Lombikbaba-Why is it important to talk about it?

As a psychologist and perinatal counsellor in my practice, I work with people with chronic women's illnesses, so I often meet couples and women who have been helped by the latest advances in medicine to become mothers.

There are countless reasons for this, all unique stories, but all similar in some way: Most of the time it is a long, bumpy road to the use of assisted reproductive technologies, with months and years of cycle monitoring, a regular sex life, going from doctor to doctor, from test to test, the shock of an infertility diagnosis, the grief of the process, the resulting difficulties in the relationship, the loss of female/male self-worth, self-esteem and the questioning of faith in one's own body.

Then there are the treatments, the stimulation, the tests, the injections, the hassle, the side effects, the anxious waiting, the days, the weeks, the planning, the hoping, and then the failures, the three months before you can try again.

And three months later again, and again, until those two stripes on the pregnancy test go viral. And then comes the joy, the unearthly bliss, followed by nine months of generally heightened attention and anxiety.

This is the parents' page. But what about the baby, the growing child?

For modern psychology, there is no longer any question that human life begins not at birth, but at conception. And the period spent in the womb is a period of incredible significance in every human being's life, which has an impact on our later development and personality. 

The foetus is competent, already in this period it sees, hears, smells, moves, feels, experiences, discovers and interacts with its environment using its own means. Under the right conditions, using special methods that require a modified state of consciousness, these early experiences can be recalled, e.g. haptonomy, we can experience what it was like to be a foetus in the womb, relive our own birth, and even, with the help of a competent therapist, correctly "recode" the memories stored from this period.

In this reading, you can see why I started from Adam and Eve: you can guess: if life begins at conception, then embryos conceived by assisted reproduction have a very different experience from their naturally conceived counterparts.

These children feel and know on a cellular level that "something else is with them", but they have no idea what it is, and as such, as they grow up, they may experience inner insecurity and mistrust. They can infer this or that from the phrases spoken over their heads in the family, but unfortunately the child's imagination often misinterprets dogma and takes them in a different direction.

The meaning of the words flask, laboratory, injection is unknown to the child or is known to him from other contexts already associated with fear, which may frighten him and cause anxiety. I have had children with fombies who, for months, had nightmares of being locked in a freezer with their brothers and sisters - they were only children at the time - and woke up terrified at night, until their parents told them about the circumstances of their conception, playfully, in a way appropriate to their age, answering their questions and encouraging them to ask more questions. When a sentence slips out of the mouth of a well-meaning friend or acquaintance, the child often blames the parents: Why didn't you say it?

And really: why not?

After all, there comes a time in every child's life when their favourite story is the story of their own coming into the world. Secrets and silences are always poisonous in a family, and a child's precise little radar detects at that moment anyway: something stinks. And if you want a baby brother or sister, he or she will most likely sit through another flask with you anyway, only this time as an outsider rather than a protagonist. You need to have something to say to the questions that arise.

Why are there so many touch-not-touch medicines in the fridge? What are these shots, you're not sick, are you, Mom? 

It's worth thinking about why, if you're reluctant to talk to your child about fombies. Maybe you're not okay with what's happened, ashamed, or you think, oh well, he's still little, he wouldn't understand, and then somehow things just slip away? If so, you might want to come to a for a consultation  to put things right inside you.

If you yourself are okay with your flask story, and you are smiling at the "what nature doesn't give you, don't force it" comments of the forum trolls, and even if you don't read these forums anymore, you will be happy to tell your child about how he or she came into your heart, your life, your family.

Welcome my latest storybook, which makes this conversation, this story, honest, light, intimate and fun. Have fun!

My book I am a Lombikbaba - A book for children conceived through assisted reproduction and their parents is available at EndoShop.

With love:

Nóra Árvai psychologist, perinatal consultant, specialist writer, nutritionist.

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