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?

Ah. YANBU - she had no business restricting your conversations. Way over the line.

She was unreasonable. You could tell her now and the impact it had on you. Why not. Otherwise put it to bed and move on for your own mental health.

I do sympathise. I was pregnant at a family wedding. The bride was shitty the whole time. I wasnt given non alcholic drinks on the table nor for the toast. The bride has infertility. She has no idea I now dispise her.

I lost my then only child before covid and I remember finding it really hard to listen to people in the team complain about what hard work their children were and how hard it was and I remember emails about similar.

I wouldn't have asked them not to talk about their children but I also remember thinking they were a bit insensitive since they knew my situation but had probably forgotten.

People do this all the time though. A friend of mine at work recently has a miscarriage and our other friend at work who knows this keeps complaining how rubbish it is not to be able to drink leading up to Christmas.

I think your friend was wrong to dictate what you say but again understand why she said it. It might not have been the mention of children but what seemed to be complaining about how difficult it all was when to her you have children so should be grateful I think.

I wonder why you are still thinking about it though.

We all went a bit weird during Covid

and we both just completely shut up as we didn’t want to offend her

I mean she does sound like a drama queen but then so do you.

Did you literally have nothing to talk about other than your kids? Nothing you had watched lately, no hobbies, nothing you were growing or doing around the house, nothing at all?

It was very selfish of your colleague to ask this of you. She will have been struggling but so were many people at that time.

Do you still have to work with this woman? That level of self absorption would leave me not wanting to bother with her at at all.

This. And the company/mgr wasn't in the wrong either. Nobody was forcing her to join the calls and the company was just encouraging team connection at a difficult time.

Exactly. Both my parents are dead but I don't get insulted when people mention Father's Day!

Yea she was unreasonable. It’s understandable that hearing people talk about children is painful in that instances and letting you know she struggles hearing it might have been helpful so you could have mixed up the conversation about. Buy requesting you not talk about children at all is unfair.

Thing is everyone has needs and things going on.

It was a difficult time and you were all struggling in your own ways. She probably could’ve done something different like withdraw from conversations without saying anything. I’m not sure that would’ve been much better because you all would’ve been wondering why she was so unfriendly.

She was unreasonable, as someone else said I have also heard about infertile people banning friends from talking about their children before. Now I can understand it would he insensitive if you know someone is infertile and you kept going on and on about your pregnancy or baby to them. But to say you can't mention your children at all ever is ridiculous especially during lockdown when people who had children were with them 24/7 and they are the biggest part of our lifes. I have also lost my parents like others on here and don't tell people they can't mention their mums and dads. In life people will always have things they want but can't have that others do have but we can't ban people talking about what they want, it's called free speech. Also yes the NHS stopped fertility treatment during covid but they also stopped cancer treatments it seeing people for anything else other than covid and many people died as a result or didn't find out they had cancer till it was at too late stage to be saved. So maybe she should be reminded of that and how selfish she is to think her not having fertility treatment is more important. I think I would have said that to her, what about people being denied life saving treatment? Ivf is not life saving.

She was unreasonable. Despite her struggles asking others not to talk about their family is unfair. You may have needed that outlet as you were struggling, just because she’s struggling with infertility doesn’t mean that trumps everyone else. I hope one day she reaches out and apologies, but very much doubt it

Covid was an odd time, I actually think it's your manager that made the wrong move.

She was completely isolated like everyone else. Their IVF cancelled for god knows how long, and the only topic of conversation her work colleges now had is their children.

Nothing about the situation for anyone was fair, it's probably time to move past it.

NAH. I don't think anyone was right or wrong. Everyone has their own trauma from that time. Everyone was getting by as best as they could.

Those with kids were undoubtably stressed because they were having them at home 24/7 and trying to entertain or homeschool them whilst trying to work and wanting to offload and have some normal adult conversation.

