How to Cope with a Pregnancy Announcement while Going Through Infertility

Here’s the issue: You want to be happy for a friend or family member. You are not happy, the feelings that override any potential happiness are negative emotions. 

As a result, you feel let down by yourself, maybe even disgusted with yourself. What kind of person can you be??? 

And in return, you ask yourself and others how can you NOT be triggered by a pregnancy announcement. 

To sum it up, you are asking yourself to avoid, ignore, invalidate, and make your emotional experiences disappear. Essentially you are having a parallel process. 

You are mirroring society who is choosing (Yes I said it choosing) to ignore your pain. 

You believe the answer is not to have an emotional reaction to your pain. Yet, we have emotional reactions to pain. 

What happens when you want to avoid, suppress, or ignore your pain? It tries to find another way out. 

It will not go away just because it is not tended to. 

Remember you have been told to push through pain both physically and emotionally. Right now, you are doing what you have been told. You have been told to be invisible. 

Others do not want to see your pain. Why? It will remind them of their own grief or vulnerabilities in this world. 

Instead of joining you, they are scared, and they want to distance themselves from your pain. It reminds them too much of their own. 

It is not in your best emotional interest when you are triggered by a pregnancy announcement. 

When we validate our emotional experiences to ourselves, we are giving ourselves permission to see and be in our pain. We can take that moment to care for ourselves and ask others to do the same. 

Validate your emotions

So how do you validate your emotions after a pregnancy announcement? It might sound weird but thinking or talking to yourself can help. 

Use these self-statements to help validate your emotions and get you in the mindset of thinking “it’s okay to feel the way I am feeling”.

Of course I am upset, look what I am going through.

Just because I am feeling, envy, and anger does not mean I am acting like a bad person. Feelings and behaviors towards others are different. 

Feeling my emotions is giving me permission to be me in this moment. 

Even writing these down and keeping them close by, so you can look at them and remind yourself of these statements can help.

How do I respond to a pregnancy announcement when I am going through infertility?

There are two ways I recommend to my patients on how to respond to a pregnancy announcement. 

First one is being assertive and establishing boundaries. It can sound something like this -

I care about you and I hope your pregnancy goes well, but at this time I need some distance in our relationship. Your pregnancy is triggering my intense feelings of grief. 

The other is sharing the effect the announcement has on you, and discussing next steps.

This can work if this person is part of your support network as you go through your fertility journey.

I care about you and hope your pregnancy goes well. At the same time, it brings up a lot of my sadness and frustration. Let’s talk about what we can do to stay connected, while I am very vulnerable. 

What will not work as a coping mechanism

What does not help us get through a trigger and its effects is what we call experiential avoidance.

Experiential avoidance is trying to suppress or bottle up unwanted experiences like thoughts, emotions and physical sensations. In order to work through a trigger, like a pregnancy announcement, you’ll need to stay connected to what you are experiencing while using coping strategies to lower the intensity over time. 

Bottling up or suppressing your emotions is a tea kettle. The heat symbolizes the triggers you experience, like the pregnancy announcement.

The water in the kettle is your mental health, and your health in general.

As you apply more heat, and more triggers, the water starts to bubble up and steam. That steam needs to be released.

What happens if you don’t release that steam? The kettle starts to whistle. The water can start to boil out of the kettle.

The more you bottle up, the more you deny yourself from working through the emotions you’re feeling, and the more likely they will boil up at a later time, causing more pain long term.

If you want to learn more about coping while going through infertility, sign up for our free webinar Navigating the Infertility Avalanche. We share coping strategies to help you manage the emotional overwhelm that infertility and fertility treatment can throw at you.