a bigger age gap between the oldest and youngest than yours, and that means accommodating a bigger difference in terms of activity/sleep/whatever schedule.

Working full time with 2 kids in day care = hell.

My youngest just turned 2.5 and this winter hasn't been quite as bad with illness, and it's like a fog is lifting.

It's nice if you want to offer to "help" somehow, but you may just want to be patient and back off for a month until it's spring and some of the gunk starts clearing out.