‘I was not prepared for how abandoned by friends I would feel after having a baby’

“Nothing’s going to change,” we cling to this reassuring mantra as our bellies swell and our hearts quake with the magnitude of what’s coming. “Everything changes,” I announced flatly, some years into this baby-making game. “Literally nothing is the same.” When I brought my firstborn home from the hospital, I settled in for a bit of my hitherto favourite light entertainment, Law & Order: SVU. The opening act corpse-discovery had barely finished when I had...