Teresa Strasser by Teresa Strasser

You fall in love. Then you fall off the map for about six months. You can't call your friends back because you have to spend four hours eating toast and sipping coffee while wearing his big, soft T-shirt and staring into his eyes every Sunday morning.

This is the natural order of things, and it probably will happen to most of us a few times in our lives.

Every other interest in your life — from the Friday night yoga class you used to take to the language you had planned on learning — takes a back seat as you and your new love sit around brainstorming names for the kids you will have.

It seems crazy, but it's the kind of thing all couples do when they are falling in love. And most of the time, it will just be part of the sad story you tell after the breakup. "We were naming kids together, I thought this was the one. Now, little Madison and Edgar will never be."

Sometimes, however, it does go the distance, and the kids you talked about having, you have. And that's when staying plugged in to the world outside becomes even more difficult than it used to be, when you spent all day locked inside eating takeout Thai and watching 19 episodes of "The Wire."

Having a kid, that's a disappearing act that sometimes never ends.

Sure, you become infatuated with this new being to what must be an almost annoying extent, but there are practical reasons you recede from the rest of life. You know, sleep deprivation, the need to be online looking for organic sleep sacks, the day lost to interviewing babysitters, mashing peas (I bought my peas already mashed, but still, it took time, not to mention the psychic energy it took to feel guilty about not making my own), figuring out which sanitizing wipes to keep in your purse. Forget girls' night or yoga or being able to name the AFC champions, the Kardashians or the Republican nominees. I keep talking to some abstract "you," but I mean me.

The point is this: It's been two years since I had a baby, and I often have no idea what is going on in the outside world.

If the headline doesn't involve a Dreft recall, I'm out.

The good news is that I don't think the world misses me much.

The bad news is that sometimes I miss the world. Sometimes I read the sharp, funny, biting tweets written by former colleagues or friends, and I wish I had opinions, or time to form some, or time to read "The Economist."

When you get into a new relationship and leave all your old buddies behind for a while, that phase passes, and you apologize and buy a couple of lunches and get your old friends back. You take that yoga class again and get sore, and it's not the linchpin of your weekend it once was, but you make it back. Life resumes almost like it used to be; only now you are a couple.

And now we are three: a couple and a little boy. And we do manage to socialize, but exclusively with other couples who have kids roughly the same age. And even that can be tough when you have nap schedules to work around, not to mention the various illnesses and moods likely to befall a toddler.

Every social event, and I use the term "event" very loosely, is a game-time decision, subject to all of the unpredictable variables of the day.

From what I understand, after you have a baby, you never really sleep soundly again, but somewhere around the 10-year mark you will get through some of "The Economist" or whatever it is you like doing that requires an abundance of free time. That's when all of us sort of new parents will be old hands, with our kids at sleepovers and on soccer teams and in carpools.

It's a good thing I can rest assured that in eight years or so, when I try to get dialed back in to the popular culture of the day, I can finally figure out the Kardashian thing I missed over the past two years. Something tells me those kids will still be around.

Teresa Strasser is an Emmy-winning television writer, a two-time Los Angeles Press Club Columnist of the Year and a multimedia personality. She is the author of a new book, "Exploiting My Baby," the rights to which have been optioned by Sony Pictures. To find out more about Teresa Strasser and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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