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?

You’re both BU and NBU.

It’s completely natural to feel sad for what you may never have. But equally you have to find a way of dealing with this and letting them indulge in their happiness. They’re not doing it to spite you, they could as easily be in your shoes. If they’re good friends they’ll hopefully try to understand your situation.

It’s asking a lot of you OP, but please try not to be bitter, it will only harm you and make you into someone you’re not.

Work out some coping strategies because if you move into another friendship group, there’s no guarantee this won’t happen again to someone in your new friendship group.

Acknowledge your feelings and allow this to be... write down how you feel. talk to your partner. All of your feelings are valid.

When you are ready to start to feel differently about this, there are people who can help you on that journey.

Been there too. Years of TTC and many many miscarriages. I completely understand. Feeling bitter is completely understandable and valid. I still get pangs even 5 years into being a mum through adoption. They’ve become a sharp sting now instead of a gut wrenching pain that stays with me for days/weeks now.

Something I came to realise is that once the baby had arrived I found it easier to cope with other people having a baby. Pregnancy was tricky because it’s so ‘there’ but once the baby arrived for me it lessened…I didn’t want their baby/family…I wanted mine/ours.

Whether you become a parent or not, your feelings are completely understandable and valid. Please don’t feel guilty about it. I found I had to be pretty explicit about what i needed from my friends and not just once. I don’t think people who haven’t been there can quite fathom the excruciating pain and grief of infertility or understand why you ‘can’t just be happy for them’ Things like asking them not to send scan pics without asking first, prior warning for public pregnancy announcements and also sharing how you feel with a friend who is understanding. That way if someone else drops a clanger then that person can be someone to chat to about it. I found they naturally started to check in with me unprompted.

Sending you a gentle squeeze xx

reading your OP - it almost reads like you feel let down and shocked by your “career focussed” friends having babies. Like you expected it from your small town friends, but had taken that town’s mentality that if you hadn’t had a baby by 25 you wouldn’t be having one, and have assumed your 30-something friends would have had babies by now if they were maternal, so had thought they were “safe” to be round as you wouldn’t have to face them having dcs.

they haven’t let you down or broken an unspoken agreement they’d be career not family focussed. They’ve just been on a different life path than the woman you grew up round.

I echo the PP who suggests counselling - you left one lifestyle as you couldn’t cope with surrounded by friends with babies, unless you are going to start again, you need to come to terms with what you’ve been through and learn to function around families.

(it also might help when the babies have arrived and they are people in their own right, not just your friends being pregnant.)

I didn't wanna jump and run OP, but I just wanted to message and ask if you had recently seen the post that Sydney rae bass (think her name is) put on her Instagram. I noticed alot of women who have struggled to conceive had commented the same thing under her post. She has ttc for man years and had secondary infertility that was unexplained. After finding that she had a type of bacteria (ureaplasma), she had it treated and within a month of two I think it was she conceived. Alot of women said the same happened to them. Don't know if that's helpful I just wanted to mention it. Good luck and I hope you become the mummy you want to be 🤞🤞

How good friends are they? Are you able to talk to them about this honestly? Is it going to make you feel better to cut them out of your life? I hope you don't genuinely feel they are ramming it down your throat. If you do then, I guess, it's better to part company or at the very least you need to tell them? It's completely reason to feel,sad and jealous but if you have real ill will towards them then you can't stay friends with them.

It's time to be honest with yourself and honest with your friends.

I can't believe the number of posters suggesting tips to get pregnant or suggesting you adopt. Some people are clueless.

OP, I'm sorry that you are in this situation. 💐

I agree with this.

It took us 3.5 years of TTC and went through the same with friends and family. I remember an occasion when both my cousin and another friend announced their pregnancies at the same time. It was like a knife through my heart. I really do get it. Had all the tests etc (coming up not too far off 30 years ago now!) - finally had an HSG done, with the intention of going on the IVF list thereafter. Fortune smiled on us - turned out to be blocked tubes, and I then got pregnant very quickly with #1 and #2 DCs. Two miscarriages ttc #3. Got pregnant again straight after my 2nd D&C. I think there's something in 'clearing out the womb' so to speak - seemed to work for me. Obs said he had intended to try doing another HSG for that reason, but I didn't need it.

