There are many questions to be answered before egg donation and assisted fertilization. But not all questions can be answered - and many are also not necessary to have answers to in advance.
Going through treatment with egg donation can promote some thoughts and questions in the future parents. We all want to be good parents, and we can quickly draw out the child's perspective even before pregnancy occurs.
It's perfectly normal to have questions like;
- Do I want to feel that the child is mine, do I want to bond with the child?
- When to tell the child that it has come into the world with the help of donation?
- Will the child reject me?
We are going to address some of these questions and hopefully come to the realization that not all questions can be answered before egg donation, and that one can still allow oneself to start treatment with an inner confidence that it is going to be okay.
First of all, I must emphasize that it is love and the maternal and paternal instinct that underlie the desire for children. The need to create a family lies naturally in us. We are born with two very strong instincts - one is the procreation instinct, and the other is the survival instinct.
When we encounter resistance on one of these two instincts, it triggers us very strongly, and that in itself can be the driving force that moves us forward in a children's project that became different from what we had envisioned.
If you look closely at the questions that I have outlined above, you will see that all the questions are forward-looking and there are no facets or statistics on the answer. Negative thoughts that we cannot respond to or have evidence for are called brooding and worrying thoughts.
The challenge for many egg donation patients is that they have been through unsuccessful IVF attempts with their own eggs ahead of time and are tired. It's hard to deal with worry when you're tired and have little energy. These thoughts are then not productive and evolving for us - they slow down the process and drain us of energy. At the same time, it is quite normal to assess back and forth, putting the positive against the negative, when making such an important decision as creating a child with the help of egg donation.
Now on to the unanswered questions:
It's not all we can think of. We actually have to experience. We need to experience what it's like to get pregnant, experience how we naturally bond with the baby in the belly, and experience how to create a bond with the baby - regardless of where the egg cell came from. We must experience the joy of the created child. This is a feeling and experience that is difficult to plan and think about in advance.
It is important to have an inner confidence in oneself and one's own ability to care.
Ask yourself; do you love people who are not in a genetic family?
What would you do if a child was put outside your door and you discovered it on your way out? Would you step over, or would you bring it up and show the child care? Most likely, you would do the latter. The ability to care is inherent in us.
How the relationship with your child is going to be, and when and how to convey to the child that it is by donation, will depend, among other things, on the personality of the child.
Most people who are going through donation treatment are most concerned with hair color, eye color, height and weight. This is, of course, to match looks. What will be the more decisive thing for relationship building and attachment is the personality of the child.
It will therefore be difficult to think about and plan in detail how the relationship will develop.
When and how to convey to the child that it is by donation will also depend on the personality of the child. There will be two different ways to convey to a “hardbarka” child, or a more sensitive child. You cannot know in advance of a pregnancy what personality your child will have.
Many are afraid that they will be rejected by the child when it is in their teens because they are not genetic parents. It is important to convey to the child at an early age, between 5-8 years, about the egg donation, so that this does not come as a surprise to a teenager.
It is the parents who are the background of the child's existence and it is important to convey this. All teenage children will find their parent's “weak” point and use it for a period of time for what it's worth. This is what it's like to be a teenager.
Then it is important to stand in that pride, security and love, and not least the gratitude of being parents, so that the donation will not become a “weak” point.
As I describe above, there are feelings, thoughts and actions that we cannot plan in detail. We need to understand that there are some things in life that need to be given time to develop and mature.
It is the love story you are going to pass on to your child, the story of how it came to this world with the help of you as parents.
You are in the process of creating the introduction to this story, it is not necessary, or possible, to get an answer to either the main part or the ending right now. Right now, it's enough with the initiation and confidence of a positive action and ending.
Let's get started!
– Tone er familieterapeut med fertilitet som spesialfelt.
Par og single som går gjennom fertilitetsbehandling hos Klinikk Hausken får tilbud om veiledning og emosjonell støtte av Tone som en del av behandlingen.
Tone gir også profesjonell veiledning før man eventuelt begynner med behandling hos Klinikk Hausken. Det kan blant annet være aktuelt for de som prøver å bli gravid hjemme eller for de som er i en prosess med donasjon.
Les mer her hvordan en famileterapeut kan hjelpe deg. Du kan også kontakte Tone dersom du har spørsmål.
