You’ve only been trying for a few months, but you’re already starting to get annoyed rather than excited when you see a pregnant woman. Or you’ve been trying a lot longer. . . and you can’t even bear to look. Here’s how to get over it until it’s your turn.
Once the decision has been made to start a family, couples are sure to feel joy, elation, excitement, and eager anticipation for the baby-yet-to-be. But as weeks and then months fly by and the pregnancy test results are still negative, other emotions may arise–like uncertainty, worry, anger, frustration, disappointment. And don’t forget envy. Yes, envy. Many women trying to conceive aren’t above turning a bit green whenever a pregnant woman or a new mom strolls by.
“It’s not fully jealousy,” explains Marie Davidson, Ph.D., staff counselor at Fertility Centers of Illinois. “It’s a mixture of shame, surprise, and disappointment in one’s self.”
Becky Fawcett, a New York City adoptive mom of a 4-year-old son, knows the feeling well. “I’ve always been the type of person who accomplished what I set out to do,” she explains. Getting pregnant couldn’t be that hard, she figured—but it was for her. And when her younger brother and his wife became pregnant after Becky had been trying for more than a year, she remembers feeling envious. “I was older,” Fawcett says. “I was supposed to become pregnant first.” It helped that her brother was sensitive to her feelings. “When I went to see their baby at the hospital, he was beyond appreciative,” she remembers.
Jamie Bates-Winfield, a Virginia middle-school teacher, only tried for two months before becoming pregnant, but during that time she says she also felt envy. “There was definitely a green-eyed monster that came out when I saw someone on Facebook announcing they were expecting,” she says. “That was the worst part of waiting, seeing someone else achieve the only thing I wanted at the time.”
The guilt-envy cycle
While you’re trying to conceive, you might not only feel envious of someone else’s pregnancy, you might also feel guilty about that envy. “There’s a sense of guilt that goes along with feelings of envy toward another’s joy,” says Suzanne Kavic, M.D., director of reproductive endocrinology and infertility services at Loyola University Health System near Chicago.
So how do you escape these feelings? First, realize that feeling envious doesn’t make you an ogre. “It’s a perfectly natural emotion,” says Dr. Kavic. Just because you feel jealous doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. Be honest about your feelings, though, and talk about them with someone you trust. Just don’t obsess over them, cautions Dr. Kavic. “It can lead to depression.”
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