Why are Pregnant People Everywhere?

When you are trying to conceive, it can suddenly seem as though pregnant people and anything to do with pregnancy or babies has suddenly multiplied and you can’t escape.

While before you may have noticed pregnancies or babies in what seemed like a normal and non-invasive capacity, it may feel like now it’s everywhere and it’s some new phenomenon that’s taking over the world.  Take a breath and take a pause—no, there aren’t suddenly now more pregnant people or more baby paraphernalia taking over the landscape.  It’s the same as it was before, except for now you want it, you’re trying your best to get it, and you’re not sure when it’s going to happen. You want it badly and it’s the only thing you can focus on and so your brain and mind are more attuned to triggers.

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

This is actually a psychological phenomenon known as The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, or Frequency Bias (or Frequency Illusion).  This phenomenon is exactly what you may have been experiencing- the thing you have noticed or thinking about suddenly seems to appear everywhere.  It may seem as though the entire world is now only made up of pregnant women and babies.  You may be thinking about pregnancy so much that you even start to think you see pregnant men and pregnant animals—how come even your dog suddenly seems to be sporting a baby bump?  Some of you might remember that scene in Sex & The City when Charlotte gets upset that even her dog is pregnant without seemingly trying while she has been struggling with infertility and trying everything she can think of to get pregnant.  Baader-Meinhof!

This phenomenon is posited to occur because of two reasons: selective attention, which has to do with our brain’s ability to filter out information that isn’t important to us so we only notice what is relevant to us, and confirmation bias, which occurs when we, as humans, like to corroborate our own suspicions and so we concentrate on information that backs our beliefs.

How to Cope When it Feels Like Everyone Else is Getting Pregnant

Zoom Out

One of the first things I would try to help work through this is self-talk and “zooming out”.  Now that you have the baseline understanding of what is happening, see if you can talk yourself through it when you are feeling overwhelmed by the amount of pregnancy or baby things you are seeing. 

Talk to yourself almost as though you were talking to a friend who is telling you what they are experiencing—what would you say?  How would you explain Baader-Meinhof to them?  Visualize yourself taking a step outside of the bubble you are in and imagine yourself looking in on the situation and what you would say.

Talk to yourself in almost a pragmatic and factual way, “No, [name], there aren’t more pregnant people or babies than before.  It is the same amount.  Your social media isn’t suddenly filled with more material on the topic.  You just really, really want to be pregnant and you want to have a baby more than anything and so your mind is using selective attention and confirmation bias to fool you into thinking that suddenly this is taking over the world. Don’t let your mind win! Remember that you, [name], are in control.” 

Refocus Your Attention

After you use self-talk and zoom out on the situation, try and refocus your brain and your mind.  You can do this by playing a mindless game on your phone such as Candy Crush or Tetris, or I have even had patients who swear by watching videos of slot machines on YouTube.  The trick is to just try and switch and refocus your brain to a different subject to give yourself a break.

Play Mind Games

You can also try and play a game with yourself—pick another subject and tell yourself you’re not going to think about it.  Whatever you do, you are not going to think about X.  This is known as the ironic process theory and the white bear is the common example for this.  This psychological process is defined as the process in which deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts make them more likely to surface.

This is also related to what’s going on with your thinking that you are suddenly seeing more pregnancies—you don’t want to and you’re trying not to think about it and you just can’t get away. 

Try and “out ironic” the ironic process here and tell yourself not to think about white bears (or whatever subject you come up with) and for at least a few minutes you may get yourself a break from seeing pregnancies and babies.

Limit Social Media

I also recommend really limiting your use of social media.  Social media can be triggering and it’s common for people to get sucked into the dark hole of social media and get upset by seeing pregnancy announcements or getting drawn into a rabbit hole of fertility groups with people who are posting scary stories.  Try and limit social media to only a few minutes per day.  

Social media algorithms are built to show us more of what we engage with - so if you’re always stopping to watch pregnancy announcements, nursery decorating videos, or posts about babies, you’re going to see more of those! Consider using the “not interested  ” feature on your social platforms, unfollowing creators who trigger negative emotions, or purposely engaging with non-pregnancy content to “teach” your feed to stop showing you those types of videos. 

Let Yourself Feel

Giving yourself the appropriate space and time to feel thoughts is also very important—the more you allow yourself to feel your feelings—anger, sadness, fear, uncertainty—and let them flow through you and let them be validated and honored, the less likely you are to have them build up inside and take over in ways such as feeling as though the world is overcome by this subject matter you are so desperately trying to avoid. 

Set a Timer 

Setting a timer can be a good way to let yourself feel feelings without letting them consume you—allow yourself five or ten minutes to feel all of the feelings, and then see if you can go another hour without thinking about them.  After an hour, set the timer and let yourself feel everything again.  The goal should be that over time you are able to go for longer periods of time without thinking about this unpleasant thought.  With this, start with where you are at—I have had patients that have needed to start with just trying to go five minutes without thinking about it—that’s okay.  There is no right or wrong, only where you are.

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” –C.S Lewis