She's Pregnant and You Blog-Hate Her

Oh, the wonder of social media. In blogs, infertile women can spew bitterness about women who are pregnant or who have young children, whether they are known or strangers. Previously infertile women like me can blog back about what they have learned from their experiences. 

I know, firsthand, how insensitive people can be in their attitudes, comments or behaviour around infertile women.  There will always be those people; some of them literally thoughtless, others purposely mean. I also understand jealousy.  Jealousy of friends who had conceived immediately. Jealousy of women who had never suffered the loss of a baby. Jealousy of women pushing Bugaboo strollers. Jealousy of friends who had cappuccinos in the park while their second children played together. Jealousy of people who were happy on my miserable days. 

What I never felt, and really don't like, is the venom I've read in some blogs toward other women who are fortunate enough to have a healthy reproductive system.  Pregnant women have been verbally attacked as smug, undeserving and inconsiderate just for being pregnant.  How dare they be in our workplace, at our family get-togethers, among our group of friends or walking our city streets?  The irony is that if the writer became pregnant, she would be beaming with joy and bitterly resented by another woman who doesn't know her story. It disturbs me that women commenting on these nasty blog posts back up the blogger like an angry mob at a lynching.

Infertility is a high-emotion, intensely personal topic, status, challenge and condition. There's the fantasy of becoming pregnant, the identification of her fertility with her womanhood, her importance, femininity, desirability to men and her purpose. Infertile women shoulder a lot of confusion and pain.  Some can dig deep to find inner strength, look for and accept support and work hard at keeping perspective and balance.  They eventually understand that even though it's personal, infertility doesn't choose one woman because she is judged bad, or skip by another woman because she is good. No one deserves infertility or miscarriage. 

So, why the bitchiness and the eagerness to be on her side? Is it like the old saying "misery loves company?" Does anyone really think that playing the "yes"(wo)man is helping in any way? I hope not. All it does is give the speaker permission to keep going in this way.  I understand the temptation, when a woman has an audience and the advantage of relative anonymity, to mouth off, but it does you no favours:

• If it's not real, it's not right;
• It's not good karma;
• It doesn't improve your chances of conceiving;
• It doesn't make you new "quality" friends;
• It uses up mental energy you could be putting toward your own goals;
• It interferes with you mind+body connection;
• It could actually hurt someone;
• even if people laugh or point with you, that's not true support;
• it's an attitude and behaviour that is beneath the "real" you;
• it's more difficult to move forward when you're carrying the burden of resentment.

Can you possibly be in the best spirit and fitness to conceive the baby of your dreams, if you are carrying around intensely negative emotional baggage? No, you cannot.  It requires diverting some of your precious focus, commitment and energy from your goal to the attention you pay in thinking about, talking about and storing up emotion towared that other person. It creates stress in your system that you could really do without. You could be turning off the friends to whom you blow off steam, who may not comment in the face of your vehement anger, but won't think better of you.  It does absolutely nothing good for you and your future baby.  While you are trying to conceive, anything that doesn't relax you, educate you, nurture you or progress you, would be best banished.

Think of one woman who really ticks you off, whether it's for something she has said or done, or just because she breathes the same air as you. (I'm trying to be non-judgmental of your hatred.) On a piece of paper, make 5 columns across the top and label them, left to right, the person's name, what they do or did that upsets you, how you categorize your feelings toward that person:

• hurt
• anger
• jealousy
• disgust
• guilt
• selfishness
• blame
• just had the good luck to be pregnant, and so on.

Then, in the next column, what your part is in this relationship or scenario, possibly:

• blameless
• equally at fault
• wished her to lose what she has
• started the bad vibe
• never gave her a chance
• don't like the look of her, etc...

In the last column, if you can be honest with yourself, what could you do to get rid of those feelings you hold about her that are weighing you down? Do you need to make an apology, explain what has upset you, release your negative feelings toward her, start talking and/or acting differently toward her to smooth things over or just forgive her for whatever wrong she has committed?

