Lead
Since the baby was born, the old friends have nearly disappeared. Not because anyone stopped replying to messages, and not because of a falling-out. There was just never a good moment to reach out, and somehow months went by.
This is a common experience among parents of young children, yet there is remarkably little language for it. "Postpartum depression" and "isolated parenting" have their vocabularies, but the phenomenon of friendships quietly changing after a baby arrives has almost no name in parenting discourse.
This change is not a personal failing. It is a structurally predictable shift. Research has mapped its contours.