What's the expected response?

yes a email saying that he is gorgeous would help. just talk to her like you did before she had the baby.not much has changed other then she had a baby right? She is still your friend right? kids are a great deal to their parents and they love to talk about them it is true. but you can still carry on a conversation as you had done before.

Are you sure your friend was passive-aggressively chastising you for not praising her kid? Maybe she really is just wondering if everything is okay….I would take it at face value and say hello, everything’s fine, how are you holding up, etc.

As for the other stuff—how to maintain friendships with your friends when they become capital-M Moms—I have no idea.

Perhaps she was expecting a baby gift? How often did you communicate in the past?

One of the things my husband and I promised ourselves while we were expecting our first child was that we would not lose our conversation. We swore that, unlike so many of our peers, we would not forgo the ability to carry on an intelligent adult-level discourse about things in the world just because a precious and infinitely remarkable little being had become the center and focus of our lives, our consciousness, our interest, our reason for existence, etc.

Six months after our son was born, we had some friends over for dessert and coffee. They were about our age, but their children were grown; we were late starters. Our pride and joy was lying in a playpen, amusing himself with the usual flapping and gurgling, while we chatted with our friends. At some point I realized that we were all watching him like a television set, and I heard myself boasting that he could roll over by himself. Presently he did, and my husband and I both exclaimed, “Look, he did it! Did you see that?”

One woman set her coffee cup down, assumed a look of animated fascination, and said, “What else can this prodigy do?”

After they went home that night, I told my husband, “We’ve lost our conversation.”

It took us a while, but eventually we did get it back. Some folks never do.

It is very hard for new parents to maintain much in common with their friends who are at a much earlier or later stage of their reproductive lives (or never intend to have one). Despite their best intentions, they are apt to be obsessively centered on the little ones. This is probably good for the survival of the species but very bad for social relations with any but their own relatives and other new parents. Please be a bit charitable and forgiving, express some interest in your friend now and then (without overly encouraging her with inquiries about her offspring), and understand that it is probably going to be at least 10 years and maybe 20 years before she can tear herself away from mommyhood long enough to resume a normal friendship with you.

Thanks for the input. Some very valid points.
To Nikipedia’s point: true, it doesn’t have to be a ‘how dare she not admire my little one’, but just wondering what’s up, but at the same time, I haven’t expected to hear from her because I know she has her hands full with the baby, same reason I haven’t really reached out to her, because I’m not in a position to offer help with nappy changing…
To Jeruba’s point: admirable that you tried, but I think as you pointed out, it probably is a losing battle :)
I do want to keep in touch with my friends, but 3 of the 4 of them had babies this year – the other one last year. As the only one without an offspring, I do feel slightly alienated and don’t just pick up the phone for a chat anymore – again, because I understand and respect they have something very time-consuming in their lives now.

Friendships can ebb and flow over the years. When all I could talk about was my baby as a 20 yo 1st time mother, all my hs best friend could talk about was student demonstrations on campus.

We continued to write over the years, kids, jobs, divorces, seldom at the same place at the same time. The night of our 40th hs reunion we left the party with a couple of other friends about 10 and then stayed up til 3 talking.

Just do what comes naturally, you will never have the same kind of friendship you had when you had everything in common, but it still can be a lifelong friendship

If and when non parents become parents, their whole world changes and as noted above, so does conversation and priorities. I think that is just fine, charming even.

Maybe you could give her a call just to check in and say hi? If the conversation feels awkward, you could always make it pleasantly short.

From another point of view, I got married my senior year of high school. I was, of course, the ONLY girl to do this. My husband was/is only a year older than me and was already out of school. I never understood why all of my friends faded away after this. I had more freedom, my husband had no problem with any of my friends, yet it seemed they just stopped coming around.

I found myself being the one, months after graduation, to call some of those friends up to find out about their lives, as your friend seems to be doing with you.

While you seem to be worried about an awkward conversation about her life, she’s probably(as i was) just hoping she can still entertain you.

It’s a wierd feeling to be left alone by things that once made you happy seemingly because you’re doing new things that also make you happy. She values your friendship, and while her life is changing dramatically, as well as her conversation, she’s still the same person you laughed with in adolescence.