Everyone’s pregnant, but she leaves crying

Q. Two of my employees are expecting and three more collaborators are pregnant. I am truly, truly happy for them ... but, I am unable to have children (and still struggling with this after 11 years), and I have gone home in tears more than once.

I have been very careful to stay positive at work and to be supportive, though I stay out of the baby-clothes-and-accessories conversations. I don’t plan to tell anyone about my situation, but I am having a hard time handling this. Any suggestions?

A. I’m sorry. Sometimes the situations where no one is doing anything wrong are the hardest to bear; there’s nothing to correct and no one to blame.

That’s not to say you’re stuck without options. You’re already exercising two of them, in fact, by choosing to stay positive and silent.

There are others, though, especially since your problem is really two problems: (1) your inability to have children, and (2) your proximity to these round-bellied reminders of your pain.

Since the second problem will resolve itself — these women will neither remain pregnant nor chatter about Onesies forever, mercifully for all involved — your choices to put on a brave face and tough it out are sensible ones.

But that still leaves the second problem, which presents other options. Eleven years ago, you apparently made the choice to build a life without kids. Also a sensible choice. However, now that you’re moved to tears by your colleagues’ joy, maybe it’s time to revisit your decision.

There are, as you know, many different ways to have children in your life besides being a parent, involving everything from minor commitments, like volunteering occasionally, to major ones, like becoming a Big Sister or an emergency foster parent.

No doubt you weighed these possibilities 11 years ago — but the decision you made when you learned you couldn’t have children might not fit you as well now as it did then. Since the subject has been forced to the front of your mind, use the opportunity to ask yourself: Among all the choices still available to you, have you chosen the best one for you?

Even if you end up just affirming your past decisions, doing so is a source of comfort in itself. When you’re going through a hard time, that’s no trivial thing.

Q. My future mother-in-law is highly anxious. She frequently tells me and my fiance (late 20s, independent, careful, considerate citizens) to “be careful,” and even begs us to promise never to do anything to cause ourselves harm. She recently emailed my fiance’s best man before his bachelor party, begging him not to let anything happen, because my fiance was “all (she) had left.” She experienced the loss of her only daughter 11 years ago, and has since become depressed and highly anxious.

Nothing seems to quell this depression and anxiety — we talk about her daughter often, honor the daughter’s legacy and memory, and also talk about her grief.

I don’t know how to prevent her anxiety from affecting my life. I’m getting resentful about her asking me to be careful, or promising to be safe. How do I prevent taking responsibility for her anxiety and grief, while also maintaining a positive relationship with my future mother-in-law? My fiance’s approach has been that “this is just how Mom is.”

She got counseling for her grief when the death first happened, for about a year.

A. That helps, because unless she had a bad experience with counseling, it means she’s at least receptive to the idea of mental health care.

And that’s the idea her son needs to present to her, kindly. “This is just how Mom is” is an indefensible position when Mom is plainly suffering. And while not all suffering is within reach of treatment (or of one’s well-meaning children), the facts that she’s not in treatment for her anxiety, and that loved ones aren’t urging her to seek it, mean it’s still an active possibility that her pain can be relieved.

Please urge your fiance to take his mom’s hand and guide her, be it to a grief-support group or into anxiety/depression screening or both — or give his blessing for you to do it.

Starting up the compassion machinery is not necessary for setting boundaries; justified as your frustration is, though, it’s not right to address your own discomfort without trying everything to address hers.

Fortunately, the boundaries you set don’t need to be showy or confrontational, since you have a ringer on your team: reality.

“I’m sorry, you know I can’t promise such a thing — but I do promise not to be reckless.” It may seem like splitting hairs, but I think you’ll feel a huge difference, inside, between lying to pacify her and gently stating the truth.

Ÿ Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com.

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