As we approach spring and summer, pregnant friends and neighbors will be in view everywhere you go.

When you are undergoing infertility treatment, contact with those who seem to get pregnant easily is stressful and difficult.

We are beginning a three part series on coping with your pregnant friends.

The three sections of the series are:

**Part one: Nonverbal Coping** How to run into your friend and shield yourself from hurt and pain

**Part Two: Verbal coping ** How to speak to your friend through distanced contact methods and face to face contact methods

**Part Three: Support and Nurture** How to maintain enough support and nurture to keep on keeping on

~*~*~*~ Coping Skills for Contact with Your Pregnant Friend ~*~*~*~

Part one: Nonverbal Coping

Your next door neighbor, we'll call her Jeanne, is pregnant again. Watching her push her 1 1/2 year old son around the neighborhood in a stroller has been very difficult for you during the last year. Now you'll have to watch her with a growing pregnancy.

Jeanne gets pregnant within the first three months every time she tries.

You have been trying for three years to conceive.

Now you are taking all kinds of medications on the path to in vitro fertilization. When you and Jeanne have a conversation about pregnancy, her comments are predictable, "Don't worry, Lucy, just relax and it will happen soon." And "if you just wouldn't FOCUS so much on it, I'm sure you'd get pregnant."

How can you continue to live next door and have contact with her now that she is pregnant?

===== Avoidance ====The first thought most of you will have is, "I simply won't see her any more."

This is a very stress-filled solution to the problem.

1. You'll have to look outside before you leave the house to assure that you won't run into her.

2. You'll need to use caller-id to feel comfortable answering the phone.

3. You'll be worried when you do run into her (and you will) about what will happen then.

I suggest to my coaching clients a milder version of this approach.

Decide to avoid Jeanne on your very *worst days*.

First define a worst day. Perhaps for you, one of the worst days is a day when you've had bad news from the reproductive specialist's office or a day when you and your husband have had a difficult financial discussion about the costs of treatment.

On such a day, you'll probably be dealing with too much pain to take on anything else. Decide to avoid Jeanne on those days.

======= Stress management ========= However, you will occasionally have contact with Jeanne.

Practice stress management techniques when you run into Jeanne.

===>Relax your arms:

As you approach Jeanne and anticipate your contact with her, your arms are very likely to tighten up. We stiffen in preparation to gather strength to hold the danger at bay.

However, you don't have to feel stress at this level.

You can take control. Make a conscious effort to relax your arms and hands and much of your stress will go away.

If it is hard to do this just through concentration, then shake out your arms like an Olympic diver does and you will get the idea of how loose they should be.

==> Focus on your breathing

Take a deep breath and let it out in a sigh as you see Jeanne in the distance. As you exhale, "Whewwww," let the tension go with the air you are breathing out.

Just focusing on breathing can relieve an enormous amount of stress because you move your concentration to the breathing rather than Jeanne's pregnancy or comments.

So take a few deep breaths and count as you do so.

Count in to four and breathe out to five, then in to five and out to six. Believe me, this takes effort and it will then be harder to think about Jeanne.

======== Develop Charlie Brown listening techniques ======== Remember Charlie Brown's school teacher? Whenever she spoke, Charlie Brown heard "Wah, wah, wah wah wah...."

Train yourself to hear any pregnancy advice from Jeanne through the Charlie Brown filter. You will have achieved an even greater level of CB listening if you can smile and nod as you hear the "Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah."

This works best if you can also focus on something just beyond Jeanne's head. For example as you appear to look toward Jeanne, you can place your focus on the brick in the wall just behind her or on the tree just to her left.

============ Use visualization =============

Imagine the most restful place you can. When you see Jeanne and feel sad and blue, then go to this place in your mind.

For me, a seat at the bottom of a waterfall in the Smoky Mountains, away from the crowds, listening to the water roll down the mountain is the most restful place I can imagine. The water makes a soothing sound and it is cool and the air is fresh. I try to use all my senses in my imagination so that the place becomes real in my mind.

============ Literally brush it off ============

Finally, perhaps you've had contact with Jeanne and she has said something that feels as if once again, she doesn't understand. When you step back into your house, then take your hands and brush yourself off as if you had lint all over your clothes. As you brush, imagine that you are brushing off the comment from Jeanne.

============ A coach can help=============

Here at FertilityCoach, you can arrange for time with Linda to work on ways to make it possible for you to participate in the life of the world. You can make action plans to cushion yourself or shield yourself from the difficulty of the daily observance of pregnant women and young children.