To feel incredibly bitter about friend’s pregnancy

[Crazyplantlady1]

I’m early 30s and infertile for unexplained reasons. Spent 5 years TTC, undergoing investigations and failed treatments which ultimately lead to the end of my marriage. I’m originally from a very small town where everybody settles down and has children early in life. After divorce, I couldn’t bare to be around it, so I moved to the city.

I love it here, I’m in a great relationship of 2yrs and I’ve got a lovely friendship group of career women in their 30s with no children and we all enjoy plenty of socialising.

In the past few months, I’ve found out that two of my closest friends from the group are now pregnant (both after 1 month of trying!) and another is TTC this year. I know I should feel happy for them, but the truth is I just feel bitter and resentful... It makes me sick that people can get pregnant so easily when I’ve never even made it to a BFP after so many years.

I can tell already that our group chats have turned into endless discussions about pregnancy and baby names and plans for the future. My friends all know my situation yet I feel it’s being shoved down my throat and I worry this is the start of me being completely left behind, just like I was before I moved to the city. AIBU to feel this way and ask for your advice on how best to handle this?

Another here who says you are not being unreasonable op.

It's such a tough situation to experience. And yes, those who haven't been through it, don't understand...it is grief for sure.

A lot of good advice given already (along with the unhelpful advice of 'why don't you just adopt?') so another handhold from me.

I'd agree with the others who have said if you ask them to get their own chat going, you may well find everything moves over there and you find you're left out.
You might not, if there are others who feel the same way, but I think it's very likely.

What might work better if you put something along the lines of:
"Delighted to hear your news.
I'm just struggling at the moment because of infertility, so I'm going to mute this chat for the time being. I will come back, so please don't forget about me. Love to hear from any of you, any time."

Then perhaps ask the one you're closest too to pass on any non-baby info from the chat that you'd like to hear.

You may find the baby chat dies down after a bit, then will probably get worse again when they've newborns, but you can mute it again then.

@mincedtart Lot more complicated than that. In a lot of us it is a biological urge to want to have kids. It is something that is so out of our control.

It's not unreasonable to not wish to have chats dominated by talk of babies and to feel like it's an arrow through the heart, but it's unfair on them to feel bitter towards them because they didn't struggle. If you're close then be honest with them, a friend of mine when I was pregnant found out through another friend (I didn't do an announcement or anything just told people as I saw them) and she messaged saying she was happy for me but couldn't help also feeling bitter and that she needed to step back for a bit. I respected that and did just that, at her own pace we reconnected. I know some people wouldn't like that, but I was glad she was honest and didn't just end the friendship or whatever and that she didn't struggle for me.

This.

That’s not at all what I meant or what I said. And the friends presumably already know how the op feels and what she’s been through. I’m sure they know very well. It is wrong to dampen someone else’s joy and that’s what I’m talking about, if op says things to them right now, they will probably feel guilt and upset and that is not right. It’s not only about the op and her resentments. Let the pregnant friends be happy. Just as if it were the op, her friends having trouble conceiving should likewise make sure to support her in her joy. It is not fun feeling the resentment of someone while pregnant. It happened to me after waiting ten years to have a child and still someone felt it their right to say things to me which really boiled down to I should be careful to not be too happy. That is simply wrong. A jealous and resentful attitude shown to a person who is experiencing joy of whatever kind, pregnancy, a new job, good news, is destructive and unkind.

By the way, I worked right up until I gave birth and am not made of glass and am not archaic in my thinking. You distorted what I said @fitzwilliamdarcy

Yanbu that you are upset my their excited chatter but yabu to expect they shouldn't chat, if you are uncomfortable then mute the chat or explain that could then have a separate group for baby talk. A word of caution, this is just the beginning, I think you need to find friends who are childless and staying that way, children are so integral to your life once you have them you can't hind them from part of your life easily, they form part of your identity

That sounds so hard.

I read your post about moving to the city and having a great group of career minded, childfree friends in their 30’s and immediately thought....give it time and they’ll all be either TTC or pregnant. I know of so many ‘career women’ who could see 40 on the horizon and suddenly decided they needed to TTC if they wanted a child or, they suddenly went from not wanting a child to realising they might miss the opportunity altogether and had a panic pregnancy.

I think it’s incredibly hard for you and possibly the start of many pregnancy announcements. Once this round of first pregnancies is over, you have the second wave in about 2 years when all the second pregnancies start.

Im not going to suggest you explore all options yourself because I’m sure already have.

There will come a time when the pregnancy announcements stop because everyone is past that stage and you will meet women who either didn’t want children or never met anyone to have children with. I know lots of these in London and they have great lives.

I think it will be hard to avoid the pregnancy and baby chats for a while because a lot of women are consumed but eventually those babies go to school and things change again.

