Brother and Pregnant Sister-In-Law Angry w/ Me

[baliandbones]

First time posting on here but long time lurker of infertility and pregnancy symptoms thread..

My husband and I have been trying to conceive for nearly 2 years now. In January, my brother and his wife announced that they were expecting and it caught us a bit off guard and my reaction was happy and excited, but I kept excusing myself to cry in the toilet 🤦‍♀️

My sister-in-law has around 10 weeks left of the pregnancy. To begin with, I was trying really hard to attend our weekly family gatherings, nip over their house whenever I could and sending different links to pregnancy/baby related stuff. But it came to the point where every time I seen them, especially when she began to show, I began having overwhelming, painful feelings that felt like my chest was going to implode whilst holding back tears - I spoke to my husband and explained that I was going to take a bit of a rest and allow myself time to come
to terms with it whilst still seeing them occasionally rather than weekly. I even began therapy in March, and this is a very hot topic that we discuss frequently in my sessions and how aware I am that I feel that I’m missing out on this and becoming an Auntie for the first time.

Fast forward to the past fortnight - I caused upset by not messaging back to a scan photo in the group chat, instead my husband and I just reacted to it with hearts. Both my brother and his wife were openly “off” with me. My brother then confronted me over text, saying that I’ve upset him as I’m “not interested”. Obviously this upset me but I had to consider how he felt too. I eventually plucked up the courage to speak to them in person, but my brother had already gone out for a walk. I stayed and talked everything through with my sister-in-law, which mainly consisted of me sobbing and trying to explain how difficult this has all been for me, however, my sister-in-law didn’t seem overly phased by what I had to explain and maintained that, in so many words, that I have essentially been a bad sister and that when I said that “I’ve been trying my best”, that it was merely an excuse, as if this is something I had actively chosen for myself and this situation. Despite wearing my heart on my sleeve and trying to be as sensitive as I could towards their feelings, a lot of hurtful things were said towards me and I’ve spent the whole of today mulling it all over and wishing I had said different things and not allowed myself to accept the accusations of being selfish and not considering how all of this would feel for them.

I suppose I’m just looking for some advice on how to proceed. It’s difficult to explain to people who haven’t experienced infertility how devastating the monthly grief and sadness of another failed cycle is whilst watching those closest to you fall pregnant easily.

Thank you for reading - I know it was a long one!

@baliandbones you poor thing! Everything about this screams that you are doing everything in your power and they are unfortunately completely oblivious to how tough this journey is!
I don't have any words of wisdom of how to make it better. But in my opinion, you have been exceptionally reasonable and kind. You really need to be kind to yourself and set boundaries where you can.
Not sure if it makes you feel better to share, but when talking to my mum about my struggles she kept going on about how she wouldn't know and had her children by complete accident...
Sending love and solidarity xx

@baliandbones
I am sorry that that was the reaction you received when trying to explain the situation.
I completely empathise. I have been battling infertility for 7 years now and along this journey I have come to know that many just don’t get it. Some try, some don’t and some are just darn right insensitive.
In all honesty I would suggest you just do what’s best for you and assert your boundaries.
One of my closest and oldest friend has fallen pregnant recently (and very easily). Since her announcement, it is almost as though she has become insensitive to everything I had confided in her about my personal journey. It has been so much so that I have suddenly taken a step back for my own mental well-being.

Hi OP, I’ve been in your position with my brother and his partner and it’s shit. You try to protect yourself then they get annoyed as they wanted attention from literally everyone in the family. I found I couldn’t win whatever I did in all honesty. Wouldn’t enjoy myself attending family events when they were there. The way they announced was insensitive at my birthday following up with oh it wasn’t planned. They knew we’d been struggling for a long time at this point but it didn’t seem to bother them in the slightest. They always felt like they had a massive one over on my husband and I.

In the end I stopped seeing them a good while before the baby was born and luckily not long after the pandemic hit so it was somewhat of a relief not to be able to see them. As a consequence I didn’t meet DN until they were six months old at a distance.

It took us just shy of a decade before we conceived and I had my baby last year. His partner is pregnant again now and it took longer than expected this time so via my mum I had the whole oh they are suffering with infertility when from what I’ve been told it took them less than six months. I had to bite my tongue and not say anything as it wasn’t worth it.

As hard as it is do what is best for you OP if that means distance keep it. Sadly in my experience a lot of people who haven’t gone through infertility don’t get it as much as they like to say they understand they don’t. Things might change when baby comes and she’s no longer pregnant, personally I always found the pregnancy to be more triggering than the actual baby afterwards but do what feels right for you ❤️

Hi OP

Sorry you find yourself in this situation. I've been there & it's awful 😔😞

My husband's sister and her husband got pregnant on their first try on their honeymoon and at that point, we'd been TTC for 3+ years. It was the hardest time of my life as my SIL had previously said she didn't want children and I have always wanted children. Also we'd found out we were pregnant the week of their wedding (so about 2 weeks before they conceived) but sadly miscarried very early on. We told them this when they announced their pregnancy but it didn't change their insensitivity. Our babies would have been born 2 weeks apart and it would have been perfect 😢.

Throughout the whole pregnancy, SIL, BIL, MIL & FIL were super inconsiderate and insensitive to us and our feelings and the fact that we were struggling so much despite knowing exactly what we were going through at the time😢. I had counselling for it too as it affected me so badly. I was so so angry with the world and how unfair it all is. I couldn't talk to them about the pregnancy or the baby as it was too hard and painful for me and they just added fuel to the fire by being so insensitive. At one point me and my husband got a telling off from my FIL because apparently we were the ones in the wrong for "not taking an interest" even though it was obvious we were struggling with everything so much.

They had their baby a year ago and we love him so much. It's still extremely painful that 5 years of TTC and we still haven't got our much wanted baby and they got theirs as soon as they wanted one. It was difficult at our nephew's party as we were the only people without children there and I couldn't stop thinking about the fact we should have a one year old too.

But the whole point of my post is to say that you're not alone in these feelings & when the baby arrives, hopefully all the hurt that was caused throughout the pregnancy will somewhat dissipate and you'll love your niece/nephew. As soon as we met our nephew, we fell in love with him and (pretty much) all the bad feelings between all the adults disappeared and now I think we're all closer than ever. If you ever want a chat with someone who knows all about it, please feel free to PM me.