Hi everyone!
Bit of a long story but I’ll try to be concise as possible. One of my best friends had been experiencing infertility for about a year, a fact I only knew bedside she brought it up briefly once when drunk and explained she’d had to essentially ghost her pregnant friends.
I then became pregnant myself a couple of months later and took great care researching the best way to tell her, what to say etc. I sent her a very sensitive text acknowledging how difficult the news might be to hear but don’t feel the need to respond right away, that I was thinking of her and sending love. She sent back a very brief “congratulations”
text and then I didn’t hear from her for a few weeks. I sent her a text to ask how she was doing and she gave very brief responses and didn’t acknowledge my pregnancy etc.
It continued in this pattern, of me hearing nothing from her and reaching out every few weeks, or couple of months, to check in. Contact was never initiated from her end and she never opened up about her struggle with infertility or how she was feeling. This continued until I was about six months pregnant, at which point she invited all her closest friends apart from me to spend her birthday with her. At this point I sent a long text to her explaining that I found this hurtful and I felt my pregnancy was driving a wedge between us, asking her to be honest about if she needed distance or if she’d like to have a frank conversation about it.
In her response she essentially gaslit me, saying she’d just had things on her mind and didn’t think it was a big deal that I hadn’t been invited, as she usually spends more time with those other friends anyway. This was pretty hurtful to hear.
We saw each other in person twice during my pregnancy (alongside a mutual friend, in a group) and the atmosphere was always very tense, my pregnancy wasn’t really acknowledged and her reaction was very stand offish and disinterested when our other friend asked me questions about it. As a result I felt deeply uncomfortable mentioning my pregnancy infront of her, despite being very visibly pregnant at this point.
Once my son was born, she sent gifts for him and champagne for me but didn’t text or call to ask how I was getting on or how my son was. Suddenly she expressed a desire to meet him at Christmas and was like her old self, very bubbly and happy and asking lots of questions about him. Fast forward to this month, where she announces her pregnancy to me in a
casual way, explaining she’s due in august (so would’ve been pregnant at Christmas when meeting my son, hence the sudden change in attitude), but doesn’t acknowledge the fact she basically ghosted me for a year and made me feel really anxious and stressed when already dealing with severe prenatal depression (something I’d shared with her but she never asked about).
She seems to think we can go back to how our friendship was before I became pregnant, without ever accounting for her hurtful actions. I realise infertility must be an extremely difficult thing to go through and I completely respect that, I just wish she could’ve communicated her feelings instead of avoiding then gaslighting me then wanting to resume the friendship now things have worked out for her.
Am I being unreasonable to expect some degree of accountability from her?