If you ask your friends not to talk about baby stuff you run the risk of these conversations still taking place but with you excluded. Then in turn you run the risk of them meeting up without you. If you can I would try and stay friends because not everyone has a baby and wants it to take over, some women still want to see their friends and leave the baby talk at home.

I will just say my friend conceived via IVF at the age of 46 after 18 years of TTC.

What are you on about? Where did I say lose all your friends? I chose to unfollow people posting bumps and scans like there’s no tomorrow. The people who enjoy that content will continue to follow regardless. I haven’t cut contact with anyone either. Christ you make sound like I suggested disappearing off the face of the earth!

Sorry for your experience OP, it sounds so hard. I agree with others about seeking counselling, as these feelings will come up again and again in your life whenever someone around you falls pregnant.

OP this may come across as insensitive but it is genuinely meant kindly.

Running away in the past didn't work. You simply can't keep running away from people around you having and talking about babies. You can grieve over the loss of your future dreams, you can accept the cards you have been dealt and you can change your reaction others having babies.

I have an amazing SIL who couldn't have much much wanted children. She was always a glass half full type person and instead she threw herself into being the best auntie (to family and friends children) in the world. She is a "god" mother to 6 children, the youngest are teens now (including my son) and she plays active parts in most of their lives.

She is in her 60s so has long accepted she wont have her own children and jokes about she has her large family without the stretchmarks, piles and with more holidays and a healthier bank balance!

I guess the point I am trying to make is stop running away and deal with it. When you are ready you change your dreams, they will be different but can still be very fulfilling.

@SeemsSoUnfair the thing is, your SIL might still write post about how painful it is when others around her fall pregnant. Yes she’s outwardly moved on with her life, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still twang for her, just like to does for the OP. The OP may outwardly be showing an attitude very similar to your SILs. You can’t really, completely honestly, speak for her.

I'm so sorry for what you're going through, OP.

It might help to keep in mind that pregnancy (and happiness in general, really) isn't a zero-sum game. Your friends' fertility has no relation to / impact on your own. They could have no kids, or five kids, or multiple miscarriages, or struggle with IVF for years, and it wouldn't change your own situation.

Although it can be SO easy to feel that they have, your friends haven't 'stolen' your potential happiness by being happy themselves. And they'd be thrilled for you if you announced your own pregnancy (I really hope you will, soon!).

I've been through a huge amount of counselling re infertility, and the day I really accepted this was a revelation for me.

You really have to accept your friends as they are or find select few who will never become mothers (and even that's not a guarantee) for whatever reason.

It will be nearly impossible to avoid talk related to children for the foreseeable, unless you plug your ears every time your friends talk about their difficulties, third pregnancies, future plans, relationships, holidays, new jobs, families, health... everything.

I'm a mum of one in my 30s, I didn't take to motherhood and I'm just binding my time waiting for women my age to "free up" to be girl - friends (as opposed to mum-friends) again. In the meanwhile, my friends are mostly younger than me, child-free or men.

It's difficult to explain, isn't it, OP? - it's not as if they've stolen your happiness, and you know it won't impact on yours, but you feel an ache of emptiness and it seems as if others find joy more easily. It's hard not to be resentful.
This is very painful and there's no easy solution. If you continue ttc, good luck. If you choose to step away from this friendship group for the moment, it's understandable.

I am so sorry I have been in your position following 3 failed IVFs and 2 IUIs.
We decided to adopt after ten years and then conceived naturally my second child six years later.

I don't think there's an easy solution here, finding a crowd of fun childfree people in your 30s it's inevitable the majority will at somepoint settle down and have kids. Unless you meet a bunch of infertile women or have older friends who are beyond the childbearing years you were always going to have to navigate this. You either decide to stay friends and embrace their huge change of lifestyle or you find a new bunch of people who you know arent going to have kids.

I'm in a circle of friends, 9 couples (we've all known eachother or one half of the couples since childhood). One by one we've all settled down and had kids. We used to meet up on nights out, have weekends away etc but now it's our kids bday partys or family events, this is where our life is at, I don't want to go out to a bar until late, it's no longer my idea of fun. Unfortunately one couple in the circle couldn't have kids, it means they aren't invited to lots of events and when they are invited to family events they tend to tutt, roll their eyes because there are so many kids there. We don't want to push them out but at the same time our lives right now just aren't the same. We will stay friends with them and once our children are older (everyone has primary aged kids or babies) I'm sure we'll be back on the same page. I know it's hard for them, they are awkward around kids, one of them made a joke about one of the kids (not mine) being ugly, the kid is 3, I had to tell them that they were out of line and please don't comment on how any of our children look!! It's like they were trying to make jokes to make themselves feel better about themselves "well at least we don't have an ugly kid if we cant have any". If we'd have told the parent's of the child this couple would never be invited to anything again! They are hurting but it's not the direction to direct it. It's a tough situation for them, we get it, but it's hard to include them when they don't want to be around children.

