by BabyCenter Guest Blogger posted in Parenting

By Jessica Hill
It?s hard to make friends as adults. With pregnancy as the common thread, it can sometimes be easier.  Mom friends at every stage of the motherhood journey are super helpful, but friends who have kids the same age as yours are super essential. Here's why:

1.When your baby is having their first growth spurt and you find yourself feeling like a feedbag (every. 20. effing. minutes.), you have someone to talk you off the what-if-I?m-not-producing-enough" ledge. Or to suggest that perhaps his latch is wrong -- or isn?t -- he's just preparing you for increasing milk production.
"Oh right?yessssssssssss!" She knows because it happened to her last week. She also understands that it?s usually just one shitty day that?ll soon recede into the fog of being a new parent -- and that sort of validation is maternal gold dust. 2. Because babies throw us into a time warp. Once you have moved past the phase of cleaning the belly button, you completely forget how to clean the belly button, and other seemingly obvious tasks. As a next-level mom, your brain starts to function on autopilot; it only has capacity for the here-and-now and, that, combined with sleep deprivation, means total loss of short term memory. A week can feel like a year, and a year can feel like a month. Being able to call each other about each and every symptom to group-think on how to deal with it in real-time is invaluable.
3. Because your f...