Inability to be happy for friends

[butternut80]

Does anyone have any advice of what I can do or perhaps offer some hope that things get better. I have been ttc for 16months now with no luck. DH is fine and apparently there is nothing wrong with me either- all bloods fine, early 30s, healthy, clockwork cycles etc etc. But in the meantime I have friends and family falling pregnant left right and centre. Even my bestest friend is pregnant and I find myself thinking awful bitter thoughts about things. However hard I try, it would seem I just can?t be happy for her. She knows our difficulties yet stills regularly emails me to let me know how big she is getting and all the kicking she is feeling. Rather than accept her excitement, I just feel like she is rubbing it in my face and it just makes me angry and upset.

In order to protect myself through my SiL ?s pregnancy, I did everything to avoid seeing them as I couldn?t cope with hearing about the morning sickness as I just sat there thinking you don?t know how lucky you are. Now they have had their baby , I have no interest in going to see them, I don?t ask DH how they?re getting on? I just don?t want to know as I find it too painful.. I have never been like this before; I know envy/jealousy are horrible traits and don?t help anyone least of all me but I just can?t seem to help it. I dread seeing friends because I worry they are going to tell me they are pregnant. I suppose my greatest fear is that if it never happens for us, I will end up becoming a bitter old hag who has no friends and who driven her husband towards a woman who can give him kids.

Am I truly an awful person or has anyone else felt like this before and if so how did you handle it??

Well said bloofer and lissieloo

thisisstupid you are an utterly hateful person. I find it hard to believe that you can enjoy your life, you must be pretty miserable or why would you need to make yourself feel better by kicking other people while they're down. I pity you for your complete shallowness and lack of emotional complexity. Your user name is totally apt - you are completely and utterly stupid.

stupid what you have posted on this thread is evidence enough to suggest you have sufficient deficiencies which render you an incapable mother.

I suspect you yourself were brought up badly by your mother - is/was she a bit of a cold-hearted bitch too? Did/does she hate you?

Suggest you seek counselling for all the issues your posts reveal.

Aesop's Fable

There was a man travelling out of his town and he bumped into a fellow traveller going in the opposite direction. The traveller asked the man what the people were like in his town, and the man asked him what the people were like in the last town that he had visited. "Oh, they were awful!" said the man, "grumpy, selfish and bitter". "Oh dear", said the man, "you will find the people in my town just the same".

He walked on a little further and met another traveller heading towards his town. "What are the people like in your town?" asked the second traveller, and the man again asked what the people had been like in the last place that the traveller had visited. "Oh, they were lovely! smiling, friendly and kind". "Oh good", said the man, "you will find the people in my town just the same".

Can't think why this thread has put that story in my mind...

Wow! Came on here to offer my sympathy to the OP but am left reeling by the vileness of the well-named stupid. Sadly I encountered people as insensitive as her during my 5 year struggle to have a family .

butternut, my heart goes out to you - it is the most incredible (and as the fuckwit stupid has shown so well) misunderstood grief imaginable. And for the poster caught between the pg and non-pg friend I would say that I found seeing babies much 'easier' than seeing pg friends. I would often avoid friends while pg and then pluck up the courage to see them once the baby had arrived. Don't know why I found this easier .

I joined INUK and met up with people locally through there. It was a breath of fresh air to meet and talk with others going through the same thing, although that came with its own challenges when they got pg and I didn't .

My story did have a happy ending but it has made me so so sensitive to others - I never ask why people only have one child in case there is a secondary IF story there or if someone wants children if they have none. I got asked that so many times and just wanted to scream at them. Sometimes I did just say "because I'm infertile" which was often a conversation stopper!

Anyway, I'm rambling now. Just wanted you to know your feelings are not unusual and you're not alone.

Well if you want insult and rant and swear all i did was give a express an opinion which in our society is perfectly reasonable. If you didn't like it you should have ignored it. I wasn't trying to goad anyone. I had a perfectly good upbringing and i'm a perfectly good mother. My children are loved and have everything they could possibly want, perhaps i do lack empathy but i've never wanted something i couldn't have so i don't really know what that's like. I made a perfectly reasonable point and it got twisted. In fact the only point i was trying to make was that whilst its hard for you in that you're not pregnant it's probably just as hard for your friends who are and that if you want people to show empathy to you you have show it to them. Maybe try concentrating on what you do have rather than what you don't you might be happier and less touchy.

"whilst its hard for you in that you're not pregnant it's probably just as hard for your friends who are"

What utter bollocks!