I can also see that having people whining about their children would have been especially triggering for her. During that time of such uncertainty for her would be particularly triggering - when will I be able to have fertility treatment? Will my partner be able to be there? If she did get pregnant, the anxiety around having to attend those appointments on her own without the support of her partner and potentially face more bad news, and potentially having to go through miscarriage or a live birth on her own. Likely anxiety about when the pandemic would be over and she would be in a better position to access those services, and whether her time to do so would have run out by then... I can see that going through those challenges when its just you and your other half in a bubble trying to conceive unable to detach yourself from it and go and do other things or really get any support from loved ones could be really spiraling for her in a way that she may have had better support and coping strategies available to her at another time.

It may also have been quite triggering for people who were locked down entirely on their own and were desperately lonely and would have done anything to be able to have that human touch and interaction with someone they loved.

You were empathetic towards her situation, which was the kind thing to do, but it seems like you are angry with her about this, even some time down the line. Are you possibly still holding on to some of your own trauma from that time (many of us are)? If so, blaming that on her rather than on the pandemic itself, is not fair on her. You could have reached out to friends, to your manager, or to your other colleague with children 1:1 to talk about these things, there was no reason to need to involve her or wider colleagues in your own offloading/trauma bonding, just as she was not on a daily basis offloading her own worries about her fertility in team meetings.

We were all unreasonable in Covid lockdown because the amount of care and support every single person needed was vastly more than the support available to give to them. None of us could give enough, or get enough for our needs.

Having said that... I'm getting a bit of a red mist descending as I read some PP, as I recall my own Covid trauma working FT with two young DC.

Yes infertility is terrible and in normal times is one of the worst things ever. In covid times there was a particular twist of the knife as people waiting for IVF saw 2-3 fertile years just down the drain, their lives were on pause, which is terrifying.

But the day to day of life during lockdown - I'm really sorry, but doing your work online and being alone in the evening is sad and upsetting. But it doesn't compare to what it was like trying to do your work and care for babies, toddlers, suicidal teens, not getting sleep, etc. It was, objectively, much much more difficult doing it all with children. I know it was. And frontline workers had it even worse than all of us of course!

So in short the person dealing with sadness about infertility is very unreasonable asking people with caring responsibilities not to talk about them during covid. Those folks weren't banging on about their kids out of personal joy and satisfaction. They had it worse than single people.

As someone else said above though, why is this still such an issue for you?!

She was completely isolated like everyone else.

She was not completely isolated at all. She had a husband living with her who she had a close enough relationship with that they were trying for a child together. She had way more emotional support available to her than single people, including single parents or people who didn’t have good relationships with their partners.

She was selfish. But lockdown was a crazy time and it did strange things to people.

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?

Being unable to have children is in no way comparable to being unable to eat dairy products. Ridiculous analogy.

Your colleague was 100% the unreasonable one.
While I am sorry for her infertility, she was wrong to make her problem into your problem.

It's an off request but you complied, but everything was odd back then. Have you written this post because the embargo she imposed is continuing in the office now?

I've not been able to have kids and I acknowledge that in the past a pregnancy announcement was like a kick in the stomach. However, pregnant women and babies are quite literally everywhere and i knew there was nothing I could do to prevent that.

Funnily enough, having a hysterectomy helped. Knowing that there was literally no way I could now get pregnant helped me move on and I'm genuinely happy for the other person now when I hear their news. Not that I recommending a hysterectomy for your colleague of course! Just explaining my story. I like babies and children and am always chatting or playing with friends or relatives kids.

It's the policy that's in the wrong here

a) you should have told the manager how this policy was causing distress to another team member.

b) you shouldn't be giving unexpurgated versions of your day in work settings anyhow. This is very much a "think before you speak" situation, even if you take this specific difficulty out

c) aim was to give social contact, but if those with DC talked predominantly about their DC, then that leaves one person wanting to quit the group, as they cannot avoid it. And I feel sorry for them, because this is not a trivial thing and they're being forced in to a situation that they would never have chosen.

I had my ivf treatment cancelled part way through during covid. It was the lowest part of my life, as to me I thought it might mean I'd never get a second child. I was a mess. She was wrong to ask and probably didn't realise how much you needed that opportunity to vent. I do have sympathy for her though and would try and move on from it as it was so long ago.