Dear Prudence,
My sister-in-law just buried her infant son. She had struggled with infertility for years until he was born, and it’s devastating. I am currently four months pregnant. My husband and I already have children and have not told announced this pregnancy yet, but it is going to be obvious soon. I don’t want to cause my sister-in-law any more pain but I don’t see how I can’t. We’ve always had a difficult relationship and it mostly surrounds my children. She has been publicly bitter about my pregnancies and once said openly it wasn’t fair I had so many children when I wasn’t a good mother. (My sons were having a tantrum at a family picnic and she’d had had too much to drink.) We ended up leaving and later accepted an apology from my husband’s brother. I really was hoping that my nephew’s birth would be a chance for our family to turn over a new leaf. Now I feel like this divide will never be bridged. What can I do? What can I say?
—Feeling Tentative