Ask the Blog Team: It can seem everyone is pregnant or just had a baby. How did you handle those feelings?

Welcome to our Q+A series, Ask the Blog Team. In this series, the Hope Mommies blog team joins together to answer questions that are commonly asked in grief. If there is a question or topic that you have wrestled with in your grief that you would like the opportunity to see how other Hope Moms have processed or answered, we would love to hear from you. You can submit your questions here.

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It can seem everyone is pregnant or just had a baby. How did you handle those feelings?

It doesn’t just seem that way—everyone truly was pregnant or had a baby. Haha! If that is you, I’m with you sister. One of my closest friends was pregnant a month later. First of all, you may have feelings of resentment, anger, and envy, but don’t let them over take you. Satan wants nothing more than to distract you from healing in the Lord’s truth, and this is just one more tactic. Practically speaking, be honest with your friends if it’s difficult. Distancing yourself from them hurts the relationship and leaves room for false assumptions on both sides. It’s okay for it to be a little awkward sometimes; intimacy in friendship requires such discussions, and in my opinion it’s worth it for future friendship. Keep going back to the truth that her blessings in life does not mean that God loves her more or loves you less. Her healthy baby does not mean more to Him than yours does. We are called to rejoice and weep with each other. We expected them to weep with us, therefore, we can also, by the Holy Spirit, rejoice with them. Envy is a sin, and while the pain feels so justified, it is our responsibility to ask forgiveness and repent even in these circumstances.

I struggled with this a lot. My neighbor ended up becoming pregnant around the same time I did with my next baby, and I was not able to attend her baby shower. I did not want to cry the entire time. I also did not have a baby shower for my son because I was nervous. I eventually went to other friends’ showers and things like that because I didn’t always want to avoid them. A baby shower for a little girl still brings sorrow to my heart even though I am happy for the parents, but that sorrow drives me to the Lord. I think it is okay to be sad for what we have lost, but we should always rejoice in new life. 

I think I realized that I could not avoid “joy” forever. As much as I wanted to just sit in my sorrow and feel the fulness of all my grief, I also knew that as overwhelming and all-encompassing as that grief was, it was not the end. Just as I longed to have people weep with me, I was called to rejoice with others. And the longer I avoided that, the harder it would be to settle into my new normal.

The first evening after finding out that my Simeon’s heart had stopped beating, I was scrolling through Facebook trying to find pictures from a friend’s graduation that I knew had taken place the weekend before. But instead of finding her pictures, I discovered pregnancy announcements from three other friends. While my breath caught in my throat each time I stumbled across another one, there was a part of me that was so grateful for the reminder that death isn’t all there is. In my sorrow, I was instantly blinded to the life and flourishing that was still happening all around me. And while there was certainly a sting to discovering that three of my friends were newly pregnant the same day that I found out that my son had died, it was accompanied by a sweetness in remembering that God is still the Author of Life. I guess that moment was a stepping stone for me in realizing that life is a constant intermingling of joy and sorrow. One does not cancel out the other. So I could rejoice at these announcements of new life while also deeply grieving the loss of my baby.

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