Seven years ago, our author had a fertilized egg implanted. Now the child goes to school and she asks herself: Do I have to burden it with its development?
April 2016. I’m on my way to the embryo transfer. Accompanied by a so-called IVF coordinator, I walk through the aisle of a private fertility clinic in the Czech Republic. I’ve had five years of desperately trying to have a baby. I’ve done everything reproductive medicine has to offer. In the beginning, when I wanted a baby, I seduced men. Later, I received sperm from voluntary donors in plastic cups to inseminate myself. Then I had my “old” egg cells fertilized with paid sperm from young men – offered by sperm banks – in fertility practices. All without success.
Whatever I tried, it was in vain. I had to say goodbye to the idea that my eggs would give me a baby. This knowledge led me to this chic little private clinic. Now I follow the coordinator in the direction of the treatment room, where a friendly doctor is waiting for me. I’m about to make my very, very last attempt to get pregnant. I am determined to adopt an embryo. It was created from an egg and a sperm cell that two people sold to the clinic. I know nothing about her. Only that they are supposedly thoroughly tested students. The questionnaires on donor preferences were not important to me, not even the similarity played a role for me.
Arrived in the treatment room, I am only outwardly a determined woman. Inside I feel exhausted, sad and desperate. I ended up here after several ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages and a year-long odyssey through Germany, Denmark and Spain, and tears come to my eyes as the embryo is transferred. I can follow “what’s happening” on a monitor.
To be too good to be true
Back in Germany, I hardly ever talk to anyone about what I’ve done. I don’t want to alienate others. In order to better endure the pain of countless failures, I suppressed all hope and armed myself with a “close my eyes and through” attitude.
I pay little attention to the positive pregnancy test two weeks after the transfer. It’s the tenth test of my life that has two stripes. Still, I never gave birth to a baby. Then the blood test. My gynecologist, who knows the story of my suffering, calls me at half past nine in the evening when she gets the hCG value from the laboratory. He is picture-perfect. A few weeks later, a small gummy bear can already be discovered on the ultrasound. My doctor is more enthusiastic than me. She shows me the beating heart and explains that, unlike some previous models, the embryo is in a very good place. I still don’t talk about it. Because I can’t believe it myself.
My stomach begins to bulge, I put on more clothes, but I keep everything to myself. At least all the words. I have to throw up almost by the end of the pregnancy. In school hours as a teacher, I almost always make it to break by spitting. I don’t tell anyone what’s wrong with me. Very few are in the know. The biggest doubter is myself anyway. It’s hard for me to trust “the roast”. What if the child is not viable? What if I lose it? But it stays and grows and is born completely healthy on the calculated date through a caesarean section.
And there it is: the greatest happiness
It is, and this is not stylized, the greatest, most beautiful, most brilliant thing that has ever happened to me. I hold my baby in my arms and I am amazed for a very long time. Emotional worlds open up in me that I had no idea existed. I often cry with happiness, beam at my child, implore it, ask: “How did you find me? Who gave you to me?”
Suddenly I’m glad about every failed attempt. Glad my own eggs went to the bin. Think and feel that this is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me. I persevered. I think it’s good to be this old and I feel reconciled with my fate.
While the children of friends of the same age are going through puberty, I can breastfeed mine and watch him develop. After the first intensive, exhausting and happy years, my baby is no longer a baby but a real little boy. He grows, asks, runs, climbs, demands – and goes to school!
Embryo Adoption – How do I tell my child?
After the initial rush of happiness, I have arrived in reality. I’m still amazed that everything turned out the way it did, but as a single parent and earner with the aim of giving my child as much security and security as possible, I have a lot to deal with. I have to remain stable and strong, work in a focused manner, I rotate between washing machine, supermarket, kindergarten, stove and desk. Organize a thousand things and run the risk of neglecting and losing myself.
In this phase of upheaval, I find myself confronted with enlightening my child about its origins. The family therapist Dr. Petra Thorn says there is no way around it. She advises parents whose children were conceived through donations or surrogacy. “Early education and a relaxed approach to the history of procreation are best”, she says. “Also, it should be talked about in everyday life. This normalizes it for the child, and it can react to possible discrimination or teasing. Contributing to such resilience is much better for the child than keeping the conception secret.” Then a family secret arises from which parents and child could suffer.
