Medically assisted procreation with gamete donation. Love beyond genetics

Infertility is a very complex and painful experience that is often not fully understood by those who have not experienced it on their own skin.

Freud said that generativity is the individual’s will to survive death.

For this reason many infertile couples decide to rely on medically assisted procreation (MAP)   to give themselves the opportunity to become parents thanks to the help of science. However, the path is not easy.

The percentages indicated in the national PMA register of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità tell us that in 2017, in patients under the age of 34, the probability of obtaining a pregnancy was 12.4% on cycles started and 13.7% on the inseminations performed, while in patients over 42 years of age the percentage drops to 3.8% and 4.3% respectively.

From a psychological point of view, those who are infertile therefore have various losses to overcome .

The first is that of their own infertility which makes these patients feel inadequate, alone and different from those who manage to have children naturally.

A second problem arises when the couple discovers that the only way to obtain a pregnancy is through heterologous fertilization with the donation of one or both gametes .

In this case, in fact, in addition to mourning for infertility, there is also biological mourning due to the impossibility of having a genetic link with one’s own child.

So how can one face such a difficult experience?

The first thing to do is to remind patients that it is possible to be generative even in infertility . This path can be approached as an inner growth which, even if it may seem absurd, can be deeply enriching regardless of the result that one will be able to obtain.

You can therefore face this journey with resilience by trying to react positively to an event that by its nature proves to be deeply stressful.

Fundamental in these cases is to try to talk about it with those who are having the same experience without feeling guilty or ashamed of what one is experiencing because infertility is a condition for which one is not responsible.

In these cases a psychological journey is essential precisely to bring out all the fears and ensure that the final choice is reached with awareness and serenity.

As a psychotherapist who supports infertile couples, when I meet a couple who are afraid about choosing heterologous fertilization, the first thing I do is to tell them that my job is not to convince them to choose a technique rather than another, but to analyze their resistance, their fears to ensure that they are truly aware and creators of their own choice.

The doubts of couples who are preparing to face a path of heterologous fertilization

The doubts that couples bring back to me in the therapy room are the following:

The fear of not hearing the baby at all

In these cases I try to broaden the couple’s vision by explaining that parenting is relational and not genetic and that love for another person is not influenced by genes. For example, you love your partner or husband and yet you don’t have a biological bond with him.

The fear that the child does not look like us.

This fear is very common but if we think about it, even those born without assisted fertilization may not look like their parents.

Moreover, it is good to introduce the concept of epigenetics which is nothing more than “the transmission of traits and behaviors without changes in the gene sequence” (Di Mauro 2017).

In practice, what is passed on to the child born of a heterologous mother is our value systems, family myths, the way of cooking, the way of speaking that are part of our family system, which is why that child will eventually look like us in some way.

Above all, I believe that it is important to give love to your child and then whether they look like us or not, it doesn’t matter because sharing your diversity can only be an enriching experience for both parents and children.

The fear of injury that the child could suffer because he was born from gamete donation

When this fear is brought back to me in the therapy room, I try to make the couple think about a concrete fact.

All of us as children, but also as adults, suffer from prejudices. We live in the era of child protectionism but the most important thing that can be taught to a child is precisely that of giving him the tools to face the difficulties that we naturally undergo in the growth path of each of us.

The fear of whether or not to reveal to the child how he was born

This is a very recurring fear but the literature is very clear on family secrets. In fact, children are able to hear even the unsaid and secrets are perceived as something more terrible than they are .

In my clinical practice I have often encountered families with secrets handed down from generation to generation which however were perceived through the expression of an uneasiness of one or more members of the family system which was interrupted just when the secret was revealed.

A short time ago I interviewed a girl born from heterologous fertilization in the 80s who told me that the problem was not knowing she was born with gamete donation but having known it when she was 21 years old.

In fact, from the age of 3 you can begin to tell fairy tales to your children who will perceive that their birth took place as a gesture of love and above all that their birth is not an experience to be ashamed of.

Moreover, not revealing to one’s children how they came into the world would deprive them of the possibility of learning a fundamental thing: terrible things can happen in life, such as infertility, but with the ability to react resiliently many difficulties can be overcome and dreams can come true.

For all these reasons, not revealing this aspect would deprive the child of the possibility of learning a very positive teaching.

Well, doesn’t it seem to you that even an experience of infertility can be transformed into something fertile?

Indeed, in life very difficult things can happen to us but it is up to us to decide whether to use these experiences in a constructive or destructive way.

Is it therefore possible to love a child beyond the genetic bond? The answer is yes.

In fact, it is not the genetic bond that defines parenthood but the relationship that defines the bonds between people .

Parenthood is in fact a psychic condition of maturity which prepares us to love and take care of another human being without wanting anything in return and this capacity is independent of the fact that there is a genetic bond with one’s child and develops only if it is worked on the resistances that a technique such as medically assisted procreation entails.