The other post about who is in your village got me thinking - if you are far from family - how did you create your village? We live 3 hour flight from my in-laws and my family are on a different continent, we moved to a new area a little while ago and have no village to speak of, but I really want to develop one but I'm not sure where to start!
Right now, we have a wonderful babysitter from LO's daycare that we hire for date nights once or twice a month but I would love to have a village to connect to not only for emergencies (although that too!) but for emotional support in raising children etc. So if you built your village from the ground up, how did you do it!?
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Both of our families live out of state too.
We met our friends through small group at church, a mommy' group at our old apartment and I met one friend at a an indoor play space!
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We have made awesome friends from day care. And then I have an amazing group of mamas from here who I text with daily who provide amazing emotional support.
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The only family that lives in town is DH's family, and we aren't super close. They babysit for us, but I don't lean on them for friendship or emotional support. I do have a large group of mom friends that I get together with regularly. I met them by going out and doing things with my firstborn when he was a baby. We went to Gymboree classes, baby swim classes, and we joined a mom's group on Meetup.com to meet people. I went to a lot of events, and I started meeting people I clicked with. I think it's important to put yourself out there and talk to other moms. I often had to make the first move and ask if they wanted to get together sometime for a play date. You would be surprised how many other moms are looking for friendship and a village too.
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I've had good luck with local mom groups. But I met my best friend here randomly at the playground, and her kid is the same age as my older LO. You do kind of have to put yourself out there at times.
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Following. We don't have a village and I feel super isolated most of the time.
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I don't have a village when it comes to child care, we dont even really have a consistent babysitter we can use
but I am trying to build and maintain a network of friends. We have a close friend that we hang out all the time which I met through prenatal yoga classes. There were 4 of us (+ 4 kids) but we usually hang out with just one which is also LO's best friend. Then now we are starting to hang out more with our neighbor with a same age child too which is also great. I tried to hang out with a friend from LO's preschool class (they've been classmate forever really) but it is harder to hang out with them because they just don't tend to be as flexible and don't want to do a lot of things I suggested. They also have a newborn so it is also quite hard. I hope we'll continue to meet more people when we switch to the new school for pre-k next year! It is so hard because I am an introvert pretending very hard to be extrovert, but I hope we'll continue to meet more people.
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We have a patchwork village. Our parents are not close by, but they are retired and when we really need them, they come to us, so they are still in our village for sure. My in-laws are an 8 hour drive away in Canada, and my mom lives a 15 hr drive or 3 hour flight away in Georgia.
I have a super great group of mom friends, both locally in my town and online from my WB birth group and I rely on them for emotional support and mom advice. I love them, but don't use any of them for babysitting.
Childcare--we pay people or we don't go. Right now, we have a nanny for the baby and our older daughter is in daycare. For date nights we have a HS girl we can ask or we can ask our nanny to work that night, but it's expensive obviously....so we rarely go out, maybe once every 3 months.
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As far as in-the-moment commiseration about issues my 17 months old is dealing with, I generally turn to the mamas on my birth month club from HB - we've kept in touch via FB. And also some other mom friends from high school and college via FB. And my SIL has a son 2 months older than DS.
I chat a lot about my son with my coworkers. Most of their kids are older, but virtually everyone in my department is a parent and going through the daycare-school grind and so they're really supportive and understanding. It also helps my boss has a son who's 2 months older than mine, so he totally gets it.
We are active in our church, so we have families we know we can trust in case of emergency, although we've yet to have to call on them. One got us a last minute referral into my son's daycare (when everyone has like an 18 month waitlist) and totally saved us.
We have 2 friends from law school who live locally who are like uncles to our son and it was just the luck of the draw they ended up settling down 15 minutes from us.
And we have our daycare providers, a back up sitter, and a contract with a nanny agency for temp nannies should we need it.
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@gingerbebe:
our little village! We don't have a village here and we are working towards trying to build one. No advice, just totally commiserate. Our family isn't local and we don't have tons of friends. I have people I could turn to, but I rarely ask for help - which makes life hard sometimes!
