It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes:
I work in a large-ish department (about 40 people), and the majority of my colleagues are women my same age (20s and 30s). Because of the age range and gender of our department, we almost constantly have a pregnant woman in the office. I think at the moment we’re going on four years with continuous pregnancies! This doesn’t bother me at all – I am always very excited for my colleagues and love celebrating with them. We are a close knit group and tend to share our personal lives with each other.
However, all the pregnancy news and talk has really been wearing thin on me lately. In the past three years, I’ve suffered three miscarriages. The last one was particularly traumatizing, in part because I became pregnant at the same time as a coworker, and she announced her pregnancy about one week after mine had ended. In addition, on my pregnancy’s due date, another coworker announced that they were pregnant. This was in the middle of a meeting and I was barely able to slip out before I started sobbing. When I came back, everyone knew that I had been upset, but I haven’t told anyone why. I only have one colleague I’ve talked to about this, because she has also had difficulty with getting pregnant (although she is now pregnant after IVF, and I’m super excited for her!)
Meetings at work have become very difficult places for me because at the beginning we always allow a few minutes for people to share any announcements…these range from professional to personal. Now, I am constantly on edge in meetings because I never know if someone will announce a pregnancy, and it’s been really difficult to overcome the anxiety that these few minutes of a meeting will induce in me.
In addition, the coworker who was pregnant at the same time as me, asked me point blank why I didn’t make her a baby gift (I am very creative and well-known in the department for knitting, sewing, quilting, etc, and I usually hand make baby shower gifts). I gave some bland answer about how I just haven’t been feeling creative lately, but in truth I couldn’t bring myself to make her a baby gift because it just hurt my soul.
So I guess my question is…how do I deal with all the pregnancy discussion at work when it just makes me want to go home and cry? How do I be a good colleague and team player when working with the pregnant women just makes me sick to my stomach? What do I do to overcome this? I really love my job and coworkers, but work has been a hellish nightmare for me lately.
Readers, what’s your advice?
how do I deal with pregnancy talk at work when I’m dealing with miscarriages? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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