What should I say, think or do when facing this?

I just came back from a work trip that took me away from my worries and day to day at least for a few days.

I was able to forget at least in part what has happened in the last months and be a normal working woman worried about events, marketing, etc.

Still an IF woman cannot forget 100% her condition since I ended up bringing tons of my Napro medicines (the compounded ones) and the ones that I cannot buy here. My suitcase looked like a pharmacy and I am not very happy that even when traveling I cannot forget completly.

Still as I return to normal I know my heart is heavy most of the time although most people would not know it. Today it struck me that most of my IF friends have moved on. They all have adopted or are pregnant. And it kind of makes me feel even more alone.

Yet this is not the hard part.

The hard part is this which I have never written about here. Several very close pregnancies to me at my office and the ones that I just found out about in the last days.

I can truly say that I find and each one of them a blessing, a sign that God still belives in the human race, yet.... my heart breaks with them.

The most difficult one so far: At work my counterpart´s wife is expecting a baby for the exact same due date as I would give birth to Miguel.

The exact same date.

April 8th.

I work every single day with him since he does the content and I do the marketing and communications channels of his work. We are in exactly the same position and work day and day out together. His wife goes to the office at least once a week. I try to hide and not see her. Its too hard see this very painful reminder of where I should be had I not lost Miguel.

They have already two boys and had some issues this last time (the previous ones she got pregnant on the very first try) I know there was some help needed and she recommended to me extensively her doctor.

She has even brought me his card several times. I refused even to see him since he does IVF for some of his patients, yet did not tell her the true reason. That I cannot in my heart go to a doctor famous for IVF, even if I would never do it.

I am not sure this was involved with them, but I know there was more than medicines involved. They still tell me to go to him since he is an amazing doctor. And I see the results in her growing belly. Yet I know deep down in me that I cannot even consult with him as I do not trust a man that does what he does.

Yet, its so very hard to see her belly growing and to know that this baby will be born exactly on the weeks Miguel should have been born.

Talk has turned to this baby every single day and I cannot forget that I would have been known my baby by April 8th. I do not know how I will manage when this baby comes to the office. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about it.

The other one is that one of my managers (I have an all woman´s team, very unusual in my industry and 3 women managers, now all mothers) just informed me last week that she is almost 4 months pregnant. 4 months ago I had met with her in Brasil and she had informed me that she and her DH had just started trying. I am very supportive of family and my employees know this so they tell me things they normally do not tell a boss.

After getting married 3 years after me, living with her boyfriend for 2 years and using contraception during all this time, she was actually pregnant when we met back then and did not know it. She told me she did not even try, just stopped using the BCP and got pregnant a few days before we met. Trying would have put to much pressure on her so she just decided to go on with life as normal and wait. (exact words).

So now I am working with her to find a replacement during her maternity leave and I am giving her day´s off to go to the doctor and do all she needs. Since Brasil is 5 months of maternity leave I neeed to start proceedings very soon and fill out tons of papers that make it painfully clear that I might never fill them for myself.

Then in Dallas during a dinner a pregnant girl sat next to me the whole time. Her due date: First week of April . Her belly looked as mine should have been looking. I had to turn my eyes away from her amazingly beautiful belly.

And today a dear friend called me out of the blue after not hearing from her for several years. She married a few month before me. We lost contact when she just had found out about a second baby. Today she asks me if finally I have children, I say no and that I had a miscarriage in September followed by medical complications. She is very sorry.

I ask her how she is doing. She tells me she has just found about her 4th pregnancy.

They were not trying and actually she was instructed by her doctors not to get pregnant and was using Billings. She is a very Catholic woman and told me all life was very welcome and that she was amazingly blessed by her 3 children, yet I could hear the weariness in her voice about this 4th pregnancy. 4 pregnancies in 4 years with a very unstable work situation by her husband. Actually a terrible one.

She does not complain, but its clear its a cross for her right now.

So what do I say to all this people? What should my face say when I see or talk to at least some of them day and and day out?

That I am happy for them (which I am actually are, specially for my employee and for my dear friend), but that their bellies (or their wifes bellies ) remind me of so much that I have lost in the last years? Of the pain of this horrible IF cross?

I do not want to hide from them, not to be happy, yet... its so very hard.