Making fake pregnancy announcement for April Fools’ day is a bad thing
Admit it, you felt to yourself "I'm a comic genius", by fooling your friends about this:
But sometimes it didn’t turn out to be the funniest joke anyone had ever made, and we got on with our day.
But what you didn’t realized is that your ‘funny’ pregnancy April Fool was something that could have caused hurt.
In our case, we kept the joke to ourselves, so it didn’t do any damage. But how many of us will go through an April 1st without at least one person making an ‘I’m pregnant’ status on Facebook?
It’s all meant as harmless fun, and no-one is saying that it’s evil, but this year there’s a push from women who have struggled with fertility issues to stop making a joke.
Struggling with fertility issues is, as we can all imagine, draining and painful. Add into that the bundles of hormones that you have to cope with during fertility treatments, and you’ve got a perfect storm of unhappiness.
Being happy for a friend who is pregnant (genuinely) is hard enough, as Lucie, 38 told me. ‘I really struggle to congratulate my friends when they announce their pregnancies. I want to be happy, but it’s such a reminder of what I can’t seem to have.’
‘Of course, I manage to pull it together’ she went on to tell me, ‘but it’s not easy. So if I used that emotional energy to find out that it was fake? I’d be upset. I hope that my friends are smarter than that.’
Sharing in someone’s genuine joy is one thing, but managing to post a supportive, happy comment on a scan photo, only to find out that it’s a joke? That’s even more painful.
‘I know it’s not meant to be nasty or anything’ Annabelle, 34, told me. ‘But it’s still distressing. It such a serious part of my life, and something that is just on my mind all of the time.
‘The idea that conception could be a joke for anyone just seems so far away from my experience. I’m sticking needles in myself and pumping myself full of hormones but it’s such a small deal for someone else that they can make a joke about it.’
As Annabelle explains, trying for a baby is no joke, and the major issue with these jokes is that many couples are private about their fertility struggles, so there is no way of knowing whether someone who sees your social media updates might be struggling behind closed doors.
No-one wants to be a kill-joy, but there are a plethora of April Fools’ day jokes you can enjoy which are far cleverer than a fake announcement. This year, why not be better than that?
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