How I cope with pregnant women

Recently I was talking to a good friend of mine that had a 2nd trimester loss (22 weeks) last year. She is a few years older and has since had another (earlier) miscarriage. We were talking about infertility and she asked how I have stayed so calm throughout my TTC journey (or calm compared to her).

Please note these are my opinions and thoughts on how I try to stay positive/cope with infertility. I have never suffered a miscarriage or loss so my viewpoint may be different.

Infertility is a nasty beast but you don't have to let it drag you down. The following are things I try to remember in each situation when faced with a pregnant woman.

Random Pregnant Woman on the Street

Whenever I see a random pregnant woman on the street, my first thought is jealousy. I want to be her; I want to be pregnant. But then I try to step back and put myself in her shoes.  Maybe this stranger has been working for years to attain the pregnancy.  She could have had a number of pregnancy losses before getting pregnant. Because she is a stranger I have no idea. She could be super fertile, or she could infertile like me. Either way, as long as she doesn't throw it in my face (which would be hard to do as a stranger that I wouldn’t talk to), I try to push down my jealousy and be as happy as I can for her because I don’t know her story.

Fellow Infertility Blogger
Of course I feel the twinge of jealousy when a fellow blogger gets pregnant. I want to be able to post a positive pregnancy test!  But the one thing that I try to keep in mind is that every IF person that gets pregnant is a win for all infertiles. A pregnancy means that treatment is working! It means that no matter how many problems that couple has, their doctor has somehow worked around those obstacles!  In addition, a surprise natural pregnancy is hope for the rest of us. So I continue to follow the blogger throughout their pregnancy, supporting them, and hoping that they get their take home baby.

IRL Family and Friends

Again, here comes the jealousy.  But whenever a friend gets pregnant I am very excited for them.  I want to see their belly pictures; I want to hear how they are doing.  (Hopefully this is research for a future pregnancy!)  I have expanded the number of people that I have told about our infertility- certainly not shouting it out to the world, but at least telling people that I see or talk to fairly often.  Recently I had dinner with one of my friends from college whom I hadn’t seen in a few years (someone that I hadn’t told about our troubles).  I noticed when I ordered a drink that she didn’t (but didn’t say anything) and after she asked the waitress if a cheese was pasteurized, I knew.  After ordering, she gave me the low down- that she and her husband recently decided that they wanted to try for their second child and got pregnant the first month.  Ahhh a super fertile friend (her first pregnancy was an oops).  But she happens to have a sister that is infertile and had to go the IVF route, so she quickly followed it up by saying that she realized that she was VERY lucky and that not everyone is as lucky as her.  I do believe that because I have told more friends what is going on, it has been helpful as they are more sensitive in what they say to me.  And if they do say something that upsets me, I try to recognize that it is coming from a good place and/or educate them as to why their comment was hurtful/not helpful.

A lot of my college friends had kids early on so they have been done for a while.  A bunch of my law school friends have recently finished having kids and others are on the cusp of trying.  But no one that is trying lives around me so I won’t have to deal with hanging out around a lot of friends with pregnant bellies and/or going to baby showers.  And people at work are generally older and done having kids so no worries there.  So maybe it helps that I am somewhat protected and in my little bubble of not having to see friends that are pregnant?  Maybe it is just easier to see them on Facebook feeds and not in person?

As far as family in the area, most of my cousins are done having kids.  I have one aunt that I will see at Christmas that now has 8 grandchildren and every time I see her, she asks me when I am going to get pregnant/when CP and I are going to have kids.  I’ll be honest- it makes me want to punch her in the mouth.  Maybe I should tell her about my surgery last year- that has seemed to quiet CP’s family who no longer ask if/when we are going to have kids.  For the most part, family members are respectful and don’t ask over and over about when we will spawn although with our third anniversary coming up, I’m sure most of them are asking the question to themselves…..

Facebook Friends

Jealousy blah blah blah.  I’ll be honest, there are a few people that I am Facebook friends with that I didn’t really get along with when I went to school with them.  (I guess a good question is why am I FB friends with them???)  When I see them get pregnant and post kid pictures on their walls, I kind of want to punch them.  I don’t cope very well with pictures of their baby bellies or their kids, so maybe I should just unfriend them?

But for people that I was friends with that I don’t necessarily keep in touch with all that much, I am happy for them, while of course jealous.  Only ONE person out of my 590 Facebook friends has mentioned having trouble getting pregnant/going through infertility treatments- and it was shockingly a guy!  He mentioned once on his FB feed about going in for IVF the next day.  But other than that, I have no idea if other friends had trouble getting/staying pregnant so I try to use the same rationale of the random pregnant woman- who knows what their story is so you can’t hate them.  I also try not to worry about status updates- I can always hide people if need be and they may not know an infertile person.....so I take their posts with a grain of salt.  My view is that I wasn’t sensitive to infertility before we started trying so I shouldn’t expect others to be if they have no life experience with it. 

In the end, I can either let infertility control my entire life and be bitter about everything, or I can continue to live my life.  (While jealously is an ongoing theme, I make sure that it doesn't take over my emotions.  There are positives to not being pregnant.)  Just because I am having a problem doesn’t mean that I want other people to have to go through infertility as well.  So unless someone throws their fertility in my face or says something stupid/ignorant, I am as happy for them as I can be.  We all have our own battles and things to deal with…infertility is mine and I do my best to not let it affect others.

What do you do to cope with infertility?