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When I was abroad, I was also staying at home, so I built my village with work friends that were also pregnant at the same time, moms I met during the hospital birth prep class and moms from swim lessons.
It was a challenge, I tried to meet moms at the local parks and the swimming pool, but I didn't have a lot of success there.
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@psw27:
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I'm a SAHM, so it's possibly easier in some ways. But I met friends for myself by joining Junior League. Some of them are moms and others aren't, but I felt like I needed an outlet of having my own social time.
As for mom friends, I have met a few through the League but mostly just when out at the park. It's totally weird to meet a stranger and exchange email/phone numbers, but I found I just had to go with it and it got easier.
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We are thousands of miles away from our families and close friends, and it has been tough trying to build a village. We don't have anyone. I'm trying to put myself out there, but it has been tough getting responses. It feels like everyone is just doing their own thing, carrying on with their own lives. I'm trying to work on our village, but I'm having a hard time.
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I'm a SAHM so met my "village" at local playgroups and by being the person that said "hi" to everybody the crossed my path!
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We're about to move to our 4th state in 3 years, so we've really had no choice but to build our own village. We usually meet people at church and Bible study. I'll probably try to join MoPs when we move so I can meet more younger moms. And inviting neighbors over to get to know them is good, too - especially if you're in a similar stage of life,
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I don't know if this is helpful at all for your situation, but our families are all far away and our village is entirely built of our pre-baby friends. Some of them have had (or are having) their own kids, many of them are childless and single, but they still provide a support network for us. We just kept on attending every social gathering we got invited to, and kept inviting people to gather at our house (frequently on weekend evenings after LO goes to bed) and we have kept our bonds tight with 7-9 friends that way. I'm able to rely on them for babysitting, someone to relax with, someone to help us move furniture, someone to pitch in when I was dealing with PPD/PPA and just needed support and help, etc.
I did the whole PEPS and parenting groups thing too, and that was nice in a lot of ways, but our real "village" is definitely all the same friends we had before. They've been wonderful.
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It's hard. We don't have a lot of local friends. Both of us have worked for small companies and haven't met a lot of friends through work. The good, quality friends we made before having our daughter aren't having kids. In spite of that, they are still good friends and part of our village. We can count on a couple of neighbors to help out in a pinch. My parents are 2.5 hours away by car so, they're there when we need them.
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I actually met my closest mum friends at a HB meetup. Funnily, two of us had both unknowingly signed up for the same parenting course a month or so later so we would have met anyway. I built up a good village by chatting to other mums at playgroups and parks. Toronto was good like that, not many people had family around so most people understood what it was like and you really wanted to help each other out.
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I'm still working on ours (we just moved to a new city/state 6 months ago), but a combination of: babysitters that we found on care.com, random acquaintances that I reconnected with when we moved here, a handful of neighbors, a handful of DH coworkers, and a few people I have met through a moms group. I wouldn't say that I have a big super-close, call-when-you-need-anything type of village yet, but it takes time, especially for an introvert who is slow to warm up to people
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We knew nobody when we moved here and got pregnant right away. Thankfully after my daughter was born I found a breastfeeding support group. These women and their families became our village! So thankful for them.
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I love my mom's group! It has been a lifesaver in our new city.
My Oct '13 moms from HB are also amazing.
but I am trying to build and maintain a network of friends. We have a close friend that we hang out all the time which I met through prenatal yoga classes. There were 4 of us (+ 4 kids) but we usually hang out with just one which is also LO's best friend. Then now we are starting to hang out more with our neighbor with a same age child too which is also great. I tried to hang out with a friend from LO's preschool class (they've been classmate forever really) but it is harder to hang out with them because they just don't tend to be as flexible and don't want to do a lot of things I suggested. They also have a newborn so it is also quite hard. I hope we'll continue to meet more people when we switch to the new school for pre-k next year! It is so hard because I am an introvert pretending very hard to be extrovert, but I hope we'll continue to meet more people.
our little village! 
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