Infertility means children can’t be mentioned?

[LusciousLemons]

This actually happened in the first covid lockdown but I often think of it and wonder who was unreasonable here. I worked in a small team of around 7 and, as we were office workers, we were all obviously working from home during lockdown. None of us were furloughed and, if anything, we were busier than we had ever been. The team was a mix of single and married people, with and without kids. This meant that we had very different lockdown experiences. My husband and I were both working full time but we also had two nursery aged kids home with us too so we were utterly exhausted and only managing maybe 3 hours sleep a night as we had to push a lot of our work to hours after the kids had gone to bed, whereas other colleagues of mine who were single and child free were struggling to fill their days and coping with real loneliness. In an attempt to try to reach out to eachother in a more personal way our manager encouraged people to feel free to talk about our lives in all aspects as obviously our contact with the outside world had become so very narrow. This meant conversations would range from “oh my god I found a brilliant new series to binge on Netflix” to “I had to spend two hours on the trampoline with my youngest just to keep them busy”, etc. I did not know this but one of my colleagues was trying for a baby and struggling with infertility and she reached out to myself and the other team member with kids and told us that due to what she was going through she did not want us to mention our children or families in any way, shape or form as she didn’t want to be reminded of her situation and the fact all IVF services were curtailed at that time. As a result, the rest of the team continued to freely share about their lives but we did not feel we could talk about our lives and would sit quietly on team calls or keep our contributions strictly to work related matters. This kept up throughout covid. I could not help but feel she was in the wrong here and as awful as it is that she was going through that, you can’t pretend children literally don’t exist or put that on other people. But am I being unreasonable here and was her request a reasonable one in light of what she was going through?

The desperation of wanting a baby, and having fertility treatment delayed for whatever reason (& Covid was a long delay for some!) really does do awful things to your MH.
She was absolutely wrong to request you don’t talk about your children but, having been through that pain and desperation, I understand why she did.
Your company were also very wrong to allow this though imo.

I find her request strange but COVID lockdown was a strange time. I can see being triggered by a pregnant or a newborn as that's what you want, but actual real children that obviously aren't yours is different. I find it difficult when people moan about their husbands being a bit rubbish with their kids or being away for a couple of nights. but it wouldn't occur to me to ban people mentioning their husbands!

I think that your manager was at fault, there was a danger of trauma dumping and given the isolation some people were going through it could have had a massive effect on MH. As it was given the go ahead, no-one should have been silenced.

Thanks for this. I think the two of us with kids had not experienced what she was going through and we both just completely shut up as we didn’t want to offend her. I did feel utterly silenced however - at a time we were all struggling. I have honestly never been so exhausted and emotional in my life as I was in that first lockdown. I have always understood however that she was clearly really struggling.
Do you mean the company were wrong to allow personal conversations or wrong to allow her to veto the topics?

Wrong to allow her to veto topics.
Much as I understand it affected her MH, it affected yours by not allowing you to discuss your life. So wrong.

Your company shouldn't have introduced team sharing, it would have been more appropriate for the team manager to make time for individual conversations.
She shouldn't have asked this of you though imo, this was her problem and she should have removed herself from it if she had an issue.

Frankly a bit of a drama queen and made things all about her. I say that as someone who needed IVF.

Didn’t your manager ask why you both stopped talking about your children?

Her feelings don’t trump everyone’s lives.

The manager wasn’t often involved in team meetings as they were regularly pulled away on covid related crisis calls

People deal with grief and loss differently. It sounds like this woman needed extra, external, support to help with her experiences. Covid times were bizarre. I can see your manager may have thought reaching out and sharing your lives might be good, but it clearly depends on the team. I would find it very strange to share my personal life with some of the wider team!

Blocking talk of certain topics is this womans own denial that life continues- and even more weight to her needing support. If someone had a diary allergy, would the team be asked to not mention ice creams, cheese or milkshakes?

I say this as someone who TTC 13yrs, and lost my 3rd pregnancy (IVF) during the early months of covid. I had difficult times, but would have never have expected others to not talk about their own children, pregnancies etc.

While asking people not to talk about pregnancy might be understandable under the circumstances, I think that expecting you not to mention your children at all was unreasonable.

I'm old enough that when I was a child/teen I knew of a few women who couldn't have children. In those days the only option was adoption, and none of those women had gone down that path.

Not one of them ever asked others not to mention their children.

She's being ridiculous.

Where do you draw the line? I've lost most of my family...I don't demand people stop talking about theirs.

I do feel for her. I haven't been through IVF but have had more than my share of MCs. But I'd never had asked anyone to not talk about their children.

I think Covid was particularly hard for everybody, those with kids wanted to focus on how hard it was having them at home, but those that couldn't have them really struggled with the focus on children. No-one was right or wrong, just different experiences

I can't have kids and it did get very tiresome with them being the subject of conversation ALL the time, and to be honest i did get a bit fed up hearing the complaints from those that had what I wanted (but couldn't have)

I think she's completely in the wrong but it is testament to just how much parents do go on about their kids, you literally couldn't think of anything else to talk about at all that didn't involve your kids? Yeah I can see how it would annoy her-she doesn't get to dictate what others talk about though.

Firstly your post is very well written, just wanted to say. It's difficult to say,but as someone who doesn't have children and went through IVF, I don't think you can veto conversations, it's something that will crop up all the time so you just have to get on with it

I have heard this request before - women who had gone through infertility asking women with children that they are triggered by their stories.

I feel for her. I really do. But what many don’t always understand is that as a parent your children are very very much involved in our lives and silencing our stories or the ability for us to speak about our children if we want to us silencing us.

Why are married people allowed to bang on about their husbands? Why do people go on about their flat mates? Why do people tell the same old stories about the bars they visited that weekend… because that is your life and your perspective and what you have to share!

I think that is very unfair. It’s like asking everyone with a husband to not talk about them, should they want to, because you are going through a divorce.

I understand triggers but either she should have removed herself or annoyingly you guys set up a “child talk friendly” zone which I think is over the top.

Surely you could have talked to the 5 other people on your team? Pp was right saying time should have been made for one to one conversations rather than it being the whole team.

I don't think she should have stopped you mentioning them at all (what else could you have talked about in lockdown? Not much!), but I could see sitting through long conversations about children when you are struggling to have them and there's nothing you can do about it would be difficult. I don't think anyone was entirely reasonable, it was a rough time and everyone was trying to get through it as best they could.

To be fair to OP, this was during the strict lockdowns. There was nothing else to do and her children were with her 100% of the fine. She could hardly talk about the fun activity she went out and did with a friend at the weekend. And if she was pushing work back into the evenings, there probably wasn't even much tv she could talk about. That doesn't mean that, outside of covid, she's someone who only ever talks about children.

She's being ridiculous. Of course pregnancies and children should be talked about.
Where do you draw the line?
Not talk about cancer because someone lost a loved one to it?
Not talk about the car crash you saw on your way in because someone had a crash last week?
Carry on chatting.

Your colleague was being entirely unreasonable and you should not have indulged her.

It was unreasonable and unfair for your colleague to do that.

Yes, she was unreasonable- and I speak as someone who knows what that is like, bar the covid ban on ivf. I never expected people to not talk about pregnancies or their children when I was going through infertility (twice) or mcs. But I didn’t want want to see people’s scan photos though.