~ BABY STEPS Forgive me, old friends!

This column originally appeared in the Flourish ezine, a monthly digital magazine from the Southeast Missourian. To sign up for the ezine or to receive Flourish in print four times a year, email cellis@semissourian.com or go to semissourian.com/flourish.

Having kids changes you. The life you knew as a childless woman vanishes into thin air. You become a woman who doesn't need sleep to function -- someone who can still do her job, feed and bathe the children and read a bedtime story all while cleaning the house, doing laundry and boosting your husband's ego. That girl in college who thought she was awesome because she could function on only five hours of sleep has nothing on the mom version of you.

You no longer know what it's like to eat a meal that doesn't include chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese or peanut butter and jelly. The nice, sit-down, homemade meal you and your husband used to have each night has been replaced with a painful hour of trying to get your kid to eat the food on his plate and convincing him that the "green thing" in his spaghetti is just oregano and doesn't taste yucky.

You never get to go to the bathroom in peace ever again. Privacy? What is that? I haven't known privacy in almost four years! You are being watched 24/7, and it isn't the government, but your nosey 3-year-old constantly banging on the bathroom door asking what you are doing in there.

But the biggest thing I have found that changes when you have kids is that you no longer get to choose your own friends. Those girls you used to have book club with? You don't get to play with them anymore because they don't have kids. You also can't remember the last time you read a book, so you wouldn't be any help in the discussion, anyway. The friends you used to meet for drinks once a month? They aren't your friends anymore, either, because their kids are either older or younger than yours, or they don't have kids at all. How about your friend Sally who has a kid your child's age? Well, Sally's son Robbie is mean to your kid, so your kid refuses to play with him anymore. Goodbye, Sally; it was nice knowing you! Maybe we can try this again in about a decade.

Your new best friends are your child's friends' parents, so you better start finding your child some good friends with cool parents! Thankfully, like his father, Cooper is easily prone to suggestion. Right now, it is easy to push him toward kids I deem appropriate so I can have a conversation with Johnny's mom without wanting to poke my eyes out with a spoon. Take it from me, mommies, play dates are much, much, much more enjoyable when you like the other parents and have common ground on which to stand.

So to those people out there who feel as if their friends dumped them when they had kids, I'm here to tell you that they did. But don't take it personally -- they really had no choice. Those children they deeply love have dictated with whom they can and cannot spend time. There is only a limited amount of time in the day, week and month, so the time we moms do have is very precious and usually spent with our families. We still like you, friend from college we used to sit at the coffee house with and debate religion -- we just don't have time for you anymore, unless you would like to meet us at McDonald's and talk about the pros and cons of "Yo Gabba Gabba."

Dear lost friends, please forgive us and look us up when you have kids of your own so we can be friends again.

Kristen Pind, a native of small-town Gower, Mo., came to Southeast Missouri State University with big dreams of being the next Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer. She never thought that in her 20s, she'd be married with two kids and living in Cape Girardeau. Keep up with Kristen's adventures as a young mom who's still trying to figure out how her own life fits together. Turns out, she's living a dream she never knew she had, and loving every minute of it. Kristen invites moms of all types to find her "Baby Steps" page on Facebook.