Why is everyone around me getting pregnant?

You don’t know everyone’s story (it might be that your work colleague has been trying to conceive for years!) but for now they are just another on a growing list of people that have told you they are pregnant and evoke the question, ‘Why is everyone around me getting pregnant?’

Once you move into the phase of being “un-pregnant” – the time when you have realised that things are not going to happen as fast as you want – then you also become acutely aware that everyone else seems to be finding it all too easy

CNN anchor Hannah Vaughan Jones has just announced the birth of her baby, she wrote about the brutal reality of IVF treatment in The Times, she admitted she found it hard to be friends with people who are pregnant, after going through seven rounds of IVF and was “fed up with putting on a brave face”.

She told 5 live Breakfast: “The most hurtful thing is that you are genuinely so so happy for the people that you love in the world when they have a baby when they fall pregnant, and all you want to do is wrap them up and tell them that you love them and be thrilled for them, but you absolutely ache inside”

If this is you we offer some coping tips, which others have found helpful.

The key is to find methods of coping:

Give yourself some distance – quietly remove yourself from social media for a while and re-focus, perhaps by spending a bit more one-to-one time with friends who aren’t going through this phase.

It is okay to think but not to act – thinking “I hate your outwardly perfect life and I hope your baby never gives you more than two hours’ sleep” is okay, but try not to say it out loud.

If it’s a close friend that is pregnant – tell her you are delighted for her but are struggling with your own sadness. Chances are by the time her baby arrives, you’ll be pregnant yourself or will at least have moved on in your ‘trying to conceive journey’ in some way.

Be kind to yourself, make excuses – it’s not horrible to feel this way. It’s natural. If a situation is all too much, simply take yourself out of the equation – it’s much better than to spend an hour sobbing afterwards.

Take action – being informed about your fertility is the first step towards pregnancy. Find out if there is any reason for your failure to conceived and get good advice about your options. Eating better, feeling fitter, making time to be with your partner can all help boost fertility.