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I got cut out of the school run mums' friendship group and now I have finally worked out why: CLARE FOGES
I checked my phone for the 23rd time that hour. Still no message. Hmm. Would the screen blink into life with an affirmation that I was liked back? Check phone again: nope. Crushed.
This sad scene was not me in my teens texting a potential boyfriend. Instead I was a mother of two kids, in my late 30s, messaging a potential new mate. A 'mum friend', to be precise.
This woman I had met at a baby music group with my seven-month-old son. Between bursts of Old MacDonald and Peter Rabbit Had A Fly Upon His Nose, we struck up a conversation. We were both struggling with the carrot-pureeing relentlessness of weaning, and when she rolled her eyes during the hokey cokey, I caught a whiff of a kindred spirit.
At the time I had been living in a new city, Bristol, for less than a year. With two children under two and my husband working all hours, the days were long — especially as all my good female friends lived 'back home' in London.
I was, in short, on the hunt for company. So, at the end of the baby music group, I asked for her number. 'Oh sure,' she replied with a smile. But when I texted suggesting a coffee and 'playdate' later that day, response came there none. Hours passed, days passed, no reply. I texted again: 'Hi! Just wondering if you got my message? x' The stony silence continued.
'But I thought she liked me!' I wailed to my husband.
His response: 'Maybe she thinks you're creepy. Who asks for someone's number half an hour after meeting?'
Part of idealised modern motherhood is having a gaggle of new friends in the same boat to hang out with
With horror I realised he might be right. Many times I had asked fellow mothers in playgrounds and playgroups for their numbers, taking the mildest geniality as a green light for pursuing friendship.
I was the platonic equivalent of the office lech, or the strange guy on the bus who asks you out for dinner after a two-minute conversation. I had come across as that most repellent thing: desperate.
So after years of undignified, and often unsuccessful, advances like these, I've given up altogether. Having a gang of 'mum friends' is simply not for me.
Why was I so keen in the first place? Because part of idealised modern motherhood — along with slipping back into your jeans three days after birth and baking sugar-free muffins for your brood — is having a gaggle of new friends in the same boat to hang out with.
I had absorbed the idea that with motherhood comes an automatic maternal tribe: a Sex And The City-style gang powered not by late-night Manhattans but mid-week lattes.
Well, I'm now four babies in, and it hasn't happened — though Lord knows I tried. My first approach was joining a group run by the NCT (National Childbirth Trust), which brings couples together in the last months of pregnancy to learn about childbirth and newborns.
I know of several people who have made friends for life at their own NCT: one still goes on skiing holidays with her group a decade later; another is godmother to an NCT friend's son. In our case, the group never met again and the whole thing fizzled out.
'I tried to project a little Mary Poppins positivity, a spoonful-of-sugar facade as authentic as Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent in the film,' says Clare Foges
Then, when my first baby was six months old, we moved to Bristol and I realised Operation Mum Mates would have to step up a gear. Soon pregnant with my second child, I vowed to work the baby group circuit.
I did them all: coffee groups in draughty church halls, singalongs in libraries, buggy-fit classes, something ghastly called 'messy play', where your babies sit in blue-coloured porridge getting gunky. While my babies had a ball, I would strike up conversations with other mothers.
Maybe, in retrospect, I wasn't entirely myself. Conscious that many of these women seemed to be sailing through early motherhood, I tried to project a little Mary Poppins positivity, a spoonful-of-sugar facade as authentic as Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent in the film.
Though my mum persona did sometimes get me as far as a coffee or a playdate in the park, these fledgling friendships petered out after a few meet-ups.
Sometimes that was because working mothers were heading back to the office, leaving stay-at-home mums like me looking for new friends.
Sometimes things just never progressed beyond baby chit-chat. How's your baby's feeding, sleeping, weaning, rolling? How are the terrible twos? How is the transition to one nap going?
Though these are all fascinating subjects in this phase of life, the conversational well soon runs dry. Sometimes I would feel the lack of mum friends acutely.
One day, while pregnant with my third child, I took my elder two to a small park. The only other people there were ten or so mothers and their children, celebrating a third birthday.
There was bunting strung in the trees, blankets on the ground, prosecco popped and homemade fairy cakes spilling out of Tupperware. In the late afternoon sun it looked Instagram perfect.
Then I recognised a face… and another… and another… all these women had attended a baby gym class I had frequented in the early days. We'd gone for coffees, had a WhatsApp group.
In the intervening years, while I'd been hitting parks and soft plays solo, they'd all become firm friends. As one of them waved at me I felt embarrassed: a lone ranger in contrast to this golden circle of friends. I waved back and quickly turned around, aware of a sting in my eyes.
Why, I puzzled, was I Mummy No Mates? The most obvious explanation had to be that I'm an unlikeable pillock (which is entirely possible), but then again I found it easy to make friends through school, university and work. So perhaps the problem was more fundamental.
I hadn't really gelled with anyone on the baby group circuit. Previously, female friendships had started with the fierceness of a crush: with nights out fuelled by cocktails, outrageous confessions, almost immediate intimacy.
And in the land of CBeebies banter, such women are hard to find. I'm sure they must be out there; it's just that, like me, a lot of women drape a cloak of wholesomeness around themselves once they become a mum. Technicolor personalities become muted; motherly; acceptable.
On the rare occasions I tried to break through the mum-chat surface with a confession or complaint about how bored I was of child-rearing, I was looked at quizzically, as though I had ripped off my Poppins mask to reveal Cruella de Vil.
Still, when baby number three arrived I vowed to give the effort one last heave and downloaded an app called Peanut, which is essentially like Tinder for mothers. Like the dating app, you scroll through profiles. 'Katy, 33, into crafts and gardening, looking to meet for coffees and walks in the park…' Swipe right!
At first I felt a Tinder-like frisson. Messages were exchanged, dates fixed. And then something curious happened. I realised I was doing the so-called 'ghosting' myself, cancelling meet-ups or not bothering to reply. After years of wanting mum friends, when it came to the crunch I couldn't really be bothered.
Like me, a lot of women drape a cloak of wholesomeness around themselves once they become a mum, writes Clare
A penny dropped: all those years I'd been chasing mum friends because I thought I ought to have them. Suddenly, the idea of only making friends with someone because she had a womb and happened to be in the same stage of life as me seemed a bit weird, and borderline sexist.
Eight months ago I had my fourth baby. This time, I haven't been hitting the baby groups or palming my number onto random women.
Though sometimes it's lonely, my existing female pals are always on the end of the phone.
There's a feeling of liberation in this shift. As in so many areas of life, thinking too much about what we should be doing can blind us to the beauty of what's happening in the moment.
These days, the company of my dribbling eight-month-old is enough for me.