I had two horrendous pregnancies but with every agonising day I knew I was getting one step closer to fulfilling my dream - nothing like the agony of IF, absolutely nothing close.

I truly hope for your DC's sake that they never experience IF in the future - my mum was a tower of strength to me when I was going through it and if I had been faced with a mum who was basically saying "get over it and pull yourself together" I think that would probably have finished me off.

No, you have set out to hurt a group of people with whom you have no empathy. you have regurgitated myths about IF and been needlessly cruel. You obviously have an underdeveloped superego and lack the ability to relate. Yesterday you stated an opinion from the other side, today you have been a bitch. And tbh, I would rather remain infertile than be like you.

maybe you'll get your wish

Maybe so, but at least I'll sleep at night.

That last comment is especially harsh and shocking.

Despite that latest nasty parting shot I wanted to come on and wish you well with your labour and wish you and your new baby all the best.

While I do agree whole heartedly that stupid's contribution to this thread was very insensitive and horrid I am a little uncomfortable at some of the responses. I think that some of the thing said to and about her were crossing a line somewhat. I have never had anthing but support and kindness on the TTC boards and i would hate to think that we are starting to stoop to the level of people like stupid by making such harsh attacks on people however unpleasent they may be. We are all surely much better then them...

Back to the point, I can understand how you feel butternut and I really think you should not beat yourself up about needing to withdraw a bit. Your friends will still be their for you once you are feeling better.

I am 28 years old, I don't smoke and rarely drink alchohol but have been ttc my first for 18 months with only an mc at the end of last year to show for my efforts. There is no reason behind it, it's not anyone's fault it's just shit and it happens.

My mc happened when my sister was very heavily pregnant. She has never had any problems getting pregnant (their last was an accident) and I was so devestated I couldn't even bare to tell her about the mc let alone go and discuss baby clothes with her. The thought of her being all sympathetic and nice while at the same time being pregnant was just too much!

Though I still have moments of being irrationally angry about it all I think earlier comments about their not being a finite number of pregnancies in the world have really helped me. I generally just try to nod and smile and think calming thoughts while other people go on about their kids...and then I go home and eat lots of cake...

X-post. I wasn't referring to you Lissie.

Why the fuck is it just as hard for the friends that are pregnant?

I have had 2 successful pregnancies, the last one was pretty tough but in comparison to my miscarriage and ectopic it was bloody great. Because there is something wonderful, and wanted, at the end of it.

You are wrong. It is as simple as that. And you are still refusing to leave this thread alone. Aren't you supposed to be giving birth right now? You don't seem very interested in that, your focus seems to be elsewhere. Which is bloody weird in itself.

bloof I'm not really managing to be very eloquent, I'm not as good as you are at that :) I'm just incensed that someone can be so relentlessly hurtful. And I really didn't like the idea that simply having a bit of luck with biology meant that I could become the sort of person who thinks the less lucky should shut up and stop pissing on my chips.

It's primal - and it really really hurts. If the way you take control of your hurt is by avoiding pregnant friends - no matter how understanding they are - then that is what you have to do.

I think if I hadn't conceived DS after my miscarriage I would have moved away, gone travelling, done something to escape - because many of my friends were pregnant at the same time as I was (and some have already had or are pregnant with their second). This makes it lovely now, because I am getting to live the life I so desperately wanted, and get to see my friends and their children, but I am very aware, especially when I have to contemplate that conceiving number 2 may never happen (let alone carrying that child to term once that hurdle has been jumped), that DS was/is something of a miracle, and that things could be so different.

I want to support women who have been where I was, and get understanding from women who are where I am now (if that makes sense).

Why someone like Stupid needs to glory over women who are having problems conceiving and dealing with those conflcted feelings that come with the whole difficult process says so much more about her than it does about any of you.

Wait a minute...aren't you supposed to be in labour or something stupid ? Why don't you just take the hint and stop posting. Then everyone can go back to saying nice things to the op.

Gosh..I try and write a nice calming post only to find I have cross posted with a load of angry crap...so much for my future as a UN peace keeper..

butternut - I'm sorry you are having a tough time TTC. It is completely normal that you can't share the happiness and excitement of those who are luckier than you in this respect. However, I am sure that they are not rubbing their pregnancies in your face.

I had both of my babies in my late 30s and so was on the opposite side of the fence - I was lucky but many of my friends of the same age were not I noticed it when they avoided me but I hope they didn't think I was rubbing it in their faces when I sent new year cards with family photos posted the occasional picture on Facebook.