If you are the friend of someone who has been acting this way about someone else who doesn't deserve it, think twice about agreeing with her just to make her feel better. It could break up your social group. It could dominate all of your conversations as your friend carries on obsessively. It could just make you feel bad. It won't help her get pregnant.  Suggest that she talk it out, write it out or get some coaching.  Appeal to her better nature and distract her toward more positive thinking. That is what support is all about.

Comments

[Robin]

In my opinion, anonymous blogs that express feelings - even hateful ones - are just fine. It is a way of getting the feelings out and getting a little validation for them, without hurting someone to their face. Anger at pregnant women when you have lost the dearest thing in the world to you, and they have it - certainly is not rational but it is a very real and deep emotion and has more power unexpressed. I would even say as an emotion it goes deeper than any other. Pregnant family members could certainly have been caring and compassionate to me, instead of avoiding me and later expecting me to comfort them, so hard was my miscarriage on them. I for one may forgive my sister in law who failed to speak to me her entire pregnancy and did not show up for our baby's memorial service, but I certainly do not have to spend time around her or worry about her feelings over mine. One word of advice I would give to those of you who are pregnant and just "feel too guilty" to speak to a friend or family member who has lost a baby - GET OVER YOURSELF and acknowledge their loss. Be the one to put forth a compassionate hand and don't let your awkward discomfort take precedence over their deep and tremendous grief. What they are feeling is nothing, NOTHING compared to your trivial discomfort. Do not complain around them about the trials of being pregnant - they would gladly bear those trials a million times worse just to be in your shoes. Just because you've never lost a baby doesn't mean you can't understand - just put yourself in their shoes and think how you might feel if you went in for a routine ultrasound and found your baby still and lifeless. It doesn't take a genious to figure out how horrible that is and reach out a little. Our family, for one is irretrievably altered by my sister in law's selfish actions at a time when any kind word or acknowledgment would have been so welcomed.

[Lisa]

Hi Robin,

I empathize with your feelings toward your sister-in-law. I also understand that we all need to blow off steam once in a while. Where better than in our "e-diary." However, my post wasn't about people like her. Read my Fertility Support Tips on Twitter @yourgreatlife and you will see that a lot of them are aimed at educating those who support (or don't support) IF women, men or couples who are trying to conceive.

I wrote about how intensely negative thoughts and feelings toward pregnant women, generally, can actually be damaging, thus counter-productive, for a woman TTC. I gave her a tool to help her determine where her emotion was coming from and how to put it in perspective. If it turns out that Pregnant Woman, is indeed, a bitchy, smug, unsupportive S-I-L (for example),then blog all you want and remove her from your circle of friends/family so you can get on.

Thank you for your comment. It's good to air all different opinions.

Lisa

[help getting pregnant]

other peoples opinion may sometimes be mean and heartbreaking , less offense to those who don't mean to hurt someone, but I felt sorry for those pregnant women who are very emotional on this part, though we must say we can't control such thing but the idea of getting sensitive to someone else feelings must be considered.

[Lisa]

To: Help Getting Pregnant

In a perfect world, everyone would be sensitive and caring toward others, but there is no perfection in reality, so we have to learn how to deal with attitudes and behaviour that are hurtful. My instinct is that some (but not all) pregnant women are acting out a primal urge to protect themselves against what they may see as bad vibes. It won't make sense to the rest of us, however, it may not even occur to the pregnant woman that it is what she is doing. That is one reason why I have committed myself to raising awareness of infertility and the need for support.
Thanks for your comment.
Lisa

[Tubal Reversal Surgery]

Hy ppl I just wanna share my knowledge about Tubal reversal…
The chances of conceiving after having a tubal reversal are considerably better than with IVF, with a 70 to 80% safe success rate for those women who are under 40 years of age. Most women are able to conceive naturally within a year of their surgery.