It’s no surprise that motherhood has an isolating effect. In that first year, you become so busy with feeding schedules, diaper changes and sleep training that you have little time left over for anything else. These past few months have been especially isolating for me having left friends and family behind on the east coast. Add to that we live in a place where two cars are a necessity (we only have one) and I don’t currently work (read: no spending money) and you can easily see how hard it can get to establish or maintain a social network.

After four months, the husband and I (okay, maybe just me) were getting desperate for social interaction. We went to the local BevMo to stock our newly cleaned and organized wet bar and happened to see a family of four. As the husband and I, with Baby in arms, perused the aisles, I’d get glimpses of that family. The dad was trying to figure out which beer would be best for the upcoming weekend, while the mom took her toddler and elementary-school-aged child down the aisles to look at wines. I whispered to the (sorry, my) husband “they look like cool people, we should make friends with them!” He laughed and we went on our way, realizing that there was really no non-awkward way of asking them for their number. “Hi. You have kids and drink alcohol, can we be your friends?”

In all seriousness, I’ve tried to meet moms by joining a Meetup group but I quickly discovered I may be fighting an uphill battle there. The moms are nice and it’s great to get out of the house each week. But while Baby really benefits from the social interaction with other babies, it seemed that I was left just smiling awkwardly at other people’s babies and making small talk about sleep habits. I mean, I can talk about Baby till I’m blue in the face, but believe it or not, I have other interests too. I like computers, I like video games, I like acting, I like controversial topics (maybe that’s the antagonist in me). So I wanted to meet moms who were comfortable leaving the kids with the dads and going out for pedicures or drinks. And I didn’t just want mom friends either. I wanted family friends. Other families with children of similar ages that enjoyed hanging out on the weekends, drinking beer and playing games, or what have you. The problem, as I had learned, was that the aformentioned play date moms seemed to just want play dates. Want to meet up at the park? Sure! Want to come over this weekend? I can’t/baby’s sick/dad’s home/laundry’s dirty/it’s a full moon. Trying to get moms to go out on weekends either solo or with the whole family was like pulling teeth. There had to be an easier way to filter out the moms who wanted the same thing I did.

[Insert dramatic pause because I can’t think of a cool way to transition separate, yet related thoughts.]

Earlier this week, I was googling random things while waiting for Baby to go to sleep and I came across this report from the Today Show about new ways to meet moms. They featured three different companies that used speed dating, Tinder-like technology, and an E-Harmony style algorithm to help moms meet other moms. The article piqued my interest so I signed up for two of the services, Momco (an app that shows you moms in your area, sorted by distance) and Hello Mamas ( a website that uses long questionnaires to match you with other moms who have similar personalities). Unfortunately for me, there weren’t that many parents close by on either of these services. On each one, I had my choice of maybe four moms that seemed to match my flexible, yet restrictive criteria for mom friends. (How hard could it be to find another stay-at-home mom with one six month old daughter who lives on the same block? I kid, I kid.)

Once I filtered the moms, the next step was to make contact. But how? We were all, theoretically, using the service for the same reason, but how do you take that first step without sounding like a pervy pedophile. Momco makes it somewhat easy by having a “Say Hi” button. Just one click and a message is sent to the other mom saying, you guessed it “Hi”. So, I did that, and immediately felt lazy for not just typing in the two letters required for that communication.

Then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until today when I got a response. One seemingly nice mom wrote back “how are you doing?” Well, that’s good, right? Someone wanted to continue the conversation. So, I picked up my phone to respond and I drew a blank. What do I say to that? If I was a single woman and this was Tinder, I’d be all like “nuthin much, wanna grab a drink down the street?”. But I’m not single and this isn’t Tinder and I’m not looking for a hookup. So, again, what do I say? I texted my hard-working husband at the office with this priority-one issue and demanded assistance; he was of little help with his LOLs and his smiley faces. I guess I was on my own. I tried to type a response but noticed the send time of the other mom’s message. It was only twenty minutes prior. If I responded too soon would that make me look desperate. If I waited too long would she have forgotten about the app and moved onto some other form of mommy meetings, leaving my response to never be seen again!?!? WHAT DO I DO!?

Okay, maybe I was overthinking it just a little bit. So I wrote back a simple “doing good” and some stuff about being new to the area and left it at that.

Why is meeting moms so hard?