Is There a Perfect Way to Announce Your Pregnancy to a Friend Struggling With Infertility?

When I was going through infertility, hearing friends announce their own pregnancies felt like salt being poured into my wounds. It wasn’t just painful, it was uncomfortable. I felt like everyone was looking at me to gauge my reaction.

Because of this, I preferred to receive pregnancy news from friends via text or email, but even those always seemed to strike a nerve for me. It just feels like when it comes to telling a friend who is struggling with fertility stuff about your own pregnancy, there’s just no right way to do it.

Recently, I came across a post from Lucky Sekhon, MD, a reproductive endocrinologist, who shared an incredibly thoughtful message from one friend to another.

In the message, the pregnant woman shares that she has been thinking of the friend going through IVF ever since she learned of her pregnancy, and wanted to give the other woman plenty of time to process the news. “I so wish I was sharing this with you at a different stage in your own journey,” she writes. 

But even in the comments of Dr. Sekhon’s post, people are divided. “Do not text. If this is a close friend it should be in person if possible. If I got this in a text Id be upset. This happened to me. I was doing fertility with multiple losses. My best friend, unmarried and not trying got pregnant, came over and told me before anyone,” one commenter writes. Personally, I disagree — but that just goes to show that there’s no perfect way to do this.

And while many commenters call this “beautiful”, some find it a touch condescending, or say it veers into toxic positivity territory. And truly? I don’t know how I would have felt if I had received a message quite like this one. Yes, it’s very, very thoughtful — but would it have made me feel like I was being pitied a bit? 

The thing is, when you’re going through infertility, you’re basically a bundle of exposed nerves. So many things hurt you or feel wildly insensitive because you’re just in so much pain. But I think the issue here is that there’s just no perfect way to navigate this particular issue of telling someone you’re pregnant when you know they are working through fertility challenges. It all just comes down to approaching the issue with as much sensitivity as possible.