Listen, you're already missing out (for now) on having a baby, so I think you need your friendships. With the best will in the world, your friends are not going to stop talking babies any time soon. For your own sake, I think you need to find a method of self-preservation - perhaps through counselling?

I honestly don't think anyone who hasn't experienced infertility really 'gets' the visceral need women can feel, desperate to conceive and met by nothing but disappointment.

If I were in your shoes, or you were my daughter, I think I'd suggest stripping things right back to basics. See a different specialist - well you probably would anyway seeing as you've moved. Something might have been missed; something might have changed.

I wish you all the very best x

I mean, you literally said that the OP shouldn’t be honest about her mental health because it would be damaging to a pregnant woman or new mum’s well-being.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting the OP literally ruin anyone’s joy. Just that she should be able to remove herself from a conversation that’s painful to her, and a good friend should understand that without deciding that the whole pregnancy and baby is now ruined.

It really does come across as though you think pregnant women and mums must be shielded from negativity at all costs, so…

🙄

I said she can step back (remove herself) from the group chats etc. Do you really believe she hasn’t already shared with them previously her struggles? She’s already been honest with them. They know her situation. They don’t deserve her negativity right now. Talk to a therapist or husband or others, don’t unleash negativity on top of someone else’s joy. I’m not talking about op saying she’s going to tell them she has to mute, step back, that’s all fine. I’m talking about not giving those feelings of resentment to the pregnant friends. You ignored my other answer to you. I had been hoping for a child for ten years and finally was pregnant and an in law made sure she ‘shared’ with me her resentment and ill will toward me and my baby. Even though she gave birth three months after I did. She was angry that I was happy. I had a life threatening condition so did my baby while pregnant, thankfully it resolved shortly before I gave birth. These friends of the op’s will have their own concerns and worries, no need to add to them. In the ten years of longing for a baby I didn’t make comments to others to make sure they had to walk on eggshells around me. I was genuinely happy for them and supported them because that is the right thing and the kind thing to do. Don’t ever dampen someone else’s joy. It could harm them, what about their mental and physical health while pregnant. They matter too. It’s not their fault.

I also had unexplained infertility and I get how much it hurts. You need to do whatever it takes to feel in balance.

I got pregnant with my dd after the 3rd ivf cycle. After a couple of failed rounds, the gynaecologist did more tests and took a biopsy of my womb lining and determined the age was incorrect and therefore too old for a foetus to implant. I used a spray to completely remove the lining then artificially grew it with daily injections to create the ideal environment for a foetus. I imagine you’ve had these sorts of tests already and I hope the doctors manage to work out the issue for you.

Some people feel the need to withdraw in similar circumstances and some (my aunt for example) don’t want to be left feeling excluded. It was extremely painful for her every time but she said she always dashed a little maternity related gift for her friend as soon as she heard - so they knew she didn’t want them to hide their pregnancy experience from her.
Another friend found she could cope once the babies was here. Another friend could cope with some friends and not others. It’s a very lonely and individual experience.

These friends may be selfish, insensitive, unwitting or actively thinking it would be worse for you for them to exclude you. If it hurts too much for now you can step back a little. If it never stops hurting then maybe you will need to drift away. I’m so sorry it’s feeling so hard for you. Following years and years of unsuccessfully trying, I then had multiple miscarriages and I remember the all consuming pain I felt. My sibling has probably long forgotten their glib comment (when I told them I was being referred for testing as I hadn’t had a successful pregnancy) that it felt like I was just having one long pregnancy to the, but I still remember the unbearable sting as that comment landed. I chose to copy my aunt’s approach by dashing a pregnancy gift round but some people were less compassionate than other and I walked away from those who I felt weren’t compassionate to me.

That’s not what she asked. You haven’t adopted have you? So why suggest it to OP?

You are being unreasonable but it is also quite natural to feel that way in your situation. They aren't doing anything wrong by talking about their lives though, they don't have censor themselves for a subject that makes up a massive percentage of their life events as their lives are going to revolve around pregnancy and small people now, that's equally natural.

I was the friend who could get pregnant in this scenario. Thankfully in days before WhatsApp, but we did still have a large group of mutual friends and you know… actually talk to each other!

I knew my friend would struggle to conceive and why, although we never really discussed it in detail.