I think in your shoes I'd cool your relationship with them (mute the chat and just bob in every now and again) but don't completely cut them off, if you do want to keep them as friends for years to come. The baby years are short in the grand scheme of things, people come out the other side eventually.

My (male) friend had a very good approach to this. He was married but his wife could never have children and due to health reasons, had to have a full hysterectomy. He would have loved to have been a Dad but he said to me, actually don't ever stop sharing pics of the kids. It's life and I love to see how it evolves for others and see folk's kids doing well and growing up.
It always stuck with me how great his attitude was. I feel for you OP but you could try looking at this through different optics and embrace your friends' joy and be a wonderful 'auntie' to their kids.

I ttc for 6 months and someone very close to me announced their pregnancy. I cried for a couple of hours and didn’t take it well. I was happy for them but super sad and frustrated for myself. Quite how OP is still in tbt group chat I don’t know, she’s a better person than me.

I would ask for them to start a separate conversation, while you don’t mind odd chats about pregnancy and babies you would prefer to protect your mental health as it’s a tricky time. If they are really friends they will get this and I’m sorry that they have been insensitive so far!

He sounds like a great person, @VoluptuaGoodshag (great name), however, it's the woman going through this physically - IVF is unbelievably tough on the system. I'm sure many men are bereft, but they don't have the blood every month which reminds them of their body's "failings" and it really does feel like a failure. I do feel that it's more intense for the woman.
(No, I am not saying men aren't impacted, for those of you with the inevitable jump on)

Yanbu, you're grieving hopes and dreams for your life that you aren't sure will happen. All your feelings are valid and normal. I do think it's sad that you are heading towards losing more good friendships over others good fortune. I think you need to speak to your friends and ask them to tone down the baby chat in the group and make effort to talk about other things you can be involved in. But if they value you as a friend they'll want you to be part of their journey into parenthood as well so you need to decide if there's a way you can do that with some boundaries that work for you. I agree with pps who have suggested trying to make more friends who are child free for whatever reason and I do think it would be worth going for counselling to get support and give yourself a place to process it all with no judgement. You need to be gentle with yourself.

Have you tried giving yourself a month or so off TTC? Removing the stress for a while really helps the system. TTC can be so stress ful and takes all of the fun out of sex.

Also, if you haven't already, book yourself in for a few reflexology sessions. I know a couple of people who fell pregnant after having 'blockages' moved in sessions. Could be hocum but who cares if the placebo affect works!

Oh, and elevated pelvis after sex! Let gravity help!!

In the mean time, try to be kind to yourself, OP & step back from the group if you need to.

Ive been where you are now. Took 4 years to conceive our son, and I'm currently. doing IVF for our second which may or may not prove successful, I'm now 2 miscarriages down.

I'm 41 now, and if I could go back in time to offer myself advice it would be the following:

Emotional - Their journey is their journey and your journey is your journey, as hurtful as it is seeing everyone else around you achieve something (and with so much ease it would seem) there's no point being bitter, it doesn't get you anywhere other than time wasted. Channel that into something else.

Which leads me onto...

Practical - Get some tests done now to establish what could be causing your infertility, we tried for years until it was discovered I had endometriosis. Totally silent, no symptoms other than a flipping bfn every month! Had surgery to remove it, boom fell pregnant naturally 2 cycles later. Do you have endo, do you have PCOS, do you have immune issues, do you ovulate regularly, what are your prolactin levels doing, what does your uterus look like, do you have fibroids, polyps, are your tubes blocked etc. I would then consider getting your eggs frozen, take out a loan if you have to. I wish Id done this when I was your age. After 35 time is not on your side, as harsh as that is to hear in most cases that's just a sad reality. They'll always be some fertile myrtle that falls pregnant naturally at 43 but it's rare. If you have that insurance of eggs on ice (consider donor sperm to make a few frozen embryos as backup aswell), it takes the pressure off you to meet someone yesterday, get married, get pregnant etc. Just the testing process alone, plus if you did end up doing ivf can take alot longer than you might think. We started when I was 38-39...only just getting round to transferring the 2nd embryo we froze and there's no guarantee that if these dont work that ill have any decent ones left to do another collection.

No one can speak for anyone, regardless of how often they opened up about any loss. Sorry, didn't realise only those who personally experienced infertility were allowed to comment or offer well intentioned support.

Even with acceptance, of course it does "twang", anyone one who has experienced a significant loss will always grieve that loss. The point is there is a life to be had after loss, it might be a different life living with that loss but can still be a very fulfilling one.

I'll just shut up now as obviously my post rubbed you up the wrong way.