Is it possible that your family and friends just don't know how fragile you are on the subject of conception?

lissielou - I remember you from 2ww and/or ante-natal threads from back in 2008. Just wanted to offer my sympathies.

I know this is rather off-topic, but I am always rather amused (in a despairing, painful kind of way) by people saying "Well, you should have had a baby when you were younger, then, shouldn't you?". I don't know anyone over very early thirties who is waiting to have a baby for anything other than good reasons - mainly not having met someone to have a child with, their DH not being ready, or having good financial reasons to postpone things a little (things like being able to buy a family house if they wait a year, but not otherwise). I think there's a bit of a myth that there are loads of coupled-up, financially stable 34 year olds sitting around going "Oh, I just want a few more posh holidays and a couple more Prada bags and then I'll have a baby". What are people meant to do, deliberately get knocked up by some unsuitable random when they hit 33 if they haven't met someone, or trick their DH into having a child he's not ready for? Hardly original points, I know, but I do find it that so many people think everyone trying to conceive later in life is doing so because they were too busy buying Jimmy Choos to consider having a baby...

stupid you have stated that you've never struggled with infertility (contraception, yes) and that you wish to have another child. I trust your blessed fertility will continue and Welsh grandmothers are carving spoons as I type.

You're bang on there LoveinaCC. The reason that the term BESH was coined way back when those threads began was in response to a DailyMailesque preconception about women ttc over 30.

It is patently untrue that you shouldn't expect to be fertile after 33.

I had my first at 35 and my second at 38. Many of my friends had theirs at similar ages. The ones having serious problems with TTC are near or slightly over 40.

I was going to pick up on that Cote - I'd never heard 33 bandied about as an age where fertility becomes difficult. 35 and 40 yes but not 33.

I have not had problems with fertility but I am staggered that anyone lucky enough to be pregnant would be 'hurt' if a friend who was struggling TTC wsnt that interested in every aspect of their pregnancy - or any of it. It is that type of person (mentioning no names) who thinks the world revolves around them, not a TTCer who is just trying to look after their mental/emotional health.

FFS! I would be hurt for them, that they were going through this.

Dread to think of all the semi-literate, emotionally stunted children that someone is pumping out.

I understand how you feel. I had 3 mcs, all whilst having close friends that are pregnant.

anyway here's the advice:
1 - think positively - you have no other option than to think pos about this situation if you want the best outcome
2 - I had success with sarah dobbyns the fertility diet book, other things you could try are reflexology, acupuncture.
3 - Most important - My uncle told me if you want to be rich you need to surround yourself with rich people and money. I applied this to getting pregnant, hung round with my pregnant friends and their babies. It works! if you are subconciously telling your body that you don't like pregnant people and their babies then your body is not going to let you become pregnant.

It is difficult, but you have to not let negative feelings sabotage this.

Oh my goodness, this was my first post on MN ? does it always get like this?!

I think the point of my post was really trying to get advice about the awful feelings that come with not being able to conceive ? feelings like bitterness and despair that i have never experienced before. I absolutely know that it is detrimental to myself, to friendships and will ultimately make me miserable but that?s why it makes it all so odd because it almost feels like these emotions are beyond my control not least the complete antithesis to me. Believe me it?s not like me to not be there for friends. I do think some of your points are fair stupid - like your tough, blunt advice about concentrating on what I do have rather than what I don?t. It?s just the tone of your words sound very disdainful and slightly accusatory that I have left it too late and that?s why i have problems! I?m not sure how age came in to it though because it?s irrelevant here and disrespectful to people who didn?t meet their mates until later on in life. Fwiw I didn?t wait until i was 33 (not sure where that figure is from(!)) - i was very lucky that i got married when I just turned 30 and we have been trying since but as I say that?s not the issue. I am grateful for what i have but I literally just wanted to find other people who may have gone through the same sort of feelings because I am finding this journey pretty lonely and worrying.

Lissie - it sounds like you ahve been to hell and back. I hope you have a good support network behind you. I can?t even imagine what it would be like to be trying for 6yrs with m/cs. I hope something positive happens for you soon.
thefudgeling - i love your advice, ?whatever happened with regards to conceiving, my life was going to be great? . This shall be my aim from now on...not quite there yet though
charitygirl - very nicely put. I would never expect a struggling to conceive friend to be particularly interested in what was going on with me if I was pregnant.

Thanks everyone else who has really given great advice and support. It is comforting to know I?m not the only one!