When my own DC1 was born, I accidentally found out she’d already been through a lot of unsuccessful fertility treatment. She’d never mentioned any of this to me, and I thought we’d been very close… since being small kids and we’d been through a lot of fun, and sad, life-events together. I had to raise it with her and I was devastated that she’d never shared this with me… not because I was nosy, but because I felt devastated that for whatever reason I hadn’t been able to hold her hand and comfort her. And actually also that it signified that maybe we weren’t as close as I’d thought. Anyway, it was her business, and I truly accepted that.

She was VERY bitter. Bitter that people who weren’t ‘good people’ could seemingly conceive easily. Bitter that her sister could conceive so easily (despite many of her conceptions ending in miscarriage). Eager that I shouldn’t tell a mutual friend she knew was pregnant about my own pregnancy, because other friend had had a miscarriage and so was more deserving of her pregnancy announcement than mine. Bitter about the money spent on TTC. She physically pushed me away from her when I sympathetically told her about my pregnancy, saying I could never understand.

In truth, there was nothing I wouldn’t have done (well, not surrogacy) to help her conceive. Nothing I wouldn’t have fine to take her pain away. And that all counted for nothing.

The outcome is that she now indeed has her own biological DC, but we aren’t friends.

I’ll never go back, to much water under that bridge. I tried for a VERY long time, but eventually I couldn’t deny the existence on my own DCs. But like PPs have said, the baby years are short. I have friends who have DC, and don’t. Whose DC have left home, and whose DC are still in primary school. Life is messy and complex.

I understood even then that my friend was experiencing rapid and repeated episodes of grief due to infertility. It broke my heart that nothing I did as a friend was ever good enough for her. I couldn’t give her a baby which was what she wanted most… her feelings took over, and nothing from our king and lovely friend could help. I also never offered TTC advice, suggested adoption, told her to relax, overshared baby stuff, invalidated her own sadness and grief, or tried to reassure her that it would all be ok.

If you have lovely friends OP, please don’t distance yourself from them over this. The best thing for you would be to sensitively address how you feel through counselling. As PP have said, your life will become very limited if you focus only on people without DC.

There’s some super advice on this thread, some of which must be hard to hear. I’m sure it’s given with love. Please don’t cut yourself off from your friends over this.

I would be seeking therapy to help me deal with emotions as being around pregnant people will never go away and you don’t want to isolate yourself.

Indeed, that's exactly what I asked. Some people just think it's a quick and easy solution to infertility. I suspect they've never considered adoption themselves.

@Mariposista Please don't tell people to adopt if they are struggling with infertility. Do you honestly think that in 5 years the op would not have considered this?
It's absolutely not a cure for infertility. Yes some parents might find happiness like this but it's an utterly different set-up to having your own children.

i would be annoyed too

@Crazyplantlady1 Just to add there’s a book called ‘what to expect when you’re not expecting’ which I found extremely helpful.

I did find myself distancing from some friends when it became to painful. Sometimes you do have to protect yourself and your heart…I reconnected with all but one of them (who drifted away from the group) once our DC was here and our friendships are still as strong if not stronger than ever so please know that the people who are saying you might lose friends are in one way correct but that might not be permanent.

I have a couple of friends who are childless (not by choice) and I now do my best to be the one who ‘gets it’ and be there for them when we have big group events where people bring their kids/families.

I hope you’ve got people you can confide in and that you and your partner can take care of each other in such a stressful and heartbreaking time

This. I spent the first decade of my marriage - the 90s - trying to conceive (never succeeded) and I’m so grateful there was no social media then.

Meant to add I did distance myself from a couple of friends to protect my own mental health. They had 8 children between them during the decade I spent ttc. Of course it wasn’t their fault and I didn’t blame them but I felt utterly shit about myself. We are now on Christmas card terms only. DH and I have now moved on and have a very contented life as a childfree couple. My friends are either childless/free or have grown up children.

I want talking about adopting. I was talking about the crass wide eyed "why don't you adopt!" suggestion on a thread in which the OP is struggling with infertility.

Adoption agencies don't even look at you if they think you're still struggling with IF anyway

I'll just shut up now as obviously my post rubbed you up the wrong way.
No? It’s hard to communicate completely effectively via written text isn’t it. Soz if I came across like that.

I was just pointing out that it’s not particularly helpful to say “I know someone who doesn’t have children and she’s fine.” Because the OP is also fine 90% of the time - it’s times like these that open all the wounds again. (And it’s potentially the same for your SIL.)