Is it really helpful to talk to your friends about fertility stuff?

Avoiding it altogether might have kept me saner!

Deepika Nagabhushan
Nov 4 · 6 min read

Having seen close family members and friends go through fertility-related experiences, I thought to myself, “I better prepare myself, what if this happens to me.” For some unexplained reason, I thought the chances of it happening to me were high. Unfortunately, I was right.

Over more than seven years of being married, my husband and I met some sweet kids that made us feel that we would want to raise a child. There was one little one though in particular, that firmed our decision. So, in 2017, we felt ready enough to work on bringing the tiny “interruption” into our family to change up our pace/lifestyle!

That summer, we were celebrating our joint birthdays in Maui and conceived on our very first try! We were so excited that we told our family and friends immediately after seeing the two red lines. Living halfway across the world from family is hard enough that we didn’t feel like waiting three months before telling anyone that we were pregnant!

I thought, hey, why should we delay multiplying our joy by sharing it? And if something terrible happens, then wouldn’t our family want to be there for us?

Eight weeks later, we saw no embryo in the sac in our first ultrasound. We had gone in hoping to hear the heartbeat, and it was just such a huge disappointment. And our family and close friends were there to support us. This was the start of the learning experience that I am writing about today!

It’s 2.5 years later now — one ectopic pregnancy and two more miscarriages later — and we are in the middle of our second egg extraction cycle hoping to implant genetically tested embryos in early 2020. The hardest thing I have had to endure relating to these losses during this time has been finding out the hard way, the potential reasons why people don’t often talk openly about their fertility journeys, and why they might be doing the right thing.

IVF stuff!

If you read blogs about this topic, you probably have read that talking about it helps avoid feeling isolated. But you know what, talking about your fertility experience even with close friends and family can cause worse damage. I write this post for two reasons: 1) to make people aware of the kind of risks I ran into while sharing my fertility experience openly, trying to avoid isolation 2) to share ideas on how to potentially mitigate such risks.

Let me start with my interest in talking openly about my fertility journey. I had heard that miscarriages are more common than we think. And that the discrepancy in how common we think it is, exists because people don’t talk enough about it. So I thought, let me break the silence and talk about it so I can avoid feeling isolated and help remove the societal stigma that is associated with experiencing a miscarriage.

I now realize that the overarching risk the “sharer” faces is that it is super hard to know what and who can trigger them, leaving them hurt, emotionally. The sharer risks having changed, or strained, even broken relationships or friendships, in the end. This has been my experience.

Here are some examples of exchanges with well-meaning people, and how each turned into an emotional trigger for me:

  1. Talking about stress: One friend suggested that it may help me to remain pregnant if I lowered my stress levels because stress can cause miscarriages. Not a wrong general suggestion, less stress is always better for pregnancy. But it is of no use in this context. The friend’s choice of words made me feel that she is suggesting that I am “causing” the miscarriage because I can’t find a way to reduce stress. TRIGGER! Assumptions involved: the friend assumes what may be causing the miscarriage or, for that matter, what may help change the medical situation and makes a risky suggestion without knowing my emotional state. The bitter aftertaste from the exchange resulted in me crying at my doctor’s appointment weeks later.
  2. Casting doubt: “Sometimes the pregnancy tests are not reliable,” “Sometimes it’s just hormones showing up on the tests, there’s nothing actually there,” “Are you sure you were actually pregnant.” TRIGGER! This person is entirely invalidating my experience and also, not to mention, medical science. I have been very hurt each time I have heard such things, I have cried my eyes out each time. Assumptions involved: everything the person is thinking here is an assumption. Everything! I have nothing more to say. To hear such remarks is absolutely the worst of them all. I would rather be lonely while going through fertility treatment than feel the need to defend whether or not I got pregnant.
  3. The adoption option: I got this advice from a friend who is going through a patience-testing journey of adoption (happy for her.) After she heard about my first miscarriage, she began imposing on me that adopting is much better than trying to conceive. TRIGGER! Assumptions involved: the friend assumes I would like to live life her way and that I don’t mind being told that my life’s choices are lesser. I have never gone to a person who said they wanted to adopt and told them I think IVF is the better option. I am perfectly aware that adoption and fertility issues are not necessarily linked.
  4. The checklist: A friend who has gone through unfortunate fertility issues too, gave me a must-do list. They are well-intentioned rational suggestions, but when it is unsolicited, and the friend knows very little about what I am already doing, it is a TRIGGER! Assumptions involved: the friend assumes I am looking for suggestions and assumes how much homework I have done or not done. It’s a tone/timing thing.
  5. Fertility issues become the only topic/reason to talk: I haven’t spoken to this friend in many many months. But they just learned from someone else about my IVF and texted out of the blue about it. TRIGGER! Friend assumes I want to talk about it with them, and that too without “catching up” on other general things that have happened in life in this period of radio silence. The risk is of the relationship to feel non-friendy, and instead more forced-IVF-group-on-facebooky.
  6. The tired friend wants out: As it is much later in the process, I have this need to share little “successes” because the longer I have waited for it to happen, the more important it gets to know we’re pregnant or progressing towards it. Irrespective of the fact that there might still be risks or complications, I am trying to stay positive. I tell my close friend, and they do not say congratulations or share in my excitement. TRIGGER! Assumptions involved: As the sharer, if I have reached this point with a good friend, then I have misread how much of the emotional rollercoaster they want to ride with me; I have overshared.
  7. The friend that went through the same thing: A colleague told me they went through the same thing in a tone that suggested that it was “no big deal” to her, and hence it must be “no big deal” for me. TRIGGER! Assumptions involved: the colleague made it about her and dismissed the possibility of me having any experience that is unique to me.

My general conclusion is that talking about your fertility journey with friends does not always help as much in feeling less isolated or in feeling more understood. Maybe a few of your friends are equipped to talk without hitting your landmines of emotional hurt. But, I feel that it is better to sort through these emotions in the presence of a competent therapist instead.

I think, as the sharer, I must revisit what is meant by “talking openly to avoid isolation.” After all these experiences, I believe a healthy definition of “sharing openly” in this context would be to let friends know I am going through something emotionally difficult and avoid over-sharing details.

It is not the listener’s responsibility to take care of the sharer’s emotions. And nor are the sharer's emotional reactions wrong in any way. But if you’re the listener and would like to know what you can do, then the best thing for you to do would be to listen more and say less. And, please try to avoid making the above-listed assumptions.

Deepika Nagabhushan

Written by

Energy policy advocate at @cleanaircatf & @ColumbiaSUMA alumna. Pragmatic environmentalist, vocal feminist, former advertising professional. Tweets are my own.

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