'AITA for telling my coworker to stop bringing up her lost pregnancies?' 'She makes a big show out of everything.'

"AITA for telling my coworker to stop bringing up her pregnancy loss?"

I have this coworker who I’ve worked with for almost 4 years. In general she is not a great coworker because she does not always pull her fair share of the weight, and tends to be dramatic with a victim mentality. She has personal issues with eating disorders, and is generally unhealthy according to what she shares with our team.

She is also the type of person to make a big show out of everything she does, even the most mundane things. Like she puts on the office Christmas party and has to make tons of posts about every little detail— none of us care.

Since we have worked together, she has unfortunately suffered through multiple (5, I think) miscarriages. Obviously that is heartbreaking, and I would never wish that on anyone. However, I can’t help but feel annoyed by her behavior when this happens.

Each time, as soon as she finds out she’s pregnant around 6 weeks, she makes a big announcement to the office and talks about her due date, all of the details, and spends a great deal of time with our manager trying to coordinate all of her 40 weeks worth of appointments.

She also has really severe morning sickness which she will announce to the whole office multiple times per day, each time she gets ill, and pretty consistently leaves a mess in the bathroom.

Each time she has miscarried, she makes a large announcement as well, and takes off work for several weeks for recovery. Of course we all feel terribly for her, but I can’t help but wonder why she makes such a big deal out of it so early each time if she knows that she has this traumatic history with pregnancy.

It’s honestly becoming a distraction at work, and as much as I would normally be empathetic, I find it difficult to go through this rollercoaster of emotions with her each time it comes up. I think I feel this way because it’s a heavy emotional load at work, where I normally try to separate personal feelings as much as possible. Does this make me an ahole?

Here's what top commenters had to say about this one:

Illustrious-Unit-636 said:

NTA Did you ever think she’s making it up...maybe she’s not pregnant, just likes attention.

justfollowyoureyes said:

NTA but I’d mention it to HR, express your concerns in private, and let them take it from there. They can check in with her and share helpful resources. And as f'd up as it sounds, I wonder if there’s Munchausen going on here…

avonlea- said:

YWBTA yes. I seem to be against the grain here, but recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) is certainly a thing, as is nausea from very early on in a pregnancy. I don't see why this woman needs to hide her nausea or her mourning just to make you more comfortable. That seems very self-centered of you. Have some empathy.

HerrBluemchen0506 said:

Honestly yes YTA. Whatever annoying qualities she has aside from the pregnancy topic is irrelevant to this and you seem to only bring it up to justify the rest. It doesn’t do that for me. Miscarriages don‘t automatically get easier. If you really want to have children, you don’t just "get over it“ because it’s the fourth, fifth or sixteenth time.

And whether she wants to share the joyful news of another pregnancy or not is up to her. Maybe it‘s her way of keeping the faith or staying optimistic that this time it‘ll be a happy ending. She is not obligated to fake happiness in the face of loss just so you‘re not bothered.

And if the desire to have a child is so strong it really makes no difference if she loses it at ten weeks or thirty. So yeah I even understand her taking time off work to grieve and process. I just hope you didn‘t say any of that to her.

SunMoonTruth said:

NTA. You can feel whatever you like but you cannot reprimand her. You could speak to someone in HR to talk through the situation but don’t just fly off the handle at this person.

Obvious_Huckleberry said:

NTA. The fact she announces it asap is off to me...as someone who had trouble conceiving and I have friends who had issues...after a couple of miscarriages we stopped announcing it out of FEAR and waited until we were further along to finally feel safe to announce it.

jammedbaton32 said:

YTA. You clearly don’t like her. Recurrent miscarriage is an awful thing that she isn’t at fault for. You talk about her general health as though it has anything to do with everything else you said you dislike about her. As someone who has been through rpl, you probably don’t want her at work after her losses anyway. She’d cry, all the time, like a “victim” which you clearly hate.