Pregnant friend keeps complaining about being pregnant to me
I posted in here a handful of weeks ago about finding out that my best friend in the world is pregnant the same weekend where I found out that I was about to begin miscarrying following an unexpected pregnancy of unknown location the month I planned to start IVF. She’s known about the difficulty of infertility over the past 3 years, the 3 failed IUIs I completed earlier this year, that I was pregnant but it didn’t seem viable, and then I found out that she was pregnant (she wasn’t even trying seriously) at like the worst possible time. I posted in here looking for advice and asking if people in similar situations have had their friendships survive and everyone was really helpful.
After taking some space and having a serious conversation about boundaries and how we both felt, we agreed that neither of us wanted the other to feel like we had to censor ourselves and that we care about each other and didn’t want this to change things for us.
Unfortunately, that’s not really seemed to be the case. I’ve noticed a difference in how she reacts to things I say. Before, if I said, “this is so unfair that I have to do this (IVF),” I’d get “it is unfair, I’m so sorry, it sucks and you shouldn’t have to.” Now I get, “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
The biggest thing, though, is that she complains about pregnancy symptoms CONSTANTLY and I feel like this is just highly insensitive. Historically I’ve been the person she complains to about her various health issues/pains/life, but this just feels like, read the room! I’d do anything to be pregnant. I can handle the good news - it’s hard but it doesn’t ruin my whole day because I am genuinely happy for her. But, when it’s endless “pregnancy sucks today” types of complaints, it makes me spiral. Like, she doesn’t even appreciate this, why did she get it and I didn’t? Or then I get angry at her and resent her, then I feel guilty for resenting her. Sometimes when I’m already having a hard day, I feel like, “is she just rubbing it in that she’s pregnant and I’m not?” and then I feel awful for feeling that way. It ends up with me spiraling about my body, my self-worth, sadness, anger, etc and puts a major downer on my day.
I don’t expect her to enjoy every second of pregnancy for my sake, and if she isn’t fully enjoying it, I am sorry. Obviously if something serious were going on, I’d want to know, but I just feel like it should be pretty obvious and requires only a very basic level of self-awareness to realize that I’m not the best person to complain about heartburn and bloating and headaches to.
I plan on speaking to my therapist today about to not spiral when she does this, and to maybe help me communicate this boundary in a way that doesn’t make her defensive or lead to more drama. I am also scheduling consultations with therapists that specialize in infertility. But I’m just curious if anyone else has had a friend do this as well and if you said anything or just sucked it up.