One of the hardest things about being single in your late 30s and 40s is that all your friends are getting hittched and having babies.

Good for them, I mean after all, isn’t that what most of us want, a happily ever after?   I know I do with the right person, but it does make being single all that much harder because everywhere you look friends, family members and even work colleagues seem to be having babies.

The last two years has been baby mania all around me. Many of my friends are pregnant, all three of my siblings have had babies and a good number of my work colleagues have been off on maternity leave. Delighted as I am for each and every one of them, it does, at times, feel like salt is being rubbed into a very open wound. It is incredibly hard not to self reflect during these times and think about what might never be for yourself.

The worst part of this self reflection is that you feel incredibly guilty for feeling this way, after all this isn’t about you, it is about your friend or family member and their happy moment. For some reason, and I have yet to figure out why, it is hard to differentiate between the two when it comes to a topic like this.  You can be legitimately happy for a friend who has just told you she is pregnant, but yet you can’t stop your tears from falling and thinking about the child you may never have.

To avoid situations like this what I did for a long time and maybe still do a little is retreat, distance myself from that friend or family member, to avoid a situation where their joy triggers my pain. I know this is the worst thing to do, and is incredibly selfish, but its just easier to deal with it this way.  If I don’t have to face it then I don’t have to feel it. If I avoid feeling sad, then I avoid feeling selfish for feeling sad which is worse than feeling sad in the first place.

There have been a few exception and they are my dear friend Fiona (not her real name, but she knows who she is) and my lovely older sister Claire (again not her name). Lets start with Fiona, she is 37 and heavily pregnant, infact she is due any day now.  Her and her husband weren’t 100% sure if they wanted children, I think they thought maybe ‘one day’, but hadn’t really thought about when ‘one day’ was going to be.  Fiona is one of my closest friends, she was one of the first people I told that I was going to freeze my eggs and subsequently has heard about pretty much every scan and blood test I have had throughout my journey.

I like to think that seeing some of the pain that I endured during three consecutive failed rounds of egg freezing helped trigger her and her husband to really think about when ‘one day’ would be and now I am pleased to say we are days maybe even hours away from welcoming their little girl into the world.

The difference with Fiona is that she didn’t let me retreat, she just let me be me.  There is no manual for how to ‘act’ in a situation like this but if there was Fiona would have written it. Despite how difficult it might have been for me to hear, especially after another failed round of egg freezing, it was important that she shared little pregnancy milestones (first scan, first kick etc) with me, even if I couldn’t help but cry.  Fiona never avoided a conversation, she never forgot how difficult things might be for me and she never forgot to ask me how my egg freezing was going, despite having a lot going on in her own life.

Fiona has been an amazing friend to me, today, at 9 months pregnant, she even offered to do a ‘follicle dance’ (I think its something like a rain dance!) to help my follicles grow in preparation for round 8!  Whilst our journeys have been on very different paths over the last 9 months, I can honestly say that I have never been more excited for two people to become parents and to welcome their little girl to this world.

My older sister Claire has also been amazing.  She is actually the one who nudged me to look into freezing my eggs and was at the end of a phone when I received my devastating AMH and FSH results.  Claire is the mother of two little ones.  She married in her late 30s and had her two kids in her early 40s.  When I started my egg freezing journey it didn’t work, I didn’t collect any eggs and at this time it was hard being around my niece and nephew.  As much as I love them, they were a constant reminder of what I would never have. My sister was and still is so supportive. She never forgets what it is like being single or how hard the situation is for me at times. I love her and thank her so much for that.

Fiona, my sister and this journey have taught me how to be much more self aware and less ignorant to what others might be going through. We just never know how close to home some things can be for others around us and I think at times we get caught up with our lives and forget this.