Her Body Is Not Your Measuring Stick

I think women have a bit of a problem. We compare. We compare our houses, our hair, our bodies, our kids, our marriages, our careers, our dinner choices, and approximately 47 other things before breakfast. And when it comes to our health and fertility, we somehow become Olympic level comparison athletes. Fertility is probably one of the hardest places to do this, because when you’re struggling with something that seems to come so easily to someone else, it is almost impossible not to look sideways. You see the woman who got pregnant the first month she tried, while you’ve been trying for two years. You see the woman with PCOS who seems to have regular cycles and three kids, while you feel like your hormones are running a small but highly disorganized government. You see someone announce her third pregnancy when you’re still praying for your first. And then, whether we say it out loud or not, we start asking ourselves, "What am I doing wrong?"

We See the Outcome, Not the Whole Story

This is where I think comparison gets us into trouble. We see another woman’s outcome and assume we know the whole story, when in reality, we usually know almost nothing about it. We see the pregnancy announcement, but we don’t see everything that came before it. We see the baby, but we don’t know whether there were years of trying, miscarriages, treatments, tears, prayers, or conversations that happened behind closed doors. And sometimes there really wasn’t any of that. Sometimes she genuinely did get pregnant easily. Sometimes her body really does seem to cooperate in ways that yours currently doesn’t. And that can hurt. I don’t think we need to pretend otherwise. You can be genuinely happy for another woman and still feel sad about your own situation. You can love your friend, celebrate her pregnancy, buy her the adorable little baby gift, and then go home and cry afterward. Those things can exist at the same time. Her pregnancy doesn’t make your struggle less real. Let me say taht one more time...her pregnancy doesn't make your struggles less real. The fact that something came easily to her doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong because it’s harder for you.

The PCOS Comparison Game

PCOS is another area where I see this happen all the time. Two women can both have PCOS and have completely different experiences, truly their charts can look completely different. One woman may have long cycles but otherwise feel pretty good, while another may go months without a period and struggle with a whole host of symptoms. One woman may become pregnant quickly, while another may spend years trying. One may have obvious signs of PCOS, while another may not even realize she has it until she’s trying to conceive. And then we start comparing.

“Her doctor told her to lose weight.”

“She started taking this supplement.”

“She cut out dairy.”

“She went gluten-free.”

“She started exercising.”

“She stopped exercising.”

“She drank spearmint tea.”

“She literally did absolutely nothing and got pregnant anyway.”

At that point, you might as well throw a dart at a fertility Pinterest board and see what happens. But here’s the problem: her treatment is not necessarily your treatment. Her symptoms are not your symptoms. Her body is not your body. Even when two women have the same diagnosis, there can be very different things happening underneath the surface. A diagnosis can give us a piece of the puzzle, but it doesn’t necessarily give us the entire picture. That’s why I think it is so important to resist the temptation to look at another woman’s experience and assume it should be your roadmap. Stop comparing yourself to the woman in your PCOS support group on Facebook or the influencer who used a "mireacle supplement" to loose weight with ehr PCOS. You are you. They are them.

And Then There’s the Pregnancy Announcement

If you’ve struggled with infertility, you probably know exactly what I mean when I say that pregnancy announcements can be complicated. You can be happy for her. You really can. You can genuinely love this person and be thrilled that she’s having a baby. But you can also feel that little punch in your stomach when you realize that she is pregnant again while you’re still waiting. That doesn’t make you jealous. It doesn’t make you bitter. It doesn’t make you a bad friend. It makes you human. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t even the pregnancy itself. It’s the story we start telling ourselves because of it. We start wondering what she has that we don’t. We wonder why it seems to work for everyone else. We wonder why our bodies are so difficult or feel like they are broken. We wonder whether we’re somehow failing at something that seems to come naturally to other women. But what if we stopped making another woman’s fertility the measuring stick for our own? What if her pregnancy was simply her story, rather than evidence that something is wrong with yours?

Your Body Is Not Losing a Competition

I think we’ve accidentally turned women’s bodies into a competition that nobody actually signed up for. We compare how quickly we got pregnant, how long our cycles are, how bad our periods are, how much pain we have, how quickly we recover after having a baby, how soon our periods return postpartum, and even how “easy” our pregnancies looked from the outside. But there is no fertility leaderboard. There isn’t a secret scoreboard somewhere that gives you extra points for having a 28-day cycle or knowing exactly when you ovulate. There isn’t a trophy for getting pregnant the fastest, having the easiest pregnancy, or having your body “bounce back” immediately after having a baby. Your body isn’t supposed to win her race because it isn’t running her race. Your body has its own story. Sometimes that story is straightforward. Sometimes it is complicated. Sometimes something changes after having a baby that wasn’t an issue before. Sometimes a diagnosis explains part of what is happening but not everything. Sometimes you’ve been told everything is “normal,” but you still know that something doesn’t feel quite right. And sometimes, you simply need more information.

Maybe We Need to Get Curious Instead of Competitive

This is where I think fertility awareness can be such a beautiful shift in perspective. Instead of constantly looking at someone else’s body and asking why yours doesn’t work like hers, you can start paying attention to what your body is actually doing. What patterns are you seeing? What has changed? What has stayed the same? Are there things happening consistently that you haven’t really paid attention to before? Is there something you should bring to your healthcare provider? Those are much better questions than, “Why can’t my body just be normal?” Because your body doesn’t need to be someone else’s version of normal. It needs to be understood. Your chart isn’t supposed to look like your friend’s chart. Your cycle doesn’t need to match your sister’s. Your PCOS doesn’t have to behave exactly like your coworker’s. Your postpartum experience doesn’t have to look like your best friends. And your fertility journey certainly doesn’t have to follow the same timeline as the woman who sat next to you at church last Sunday and casually announced that baby number four is on the way. Good for her. Truly. But her story is hers.

There Is Room for Her Story and Yours

Maybe your friend gets pregnant easily and you don’t. Maybe your sister has PCOS and barely notices it while yours affects nearly every part of your cycle. Maybe your coworker has predictable cycles and yours seem to change every month. Maybe you’ve had babies before and suddenly your cycles look completely different. Maybe you’ve been told everything is “normal,” but you still feel like you need answers. None of those experiences make you less of a woman, and none of them mean that you are doing something wrong. We can celebrate another woman’s joy without using it as evidence against ourselves. We can learn from other women’s experiences without assuming that their experience will be ours. And we can acknowledge that something is hard for us without needing to compare it to how hard or easy it was for someone else.

So the next time you catch yourself looking at another woman’s fertility journey and wondering why yours doesn’t look like hers, take a step back. Her body isn’t your measuring stick. Her timeline isn’t your timeline. Her diagnosis isn’t your diagnosis. Her story isn’t your story. Your body has its own story to tell, and maybe the goal isn’t to make your story look like hers. Maybe the goal is to learn how to listen to your own.