Let’s Talk About Jealousy, Because I Know I’m Not Alone

by Samantha Gorenstein

After five years of infertility, an early miscarriage, and the unexpected death of my son four days after his birth, I am no stranger to jealousy.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I looked at a pregnant woman or a new mom pushing a stroller and didn’t feel some degree of jealousy.

Over the years, I have learned when to expect it and how to breathe through it when it arrives. I had just begun to tame it when I lost my son.

Suddenly, my jealousy was back and bigger than ever, striking in all the old familiar ways and finding new places to work its way into my heart.

Jealousy is an ugly emotion. I don’t like feeling it. It makes me view myself as a small, bitter, coldhearted person, and I know that’s not who I really am.

Jealousy is also a human emotion. It’s one we all feel, whether we anticipate it or not.

Like most emotions, we have little control over when it rears its ugly head, and when it stays silent. What we do have control over, at least sometimes, is how we choose to acknowledge it.

Often, we don’t admit it, even to ourselves. We pretend we aren’t jealous.

We smile and congratulate and desperately try to feel happy for someone else while denying the envy that has briefly flared up inside.

Sometimes, we silently recognize it, but try to keep it a secret from everyone else. We release our jealousy only once we are at home, in the secrecy and safety of our childless houses, free to cry and scream and let out everything festering inside.

Rarely are we able to talk about it honestly and openly, to acknowledge it, process it, and move on from it in whatever way we can.

So let’s talk about jealousy.

Let’s open an honest dialogue about all the things we want ourselves to feel happy about, things we want to be able to celebrate with others without the cold tendrils of jealousy winding their way through the pits of our stomachs.

Let’s take a moment to welcome one another without judgment and acknowledge that jealousy is real, it is valid, and it is okay to admit it exists, even when we don’t want it to.

Let’s talk about jealousy if only to realize once again that we are not alone.

Let’s talk about accidental pregnancies. The kind mothers either laugh about or cry over because it happened when they weren’t prepared. I listen to these stories and clench my teeth, so my jealousy doesn’t accidentally seep out of my mouth.

When it takes five years of carefully monitored cycles, tens of thousands of dollars, dozens of blood tests, and hundreds of hormone shots to become pregnant, an accidental pregnancy seems like a dream come true.

I am jealous that it comes easily to so many people.

I know I am not alone.

Let’s talk about baby bump photos. Beaming mothers-to-be cradling their bellies, blissfully unaware that this unbridled happiness and excited expectation could be lost at any moment, for absolutely no reason.

My jealous brain sees them and rages at the series of tiny miracles that will almost certainly take place for their baby to be born healthy, but was lacking from my pregnancy.

I am jealous of baby bump photos.

I know I am not alone.

Let’s talk about birth announcements. Beautiful, chubby newborns swaddled tightly with little knit caps on their heads, proud parents smiling from ear to ear. Jubilant relatives calling each other up and announcing the baby’s name through cheerful laughter.

Most people learned of my son’s birth and his death simultaneously. Even those who were lucky enough to meet him before we said goodbye knew how this universally joyous occasion had become unexpectedly complex, interlaced with tragedy and despair.

Yes, I am terribly, tremendously jealous every time I learn someone went to the hospital to have a baby – and got to leave with a baby.

I know I am not alone.

Let’s talk about family pictures. Brothers and sisters holding hands and smiling. Parents surrounded by all of their children. Many loss families will never have a complete family photo. They didn’t have time to take any in the hospital, or they have younger children who never got to meet their older brother or sister.

We substitute teddy bears or other tokens as placeholders to represent the babies we had to say goodbye to, or we accept their absence in photos of our permanently incomplete families.

I see smiling family photos on Christmas cards, and I feel jealous that these families don’t need to remind others of the one who isn’t pictured.

I know I am not alone.

Let’s talk about milestone celebrations. It doesn’t seem to matter how old my son should be right now; it doesn’t matter that, as an infant, he would not be graduating from high school this year. And yet…those high school graduation announcements still make me jealous because it represents yet another milestone my son will miss.

Every first day of school, every athletic accomplishment, every graduation, and wedding announcement… when parents share any of these moments, a brief stab of jealousy precedes my genuine, joyful reaction.

I see their children growing up, I see their pride and wonderment over the people they are becoming, and I am so jealous that I will never know anything new about my baby.

I know I am not alone.

Let’s talk about the completely irrational jealousies. The ones we feel ridiculous for even feeling.

When I see the new baby rhino at the zoo run over to her mama and touch noses, I am jealous.

When I watch a Disney movie where a fictional animated king and queen welcome a bright-eyed baby girl, I am jealous.

I recognize how silly these reactions are, and I laugh about them, but deep down, the jealousy is still there.

I know I am not alone.

Just as I will learn to live with my grief, rather than overcome it, I hope I will eventually learn to live with my jealousy. That I may accept it, unwelcome though it may be, as a part of me.

I want to gradually stop trying to push it away, pretending it doesn’t exist, or shamefully hiding it from the rest of the world.

Instead, when I feel the pinpricks of envy scatter through me, I will remind myself that others feel it, too. I am not alone.

I will remind myself that jealousy doesn’t make me a bad person.

It doesn’t mean I deserved to lose my son.

It simply means I am human.

 

———

Samantha Gorenstein and her husband Marc struggled with infertility for five years before welcoming sweet Reed Elliott into the world on December 10, 2019. Their hearts were broken when they learned Reed had suffered a severe neurologic injury in utero and was unable to survive. Reed passed away on December 14, after four days of love and joy with his parents. Though they didn’t bring their baby home, Samantha and Marc are still overwhelmingly proud of their little boy and are learning how to be better parents to him every day. Find more of their story on https://gorensss.wixsite.com/hopeblooms/blog