This hurts my heart because she’s preparing for her second round of IVF and I feel like a terrible person for having two children already and now being pregnant with a third (and I haven’t told her about this yet, although I’m pretty sure she’s figured it out). It hurts my heart because I remember those days very vividly – wondering why everyone seemed to get pregnant so easily and why it was taking me forever. What was wrong with me? Would I ever be a mother? I wore fertility bracelets, temped, took supplements, checked CM, joined a yoga for fertility group, set up a meditation corner in my bedroom to relieve stress, started acupuncture, and on and on and on. And I think: how much harder would it have been if my job was to take care of small children? And how conflicting it must be when that job is paying for your opportunity to have your own child.

In addition to my nanny, I haven’t told a lot of people I’m pregnant yet, but there are two people in particular who I should have told but I have not. They are very dear friends to me. One recently miscarried in her first trimester after deciding to have a second child, and the second is undergoing her second round of IVF, having failed a first in an attempt to have a second chid. I should have told them, but didn’t know how to break the news directly after they announced what they had been through. And, to be honest, distance and our busy lives make it easy to evade. But I am 15 weeks tomorrow, so it’s time. And eventually I’ll need to tell my nanny, who likely already knows. I only hope that in a few weeks to months she shares the news that she’s expecting as well.