How do you feel/cope when someone announces a pregnancy? (Childfree section)

[Possimpible]

Reluctant to post this as I know it makes me sounds like the worst person ever. But yet another friend announced her pregnancy this weekend and although I'm happy for her, I also have some unpleasant bitter feelings. If it was jealousy I'd at least understand my feelings, but I'm not jealous. I just find babies so dull. My best work friend is on mat leave. Lots of other friends are pregnant or have new babies, so all conversation and activities revolve around this. I'm not saying I want to go drinking every weekend, but I just want to go to nice restaurants or interesting places and talk about something else.

End of self-indulgent moan. I know it's awful, I'm just putting it here because I can't say it in real life. It probably means I need a change, a new job or new hobby or something, and I'm sure once I'm past 40 it'll stop. But does anyone else have a few days of feeling gloomy when another friend announces? How do you deal with it?

@HundredMilesAnHour that's interesting, I can't say I've ever really noticed it happening when someone gets married. What is it that changes? I'm mainly interested as I'm recently married but don't think anything has changed for my husband and his female friends. Maybe they feel differently.

@Possimpible Unfortunately most of my male friends 'drift off' once they're married. (I work in a male dominated environment - plus used to do a lot of sport - so a lot of my friends are/were male as we bonded over shared experiences/hobbies/work misery).They usually get sucked into a world of activities that their wife wants to do, often with her family or friends, and it tends to be made clear to me that their wife doesn't want a single female around. I don't think it's necessarily a 'threatened' thing but just that I don't fit into a nice couples scenario that the wife now wants to have for their social life. Or in some cases the wife makes it clear that he doesn't 'need' a female friend because he has his wife now and 'she should be enough'. Or she just doesn't want to include his friends in their social life as she thinks they (she!) have lots of friends already. All of these scenarios have happened to me. Once it happened as soon as the engagement was announced - his group of friends (male and female) made it to the engagement party but by the time of the wedding, we had all been dropped. Very sad. None of our group heard from him ever again (note I'm not blaming her - he is equally to blame).

A lot of men are lazy. When they get married, they usually just go along with whatever is planned for them. You see it all the time on MN, wives take on the "mental load" and do all the arranging with regard to both families and activities. But because they don't tend to make the arrangements for their husbands to maintain friendships, those friendships drift.

Good point @BadNomad

People generally live together first so nothing really changes with marriage, in my peer group at least. Not until kids come along. I can't say I relate to that one, but I'm sorry that's happened to you.

I'm not childfree I have a 3 over the age of 10 but now I'm out of the baby bubble I do find announcements and babies a bit dull and I agree it can get a bit annoying hearing it, especially now baby showers have come into fashion.
I've always declined the invited because I just don't get them and don't really want to be forced into buying stuff for them or their babies. It wasn't the done thing when I had mine.
My other pet gate are gender announcements.
It feels like people make such a big deal out of these things nowadays. Like wow nobody cares what genitalia your baby has.
Probably get blasted for my opinion but it's how I feel and Yanbu you shouldn't apologise for how you feel either.

I’m lucky in that my good friends are all childfree so the people I know getting pregnant are more like distant acquaintances and there’s no friendship to lose. I think I would feel disappointed at the loss of a friendship though if a close friend had a baby. I’d just resign myself to the fact it would fade away, I’d congratulate them if it was a wanted pregnancy and still message and chat to them ofc but if that effort wasn’t reciprocated anymore I would let it fade out.

My gut reaction to pregnancy announcements is actually a deep relief that it isn’t me, combined with a feeling of horror that they’ve ruined their nice life. But obviously I’m outwardly nice about it!

I'm happy for them. But I will say at 38 in the past 5 years ish there have been a lot of friends / colleagues /acquaintances who are having kids when I might not have expected it. It's fine and their choice. But it just feels a bit like such a standard unthinking life path. Like we get to our mid 30s and have to breed. Just so dull and basic I suppose. Which is harsh, I know so many live being parents but it's just like ok, yet another is doing the thing everyone else does.

I'm not the person you are actually asking, as I was happily childfree till almost 40, then decided to have a child, but I read the Childfree forum with a sense of fellow-feeling as I was childfree for far more of my adult life than I've been a parent, and I think my experience might be of interest.

I lost three good childfree friends (a married couple and a woman) when I told them I was pregnant. The female friend said 'Congratulations' with every appearance of sincerity and never picked up the phone when I called ever again, or replied to texts or emails.

All three were considerably older than I was, and I had assumed that their decision to be childfree had been as uncomplicated as mine had been.

Turns out I was wrong.

The friend who literally never got in touch again had desperately wanted a child long before I knew her, but her first marriage was unhappy, and her second relationship was both longdistance for years, and with a married (though separated) man who already had young adult children, at a time when divorce was illegal in his country. (We've now reconnected, twelve years on, but it's not always straightforward.)

