Finally, an IF cliché happens to me!

Well. After three years, it finally happened: the totally unexpected Facebook pregnancy announcement that made me feel sick and angry. Even better, there were TWO in one weekend! The second wasn’t even an announcement; it was a photo of a pink-and-purple toy with a comment about “having a girl.”

I know I have been lucky the last few years. Not in the lack of pregnancies, but in my reactions. I felt briefly wistful and sad when two of my friends had babies, but for the most part I have been indifferent to the other pregnancies and babies around me. I never had the “OMG pregnant women EVERYWHERE babies EVERYWHERE GRRR” reaction. Our first IVF worked, and the massive bleeding complication was such a rare, flukey thing that I wasn’t (and am not) afraid that it will happen again. I was sure things would work out for us, and what happened in other families just didn’t bother me.

Until this weekend. Damn. This sucks. Let me be clear, these are old friends I know and love, and if I weren’t in the middle of this mess, I would be over the moon for both couples! But yeah, I am jealous and not looking forward to all the FB updates.

And here’s the other thing that makes this hard: I found out that I can’t be naively happy for my friends that they will actually have live, healthy babies from these pregnancies. Between my own experience, my friends’ losses, and the amazing strangers who share their stories on the internet, I feel like I know too much. My very first reaction to these announcements wasn’t jealousy, although that came quickly. It was fear. It was fear that somehow something bad would happen, fear that my friends just didn’t understand how easy it is for something to go wrong. And that loss of innocence makes me sad. It’s a side effect that I never imagined.