Pregnant and wanting to be as sensitive as possible to my SIL

[FPAN]

Hi everyone,

I'm after some advice.

I have recently found out I am pregnant with my second child, my son is 3.

After the initial excitement one of the first thoughts I had was sadness and worry about my sister in law who has been TTC a second baby for over 6 years and has been going through the adoption process for nearly 2.

I looked on here for advice about how to tell her and decided to message her so she had time to process it.

She text congratulations and I didn't hear from her for a few days. I messaged her today and she said how hard she is finding it and I just couldn't seem to say the right thing. Everything I said seemed to make it worse.

What should I do? Is it better to not speak to her? To keep trying to speak and be normal? I just want to make it as easy as possible for her.

Thanks. X

You could text her and tell her you're going to give her some space to process things, but that you're thinking of her and to get in touch when she feels up to it.

Don't try and say anything to make it better. There is nothing you (or anyone else) can say to make her feel better. There is no right thing you can say. The best thing you can do is to acknowledge this, acknowledge that it's totally crap for her and empathise with the fact that she's obviously going to find your news hard and will need some space while she's struggling. Please don't offer her any platitudes as they're only likely to make her feel worse.

Agree with everything earl grey, also tell her that whichever way she wants to play things then that's fine. Also,concentrate on other things you have in common too, otherwise giving her space will affect your relationship.

It's hard. You seem like a really lovely SIL