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?

I've worked on a team where somebody tragically lost a child, we had an unsaid agreement of not talking about our families (including during Covid) it really wasn't a hardship. It probably was unfair or irrational of your colleague, but I'm sure you'd rather be in your shoes.

Yes I’m curious if the embargo is still continued.

I know someone undergoing fertility treatment which stopped during covid and she was badly affected with her mental health. Her well-being just dived off a cliff - she was really struggling. Sometimes she was not rational and although she didn’t do this, I could well imagine her wanting to ask!

It was covid, it was weird, everyone was just doing what they felt they needed to do to get through. The issue seems to be the group discussions. I had a supportive company but had to choose not to attend some of the similar team bonding as I couldn't cope with it. Luckily I have a good relationship with my manager so was able to get support there.

To the PP above who has a 'red mist' at the thought that single people were complaining about 'working online and being alone in the evenings'. Trust me you haven't got a fucking clue. Just as I have no clue about what it would have been like with children.

Yes I'd go with that one. Avoid pregnancy talk of course but not kids who are here.

I'd have discussed the request with my boss too to say it felt unfair so they could deal with it.

infertility is painful but she should not have made that request. She should have talked to her manager who could have arranged for her to join teams meetings after check ins were almost completed, with child free check ins at the end.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their thoughtful responses. Just to say too that this is not something that haunts me on a daily basis but it does come back to me on occasion and I’ve always wondered if her request was a reasonable one.
she also left the company about a year after lockdowns but our relationship never recovered and we didn’t really speak after all of this and we don’t keep in touch. The embargo continued for the entire time.
And yes during the first and strictest lockdown my entire life was my kids and work. There was nothing else - everything I did every waking hour was about those two things. I wasn’t binging new Netflix shows or growing anything or going anywhere or catching up with anyone.
Thanks also to everyone for sharing your very sad experiences and letting me see it from both angles.

She was going through unimaginable pain, but I still think she was unreasonable, and I have been struggling with infertility for many years. I have never tried to police conversations. I zone out of kid-based chat instead, which I know probably comes across as rude, but it is to best protect my heart.

She was unreasonable, but people in pain will be unreasonable, and understandably so.

I was also working ft with a nursery aged DC during that first lockdown and understand exactly what you mean.. in hindsight you should have gently said no, and let your manager know what she'd asked and what you'd replied, but well everything is easy in hindsight.

I think the point above about covid being difficult because we all needed support but no one had the resources to give support is very wise.

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?

Lol. At that time, no. It was work or keeping the two year old entertained with limited options. That was it, for three months. It was relentless.

I'm battling infertility and in the time I've been trying, two women at my work have both got pregnant and given birth. One gave birth while I was on IVF stims, it was utter crap. The most I ever did was leave a call halfway through when the second woman announced they were due to be going on maternity leave. I never asked for any conversation about kids and babies to be curtailed, I just avoided them or left calls. My manager understood and always checked in with me. It's certainly a rubbish place to be but I don't agree with telling people to shut up about it.

She was unreasonable. She should have spoken to you to say how she was feeling and how hard it was, and you should have (voluntarily) been sensitive in what you said after that. For example, you wouldn't say oh god I'm so jealous of people without a toddler running round all day. But of course you can still say it's been a difficult day as the toddler drew on the walls while I was working.

I think your manager was wrong to encourage the emotional dumping on each on team calls, and you colleague was reasonable to ask you to not talk about your family problems in her presence - but perhaps that's how she should have phrased it.

If you had all been in the office together you wouldn't have had an open discussion where everyone offloaded their life problems on each other. That would be the sort of conversation you had if you went for lunch or coffee with one or two chosen colleagues/friends.

I was also having fertility treatment before lockdown that I was forced to stop when everything closed down, and in my case I knew from the beginning of lockdown that I was unlikely to be able to continue the IVF afterwards. It felt like a bereavement, a grief, it destroyed me. Perhaps this is how your colleague felt too. Imagine if a colleague's child had died, and asked you not to talk about your children in front of her - that's the level of pain and madness I felt.

I don't doubt at all that lockdown was stressful and difficult for parents. It was difficult for everyone for all sorts of different reasons. But the difficulty of working at home whilst caring for your children seems easier to bear than the difficulty of knowing you'll never have any.

Did she ever get pregnant, post lockdown?
If she did, I do hope that she never mentioned it ever, or the resulting child, out of consideration for anyone else on the team who was unable to conceive.

Well, I do have a clue, because I've been alone and lonely and also suffered infertility, as it happens. And I maintain that single people living alone, especially those furloughed with nobody to care for but themselves, had it easier during Covid than those with more responsibility. Mental health struggles are real but you have a shed load more autonomy to mitigate your own pain if you're just...you... than if you are at the mercy of someone else's schedule.