I don’t want that. But why now? It all worked out so well. My son and I are a dream team. It has to be, says the psychologist. She recommends teaching children about it as early as kindergarten age. Shall I say that sperm and ovum were brought together and frozen after successful cell division? That its creation began with the lines: “There is something suitable in our database, when would you like to come?” Is the woman who donated her genes the real mother?! Or the woman (me) who has taken care of everything since the birth of the child and endured every second with the child without letting it down?
What role does kinship play?
There are people I am related to by blood who mean nothing to me. I relate more to the quote “Your life is responsible for what you have learned” than to the similarity of genes. In fact, I think it’s good that my son doesn’t come from my odd clan and I don’t have to think about what weaknesses I might have instilled in him. On the other hand, there is the question of what information is passed on during pregnancy independently of the genes. Something can also be found about microchimerism, according to which during pregnancy there is a migration of cells from mother to child and vice versa. (spectrum.de/news/wir-omamutterkind-mischwesen/1345475). This suggests that, with the exception of the first “starter cells”, some of me has passed into my child’s body.
I’m in no mood to tell my son about his anonymous origins. It’s also difficult that I don’t tell everyone around me the whole truth, but rather leave it in abeyance. I mumble about fertility treatment, not embryo adoption. Now my sanity demands an outing from me that I don’t feel ready for. I would like to shelve all the difficult questions and much more complicated answers.
I’ve faced extreme rejection from close relatives since I started single-handedly having a baby. In her eyes, it is incredibly selfish to bring a child into the world without a father. What am I imagining? “At your age, in your professional situation.” It is pure egoism to throw someone into such a difficult life situation without being asked, to create precarious living conditions. I’d rather not hear the words they find for me when I’m not there. I would even less like to hand my son over to a similar evaluation machine. It’s enough that he says “Where’s your daddy? Every child must have a daddy!” in kindergarten. was bullied. His school start seems unsuitable for new targets. And so I hold back for the time being and educate him with a certain ambiguity: the knowledge of the truth and what I am communicating.
Openness – right from the start
Petra Thorn says: “It’s easiest for parents who have been open about conception since pregnancy or even earlier in their environment. They have had a lot of practice and, above all, have also developed words and know how to talk about conception by donation. It helps immensely to talk to the child early on.”
I almost didn’t tell outsiders but I told my son right from the start that I picked him up from a clinic abroad. I wrote him a little book and tried to find child-friendly words. “There are clinics that help people who can’t have children. I went there and you were put in my stomach when you were miniminimini.” I left out the anonymous donors and the technical complex. Also that such treatment is not possible in Germany for legal reasons and it only exists because I circumvented German jurisdiction by traveling abroad.
Petra Thorn says there is little experience of how children perceive this fact. “Most of the children conceived abroad using methods that are punishable here are still quite young. However, I suspect that this is rather unimportant for small children. In addition, education and an open approach to the history of procreation break the taboo that surrounds family formation with the help of third parties. These families thus make a contribution to normalizing these family forms.”
Maybe I have to reinterpret and rethink everything. Trying to be proud that I didn’t let anything stop me, that I persevered until my life’s dream came truet. I want to be more progressive about our history and contribute to a society where “double donation” no longer has to be kept secret. I won’t start that this week, but soon. And if I’m lucky, I’ll meet other parents with a similar story.
What actually is an embryo donation?
In Germany, a woman may only be implanted with her own artificially fertilized egg cells. Egg donation and commercial embryo donation are prohibited under the Embryo Protection Act. The law was passed in 1990 to protect children from growing up with two mothers (“split motherhood”). In the meantime, however, experts from medicine, politics and ethics are calling for a modern adjustment. Especially since egg donation is legal in almost all other European countries (except Switzerland and Norway).
INFO: netzwerk-embryonenspende.de. Specialist therapists for psychosocial fertility counseling such as Dr. Petra Thorn can be found at the Counseling Network for Children in Germany: bkid.de
Editor’s Note: The author wrote her story under a synonym.