Thank you for sharing such a personal, heartbreaking part of your life here! My heart goes out to you. It’s a sad, unfair, bleak thing to not be able to get pregnant – I know.

I wrote an article for you, and all the women who commented about resenting their pregnant friends – or being resented by their friends because they’re pregnant!

How to Cope When You Can’t Have a Baby

I hope it helps, and wish you all the best.

Blessings,
Laurie

Congrats on your pregnancy and sorry for your hard journey. May you have a very safe delivery. If I. Could perhaps give some perspectiive on your friend it may help. (Please note it does not make it right or even logical for her to do to you.) Emotions are a flippant thing and something we can’t control really. Yoour friend and you have been very close and had a similar story. She’s probably reacting how she is because she now feels truly alone. When you ‘loose’ that type of bond / connection it hurts (not by your fault) your happiness and success brings her lots of pain and makes her situation real and possibly terrifying. All in all she feels betrayed by her own emotions her own inability to concieve. By saying she doesn’t want to talk about your pregnancy isn’t malicious its a way for her to stay in denial, its a way for her not to feel the pain. I imagine she can’t really handle much right now and feels very very lost I have a feeling if it was her pregnant instead of you, it may make more sense.

She needs time and you told her you’d respect that. Lean on other friends and allow her time to heal. Don’t put a time frame on it and perhaps accept her absence for now, but always keep the door open for her. But also don’t expect things to change right away.

I say this out of experience when my friend who had a similar journey to mine got pregnant as well. I was honest with her and I personally needed a few months. I lost my pertner in crime, the one person next to my husband who made it. Bareable, who made me feel like I wasn’t alone. As bad as it sounds that was comforting and when I lost it I had tp learn to lean on online support groups and seek some kind of theraputic release/ gain other means of coping with our situation. I am now seeing that friend todaywith her beautiful son. I’m ok with it and don’t feel the least bit saddened. She respectuffly gave me the time I needed to heal, and I love her so much for that. I see her on an almost on a bi. Weekly basis. After her son was born I needed some time again. I think its about transitioning mindsets. I’m greatful for the time she gave me and how she was nothing but understanding. I too put her on restricted for a while on my fb, mainly so she could express her happiness and so that I wasn’t painfully reminded while I was healing. If I wanted to know how she was id call, I did need to do that on my own time so I could be emotionally invested in the conversation. I didn’t want to have to see a status that perhaps put my emotions into a tail spin. Facebook is far too overrated and should not be an indicator of if people care or not. You should repect her need to want to just kind of heal and disconnect. Hoepfully shell come around. Perhaps she needs to seek counseling of some sort. 5 years.. I can’t imagin the toll that’s taken on her and again I’m so sorry you feel this way or guilty. Please don’t and understand she’s not mad at you, she’s angry at her situation and your situation only reminds her of what she doesn’t have.

A very good friend of mine, one I’ve known for over 18 years, has also struggled with fertility issues over the last 4-5 years. We’ve been there for each other throughout the process and through all our friends’ pregnancies and our losses.

I suspected that she would take the news hard. I told her before our other friends, very privately via a letter. I indicated that I knew she might need time to digest the news and said I would be really happy to talk to her when she was ready. That was three months ago and nothing since. She sent me an email basically saying I can’t handle this right now and that’s pretty much been it.

I’m not really sure what to feel. I’m hurt but I also feel weirdly guilty. I haven’t posted any pregnancy news on facebook and tried to keep things low key. Part of this is because my pregnancy is high risk but part is also because I thought all the news might be like rubbing in salt. Turns out I’ve been restricted on her facebook account so it really didn’t matter. The worst part is that she has told our other close friends that she doesn’t want to talk about me or the pregnancy and it has made things very awkward.

I’m not sure what to do. This reaction seems extreme and really different then the reaction she has had to other friend’s pregnancies. I’ve never really been cut out of someone’s life like this…I feel like I’m back in middle school or something. On the other hand, I did say I would be there for her when she was ready to talk…I just didn’t think it would take three months. I knew she would need time but since she hadn’t reacted like that to other friends pregnancies I thought it would be more of a matter of weeks rather than months. I’m starting to get angry but at the same time I feel pretty shallow for feeling angry as I totally get that this is hard and I said I would be patient. Anyways not sure that this is the right place to post this but no one else really seems to get that I feel guilty over the situation and angry at her all once.

I’m glad I found this article. It really speaks to me and these wild emotions I’ve experienced in the past. Half of the time I feel like being honest about how you ‘feel’ often gets rude comments in return. Almost like I shouldn’t feel how I feel about this journey.

if emotions were something of a switch I’d be glad to switch this particular emotion off. I guess I feel like some people just are a bit rude and make you feel bad for how you feel. Like it’s not right or natural. We’ve been trying for 3 years come April and I had 2 best friends get pregnant within 5 weeks of eachother last year. I responded with a big congrats. Then once the phone was hung up I cried like I never cried before. I had to come to terms that my tears were out of sadness for the reminder of our situation. The thing about our situation was that I had 2 amazing best friends who understood and respected where I was coming from. I had to take a month after the announcements before I started to really see them again. I needed to give myself the time to heal and regroup. I also didn’t want to be one of those people who fake it. I wanted my happiness and love for them to be genuine and I wanted them to feel it. I’m proud of myself for being honest with my emotions and giving my friends the common curtesy of not making their pregnancies a negative one when it came to me.

I guess feeling this way makes me feel like I’m being selfish, like I shouldn’t cry or I shouldn’t pull away. that I should some how deal with it? In readin these posts I realize that perhaps I need to seek out a few books. We’re on clomid and about to start IUI in a few months. Just this past weekend I cried and cried hard with my husband holding me. He said we’d keep trying even if it took us 10 years. I had to be honest with him and say “I can’t do 10 years.” I’ll do another year but after that I want to start living life. I don’t want to conintue to be this way or feel this way. I want to begin the healing process if our home will not have children in it. I want to start planning a life for 2 people instead of 3,4 or 5.” As my husband and I have decided not to adopt ( a personal decision) that realtiy is becoming more and more real as each month passes. I hope to one day get to the point if we can’t concieve that I’ll be ok with it. I realize it’s going to take a lot of self work on my part but I know I can do it.

I just wanted to say that this site after reading some articles has given me hope and a bit of comfort that I’m not alone, I’m not insane for feeling how I feel. Thank you!

Hayley ~ I’m sorry you got those negative comments, but very happy for you! That’s great that you adopted your child. We haven’t taken that step yet, but are thinking about it.

Lena ~ One of the best tips for not resenting your pregnant friends is to create a live you LOVE. You CAN have a happy, fulfilling life even if you don’t have kids yet (or at all). But, you have to build that life yourself, and you have to accept that your friends will continue to talk about their children and pregnancies. They’re in one stage of life – and it may be a stage you can’t experience yet. You need to find friends who don’t have kids and who share your perspective and life goals.

It’s easier said than done, but once you learn to love the life you have (instead of the life you wish you had), you’ll be much happier.

Blessings,
Laurie