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BOISE, Idaho — For many Utahns, pregnancy announcements show up somewhat regularly on social media, and many of them tend to be pretty creative.
A conversation about these announcements led Brigham Young University alums Spencer and Whitney Blake to create their own mock announcements about their struggle with infertility.
“For people like us struggling with infertility, it’s not uncommon to see those, and when they're from people that you know and love, you’re truly happy for them inside ... but then at the same time, it just hurts, because ... you feel like you’re getting left behind so to speak, and they just have something that you want so desperately,” Spencer Blake told KSL.com. “... We’d just seen so many of those we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if, instead of doing that … what if we did some sort of mock announcement of infertility and just kind of put a twist on all of those ... ones that people have seen that are really common on social media,” he said.
The Blakes began trying to have a family in 2009, started going through medical procedures in 2010 and eventually adopted two boys. They posted the photos to their blog during Infertility Awareness Week, according to Whitney Blake.
“Since humor is one of our coping mechanisms, we thought we’d use that to hop on the creative announcement bandwagon in our own infertile way,” Whitney Blake wrote on the blog. “Of course, we’re not suggesting infertile people announce their deepest struggle with a silly meme, nor are we making fun of pregnant people. We’ve just found that laughing at our problems sometimes makes them feel smaller and couldn’t resist the chance to poke fun at infertility.”
The photos feature what a typical pregnancy announcement looks like and what the Blake’s “infertility announcement” looks like.
Whitney Blake said they posted the photos during Infertility Awareness Week mostly to connect with others who struggle with infertility and kind of say, “We remember what that’s like, and it’s horrible, and we feel for you.”
She said she thinks they’ve had a pretty big response from people their photos have resonated with.
The Blakes do not love infertility, but they have an appreciation for it now, in a way, Whitney Blake said.
“Because infertility is what led us to adoption, and adoption is what led us to our little boys, and we love our family so much and are so grateful that they came to us the way they did in the time they did, and we just felt like our family was very much meant to be,” she said.