And yes, I know it's a grumpy perspective and people will legit argue against me and I know everyone is different and had some terrible experiences. But I'm fed up with everyone's lack of resilience to things that are totally in our minds. Anxiety etc. Just must be a way we can get out of this rabbit hole as a culture.

She was wrong. I understand how she feels for a variety of reasons. However she can't expect people to not mention their children in general work chat.

3 months entirely alone, with just a camera to stare into for company and strangers at 2m distance, and the uncertainties of what the pandemic meant long term? Solitary confinement is a torture for a reason. I'd rather have had the practicalities of children to look after, and a partner as support / company. I'm an introvert and can happily spend a week alone, but with the best of resilience and coping strategies cracks can show after that.

It was different for everyone. Some loved being with their kids all the time. Some people alone enjoyed aspects of it. You can't make a sweeping statement that it was worse with kids.

When pregnant with dd2, I was working with someone going through problems with fertility, (it wasn’t her, she was amazing and we both respected each other) but the other people in the office made it clear to me that I couldn’t talk about being pregnant unless she was out of the office, even then it was only the negative stuff (piles, heartburn, super smell for bad smells, stretch marks, bad sleep, you get the idea).

It had such a negative effect on me, I ended up with pnd and didn’t really bond with dd2 until she was about 3.

Your struggles may have been different to your colleagues, but she was incredibly unreasonable to make that request of you and the other parent. You needed support just as much as she did. Why are her struggles any more important than yours?

@EthicalNonMahogany its not a competition. If you struggled with mental health for whatever reason you struggled. Just because you experienced something one way doesn’t mean that everyone else would feel the same way.

that’s what I was trying to get at in my last post. One persons struggles does not mean that other people who do or don’t have xyz get to dictate what others can say, do or feel.

Yes this. It was such a strange time and now feels so long ago. I think we all struggled in some ways, but while the impact on parents of young children has been acknowledged and discussed, I do really feel for those who spent the whole time alone or, like the woman here, couldn't continue her IVF or other treatment. It does feel like their pain is dismissed as not important or not as bad as parents of young children.

I think unless you have experienced infertility, it's quite harsh to judge the colleague for being unreasonable. Infertility leads to depression and suicidal thoughts; imagine dealing with that on top of a pandemic and having your treatment put on hold for, in some cases, years.

I was in this situation of starting IVF just before COVID and had it put on hold, thankfully not for too long as I had to go private due to no funding in my area. I had to leave a Whatsapp friends group because it was nothing but people moaning about their kids. It was brutal and I have never felt so low. I did not veto the conversation and chose to leave instead, but I did ask my best friend to stop moaning about her kids constantly, which she was totally understanding about and unsurprisingly we still had plenty else to talk about (kids were not a banned topic, just continual moaning about them).

Someone analagosied this to not being able to eat dairy and not talking about milkshakes, which is effing ridiculous. A better analogy is imagine you are literally skint, being faced with evicition, you can't afford food, and people you know complain constantly about how much money they have and how hard being rich is. Would you honestly not ask them to stop being so insensitive?

Banning literally any mention of children is maybe a bit OTT, but on the flipside did the OP really not have any other friends to offload child-related woes onto rather than colleagues? As someone else said, if you could choose, would you have chosen your or her situation to be in at that time?

She was unreasonable. I get why, and feel sorry for her and it must have been a very unhappy time, but she had to learn to deal with it and not make it other people's problem. Particularly when those other people had their own struggles.

What she should really have done is to speak to the manager offline and say "for these reasons, I am not comfortable sharing with people who have children and would prefer just to opt out of these sorts of intimate discussions". If s/he had any emotional intelligence at all the manager would have shut the whole initiative down, at worst your colleague could simply have sat this sort of thing out or found excuses not to participate in these conversations.

But however difficult and heartbreaking these situations are, they don't give anyone the right to minimise other people's difficulties or police their conversation.

Given what I now know about two members of the team I work in, I am glad our conversations were about things such as telly watched, opinions on Mr Johnson and nature walks. Not the way the OPs manager intruded, in my opinion.

As upset as she must of been she was very unreasonable. She can’t expect people to pretend their kids don’t exist because she is struggling to have one. Lockdown was hard any many people may of needed to talk about their lives etc to cope.
Hopefully in the future fertility treatment works for this lady however how happy/unhappy would she then feel if she couldn’t talk about her baby incase it upsets someone else… she would hate that and of course will want to talk about baby

Of course she was wrong and I can see how your reaction would be to be sympathic and feel you should oblige.

Covid isolation has passed (for most). Why are you asking now, it still an issue? I would start talking about your kids again instead of being silent about your life if people are chatting and prepare yourself if she tries to reminds you of her ban - be sympathic towards her situation but also tell her gently her request is unreasonable. Raise with your manager if needed so they can support her in other ways.