Congrats, you are the first in your friend group/work place/peer group to become parents! After the initial newborn baby daze (How I Met Your Mother portrayed it very well with Lily and Marshall's initial parenting) you notice there's some differences in how your social life works. Now you are worrying about naptimes and appropriate places to change a baby (why don't all men's rooms have changing stations?!) and if you need to be prepared to whip out a boob or have a warm bottle ready or a million other things. You can no longer just walk out of the house moments after making spontaneous plans with a friend-- now you have to pack a diaper bag, pack a baby (and potentially toddlers or older kids), make sure everyone is changed and has gone potty recently but pack those wipes just in case you know better dude, and prepare. If you decide to get a babysitter instead, that's a whole 'nother can of worms and tasks that must be fulfilled before leaving the house (clean all the things, prep diapers and wipes, make sure everyone is changed and gone potty, food in case of snack or hungry baby, instructions for every possible scenario that may occur during their brief tenure as parent of your child(ren), etc).
It's automatic for you to be aware of all of this when scheduling anything, from covering a shift to going out on a double date. It also can make you sound kind of crazy and impossible to plan around. This is normal.
Growing pains suck. Most of our friends kept going out and hanging out and staying up til all hours when Negi was born, and we were both sad and bewildered to find that we were more often than not stuck home. Gone were the impromptu Nintendo nights. Gone were the game and snacks nights. Granted, there was a lot of time when we didn't even have the energy to go out. It sucked.
But things are better now.
Negi is four years old now. He and Oli are mostly potty trained (please lord just poop in the potty you can go all night dry why do you poop in your underwear?!). They communicate. They are good kids to babysit. Fairly easy. Izzy is still looking at his first birthday at the end of the month, needs frequent changes and cuddles and a short attention span, so we aren't super free. He's also still breastfed and refuses a bottle of formula or boobie milk, but he does like watered down juice and all kinds of food, so it's not like he wastes away if we drop him off for a couple of hours.
And we do!
Once or twice a month, Eric and I will take the kids to my parents and they will hang out for a couple hours. Even if half the time we end up going home and sleeping or having to run an errand we can't physically run with the kids (like a visit to the cell phone store or meeting at the bank), it's a huge blessing. We need that break, knowing that the kids are happy and safe (a lot happier and sugared up than at home actually) and we can just breathe for a little while. It's a huge blessing.
The other half of the time, we finally get to spend time with our friends.
Granted, sometimes it's something simple like going out to dinner, grocery shopping on a coupon spree (which is a ton of fun and you feel great about saving money), seeing a movie... we can finally socialize again! Eric and Hannah are back on the scene, now with stories of hilarious small children to pepper into conversation because frankly that's 80-90% of our daily experiences now.
It feels like that's all you hear when you are a new parent or have really young kids-- "It gets better!" "Yeah, but when?!" was my usual reply. I found that once I threw myself into work, improving the household, helping and playing with the kids... time flew. We lost some friends along the way, but it all comes out in the wash. We also found out which friends were willing to adjust our activities to allow us to parent as best we could. That kind of friend is a treasure. I reminded Eric constantly over the past few years that when everyone else is having babies and sleep deprived and dealing with colic or teething or tantruming kids, we will be sleeping through the night and our kids will be in school. Playing the long game pays off.
When the kids are older we plan to look into hiring new and recommended babysitters, which will give us more opportunities to socialize and Get Things Done.
I figured out that a great way to get that human interaction without children yelling in the middle of it was via online groups-- Facebook and Reddit have some awesome parenting communities. There's even opportunities for playdates in local groups-- everyone wins with a playdate!
This post kind of got away from me. I guess what the tl;dr would be is that being the first parent of the group can suck, but it's over quickly so don't give up.