The couple (who are the most devoted and happy married couple I know) who dropped me had also wanted children years before I knew them, had undergone a brutal form of very early IVF and had almost split over whether to adopt - she wanted to, he didn't. They never told me this. A mutual friend did, later on.

I think it taught me a lot. Many people I see talking about being childfree on here for obvious reason want it acknowledged that it's a free choice, or that having children never seemed at all appealing, or that it was a positive choice, which I get, because it was that way for me.

But the experiences of losing three friends I valued taught me that it's not always straightforward, and that even though these three people were living fulfilled and interesting lives and had come to terms with things, they still found it difficult to see someone else they considered childfree change 'categories'.

None of my close CF friends have had a change of heart and become pregnant so I've never had that losing-a-friend feeling.

When someone announces a pregnancy my internal response is largely a relative lack of interest, unless it's an older person who I thought would remain CF in which case I'm internally a bit horrified for them and think what a daft thing they're doing, but that I obviously keep to myself.

The first couple of pregnancies of friends, I really didn't realise how much it would impact the friendship. Not in the sense of being jealous they were pregnant (I wasn't) but just how much the friendship would change in frequency of seeing each other, what you do together, what you talk about.

After that yes, my heart did drop a bit with each pregnancy announcement because it was effectively losing a close friendship. I'm in my 50s now so the baby announcements are done. The friendships survived but are different to what they were years ago (I guess they would have been anyway though). As the childfree one you have to keep adapting and finding new friends, new ways of doing things - holidaying, hobbies.

@Saverage I think that's what I'm struggling with. I want to stay childfree because I like my life the way it is, but my life is going to change to an extent because of all these other pregnancies. I know it's inevitable, but it's hitting me hard at the moment.

@MardaNorton I did acknowledge in my OP that if I was jealous, I'd understand my feelings more. If your three friends didn't want kids and were just upset because it meant the friendship would change I doubt you'd have been so forgiving about them pulling out of your life?

I am delighted for them- have also a big helping of ‘a baby now would really upset a life I quite enjoy’, sadness for me, as our only round of IVF failed and it’s a different path for us now, and also that sadness that things won’t be the same friendships wise because it will never now not be about their child. Coffee and a chat? Kids running in to interrupt. People need to use all available childcare so they can go to work, not so they can meet up with me and nor would I want to put that on them. So yeah it’s a mixed bag.

I feel like people often expect you to have a really binary reaction though- either ‘oh marvellous, I will be your babysitter and number one cheerleader’ or ‘I’m never speaking to you again’. I think it’s usually more shades of grey than that.

I'm past this stage now, but well remember the mix of feeling pleased for my friend but a stab of grief for the friendship.

However - past the first couple of years, when most new parents are inevitably very absorbed and exhausted by the baby, I've found it's absolutely fine. I've become very fond of my friends' children and really enjoy watching them grow up. And my friends have retained many of their former interests so we can still have proper conversations. I think I've been very lucky!

I’m well past the stage of contemporaries announcing pregnancies now - it’s imminent grandchildren now.

The last friend to announce a pregnancy was 46, a couple of years older than me, natural conception out of the blue . Although I was happy for her it was a real shock because I really thought we were on the same path for ever - we’d both had fertility issues. Tragically she was diagnosed with terminal cancer 8 years later. Life gives and it takes away.

I've never felt it, although there were a few years when I really wanted to have a child (I call myself "socially infertile" - just never met a man who wanted to have children with me). I love babies, so I look forward to meeting new ones of friends & family.

But I was never in the position to have a child of my own - I think my extreme pain was about the lack of a partner. I found weddings difficult in my mid-30s to 40s.

Did you coin the phrase 'socially infertile'? I hadn't come across it before.

(Does it get angry responses from women who are biologically infertile and say you could have had a child alone, but chose not to?)

If you Google “social infertility” there are many articles about it. And no angry response from me.

Honestly I feel the same as when someone announces they've got a place in a marathon, are going on a cruise, or have done a skydive... I have no idea why you'd want to do such a thing but I'm happy that you're happy!

Good for them, glad it's not me. Knowing I am unlikely to see them for years. Sometimes the friendship is strong enough to withstand this, sometimes it isn't.

Does it get angry responses from women who are biologically infertile and say you could have had a child alone, but chose not to?

Not that I've noticed. But my answer to anything like that is: "Well, you have a partner. Count your blessings. I am totally alone."

I did contemplate doing it on my own, but I decided that it was the height of selfishness to have a child simply to fulfil my emotional needs. I think a lot of parents should have thought about this, frankly.

Very much “another one bites the dust”. I have no close friends who are child free. I wish I did.

You've got all of us LoobyDop!

Thank you 😃 and thank fuck!

I always just think I probably won't see much of them for a few yrs but luckily I have several CF friends still. There was a wave of announcements the last few yrs and its settled down now I'm later 30s.