When pregnancy announcements hurt

On the pain of losing your ‘safe people’

Photo by Luis Villasmil on Unsplash

---

*I feel that I need to add a disclaimer at the start of this newsletter. Please know that if you have, or are about to, announce a pregnancy or birth, this is not about you or any one person in particular. This is a me thing that sits alongside my happiness for you*

---

I have noticed that a recent spate of pregnancy announcements – specifically of second and third babies – have landed a little more heavily on me and I’ve been wondering why.

We’re at least two years into a place of acceptance that we won’t be having any more children, so in many ways things feel easier. Softer. Less ‘triggering’. But this is a place that is not devoid of emotion. There are still many things that swirl and brew beneath the surface, breaking waves at times that feel understandable and predictable (like pregnancy announcements) and at other times that do not.

I have written before about entering a new chapter of life – one of ageing and being less able to exercise choice in decision making around fertility – that feels destabilising. It is certainly easier to be in a place of acceptance, when there is a possibility that you could, in theory (if you so wanted, or circumstances suddenly and miraculously shifted), change your mind.

But maybe this isn’t really acceptance at all. It’s simply a waiting room. The green room where you do your warm up for the real deal.

I therefore wonder if I am simply in a precarious period of change right now. Writing a new volume in my anthology of reproductive loss and trauma. Yet I cannot escape the fact that these announcements have undoubtedly stirred up something within me.

In some ways – and I know that this will sound utterly ludicrous, irrational and unfair but hear me out – I sometimes feel as though I have been betrayed. Even by people I don’t really know.

Sometimes the betrayal is of the leaving the only child village behind. Sometimes it is in the way the pregnancy that is announced that leaves you questioning if you were ever even on the same page before. I realise that in my mind, I have sorted out the ‘safe’ people from the ‘not so safe’. The ones tend to have a familiar story to parenthood. Challenges along the way that may not be exactly the same, but echo similar feelings nonetheless.

I begin to wonder if the shared experiences that I thought we had - the terrible mental health postnatally, the horrendous lack of support, the debilitating terror of pregnancy after loss - were really shared experiences at all. That these things (plus more) that have played into our position of being one and done by circumstance seemingly have not influenced them in the same way.

And so, I start to wonder if whether what we shared was ever really shared at all. Which feels desperately isolating.

I then pull myself back from this particular downward spiral, because I know that what they experienced is indeed real and true. Before being tugged down by another cyclone of thought where I start to consider that they must be braver, stronger and therefore ‘better’ than me. That they did indeed share these experiences, but they were able to work through them. Overcome them. Unlike me.

And at this point, the words of a particularly irritating inspirational baby loss quote rings in my ears, which is something along the lines of ‘how courageous it is to feel fear of a pregnancy after loss and go for it (again) anyway’.

But maybe it is also just as courageous to not.

My brain then fantasises that they have tried being part of the only child tribe and decided that they didn’t like it. That it wasn’t for them. Or even, that they are better than this. The hangover of the myths of the single child family ringing loudly in my ears. I feel less than. As if I have failed myself - and more importantly - my child.

In reality, this all happens unconsciously. Rapidly. Physically. I feel something stirring in the fibres of my body that I carry around for hours, days, weeks even after seeing such an announcement. And it’s not until I start to pick at this familiar scab that I begin to uncover the wound that is lurking beneath.

Yet I know that this is a wound that is healing. The skin is fresh, pink, shiny. New. Tender. Fragile. It is work in progress.

When I allow myself to notice these feelings that bubble up with pregnancy and birth announcements, when I allow myself to look beneath at what is fuelling them, I give myself another opportunity to heal that little bit more.

The truth is that these things will always sting. And they will sting more when they come without warning, with visible protruding bumps suddenly thrust into focus and from those who you once thought were your safe people. In those moments, your village is suddenly reconfigured. A piece of the Tetris puzzle smashing its way through to create something new and less familiar.

I’m sure you know me well enough to know that I am of course happy for these people and that they are of course free to choose how they tell the world their exciting news. This is a ‘me’ issue and not a ‘them’ one. But this me issue might also be a ‘you’ issue too.

I think when you find yourself living a life that you didn’t expect, you are constantly looking for your people. The ones who get you and what you have been through. The people you trust. When their life shifts, even just a few degrees away from the course of yours, your destinations can suddenly become continents apart.

That is not to say that you necessarily need to Ctrl-Alt-Del them out of your lives. A subtle mute on social media might be required, a withdrawal from shared chats or group events.

But they will occupy a different space in your life, and therefore leave a vacancy behind. Which is sometimes the thing that hurts the most.

Michelle x