Dear Urban Diplomat: How do I help my friend get her identity back now that she’s had a baby?
Dear Urban Diplomat, Since my friend had her baby last year, she’s lost her identity. Her Twitter profile features a picture of her one-year-old instead of her, and she often tweets from the first-person perspective of the baby, as in “Mmm, mmm. Mushy peas fow bweakfast.” It’s embarrassing, and I want my friend back. What’s the best way to talk to her about this? —Baby-Talked Out, DON MILLS
Adopting infant patois is as obnoxious online as it is in the real world. But your friend is in the throes of first-year parenting and understandably bonkers about her baby. If you grew a tiny human inside you, you’d be a little bonkers, too. Having a baby changes people. The good news is the baby talk will fade (if it doesn’t, write back in a year or so), along with the novelty of parenting, so you just have to be patient. In the meantime, offer to babysit so she can do adult things, like go to the opera or have dinner at a fancy restaurant—or relearn how to spell.
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