Inconceivable Conceptions

Psychological Aspects of Infertility and Reproductive Technology

Jane Haynes, Juliet Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135480356
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Psicoterapia

It is over two decades since the first test-tube baby was born. During this period a new belief that all infertile women can now have babies has become widely accepted; indeed, infertile couples may feel great pressure to seek a medical solution. However, the psychological and social effects of the changing experiences of infertility remain confusing, both for those who experience infertility and for wider society. In this book, a distinguished range of contributors, including novelist Hilary Mantel and Germaine Greer, examine the experience of infertility from both male and female perspectives, the psychological aspects of infertility diagnosis and treatment, and the often radical and unexpected effects on kinship.
Drawing from a wide range of theoretical backgrounds including Jungian, analytical, and compelling personal reflections, this book aims to unravel the implications of advancing reproductive technology for our understanding of ourselves and our families.

Changing patterns of kinship

Chapter 10

The story of Seth’s egg

Emma Scrimgeour

Emma Scrimgeour is a pointer and lives in London with her partner and two children.

Seth is my nephew, his mother is my sister and his father is my brother-in-law. Seth’s conception took place in a Harley Street clinic Petri dish; the sperm was my brother-in-law’s and the egg was mine. He looks very like his father and shares his dashing eccentric style in clothes and sense of humour; nevertheless he reminds us all of my son Peter when he was Seth’s age.

My sister, Flora, asked me to give her an egg and I was pleased she did. She and my brother-in-law, Hugh, had experienced eight years of disappointment with fertility treatments which culminated in the devastating stillbirth of their naturally conceived daughter. By the time Flora and I had our first conversation about egg donation, Mark, my husband, and I had considered every way we might help them get a baby, including having one and giving it to them. Now that we had heard about egg donation it seemed a very simple and natural thing to do for my sister who, in a great many ways, had brought me up since I was fifteen.

She was a strikingly sharp child who delighted my father who called her his ‘Queen’. Until I was born she was the only girl amongst three boys and her supremacy was unassailed. When she was told without any warning, aged five, that she had a sister upstairs she said, ‘How nice for me’. This was much quoted by my father, and I always felt the ambivalence of the story. My sister guarded her position like a tiger and I turned out not to be very nice for any of them, sneaking on my siblings and throwing tantrums whenever they teased me.

Until I was fifteen I lived in the shadow of my sister’s brilliant, rebellious school career and her powerful presence at home. We were opposites; physically I began by being tall and strong for my age (I was christened Tamara Press by my siblings after a Russian weightlifter who was caught taking steroids), whereas Flora was wraithlike and grew into a teenage beauty. I charged about on my pony and Flora read in her room, eschewing any form of physical activity. Whereas she was naughty and quick, I was eager to please, and if I hadn’t later been ‘saved’ by her I may have ended up forever getting ready for my next gymkhana. I was both scared and immensely proud of her and I longed to be like her but would be seized by jealous rages, hurling her (and anybody else’s) things out of the window or pouring mince into her boyfriend’s boots. Sometimes I would sneak into her room to try on one of her beautiful, shoplifted dresses from Biba and get stuck, slightly wrecking them. At last, considered old enough to be part of my brothers’ and sister’s wild holidays camping by the sea in the Outer Hebrides, I ended up sharing a tent with Flora as she was forced out of hers by the unwelcome attentions of an amorous man with smelly socks. Throughout the rest of that summer we became devoted to one another.

Flora then took my education in hand; she gave me a copy of The Female Eunuch, introduced me to her radical Cambridge friends, and encouraged me in my sexual adventures. When our father died, we curled up in a bed together and slept through the wretched afternoon. After Dad’s death we spent a long time together going over and over our parents’ unhappy marriage and how it had affected us. I turned out to be a lackadaisical feminist; although committed in spirit, I was lazy. I slept through university lectures and arrived in London with no degree, or clue as to how I was to earn my living. By contrast Flora was working hard as a criminal defence barrister in radical chambers. Never without a man in her life, she swore she would never have children and certainly never get married. When I rang her to tell her I was going to have a baby her comment was, ‘I expect you’re going to make a career of this.’ She was and is a fabulous aunt and our sons are extremely close to her and Hugh.

If I, Mark, Flora and Hugh had not remained so close through their long efforts to get pregnant, especially during their pregnancy and its terrible end with the prenatal death of their baby girl, Dora, Seth’s story might have been less straight-forward. As it was, none of us could think of any reason to give the psychologist at the clinic as to why we shouldn’t do it. Quite soon after we’d all agreed to give egg donation a try, Flora and Hugh looked into adoption and were given a three-month-old girl, Melody, to be their daughter. Her arrival was momentous and we were all ravished by her. The ghastliness of the death of Dora, Flora and Hugh’s baby, and the awful years of unsuccessful fertility treatment were over, somehow Melody made sense of it all. Flora and Hugh’s adoration of her was marvellous to see and they took to the nurturing of Melody with easy confidence and joy. When not long after Melody’s arrival Flora suggested we go ahead with the egg donation, I reacted powerfully against it. Instead of feeling excited about the process, as I had done previously, it became unreasonably menacing. I found the prospect of the physical intrusion threatening, whereas before it had been insignificant. Also I became intractable over dates. It must have seemed very peculiar as I hadn’t really got so much to do except a show of my paintings that was coming up. I had always been cavalier about my health, consuming anything going. I think I behaved like this because it was too soon to revisit the traumas that Melody had put behind us, but I didn’t quite realise it at the time.

It was a good thing to have delayed it, for we all agreed later that Melody’s place in the world would certainly have been undermined had Flora fallen pregnant shortly after Melody’s arrival. Flora and Hugh accepted my contrariness with great understanding; they didn’t mention eggs again until Melody became such an integral part of all our lives that we could barely remember life before her. This time the atmosphere was different; Flora and Hugh had Melody, we agreed we were going to attempt one cycle to produce this baby and all desperation disappeared. It was exciting. Our visits to the psychologist and the clinic were made in this spirit. It felt as if we were watching ourselves in a Woody Allen movie as the four of us sat in a row in front of the psychologist who tried to puzzle out whether this was going to end in disaster. There was a sense of unreality about it; it was hard to imagine that this process would work where so many others had failed. I don’t think any of us believed, or dared hope, it would result in a baby; besides which the doctors made us feel as though we were part of an experiment in eugenics and gave us frightful giggles. Though I hate needles, Mark got so good at giving me injections in my bottom, I didn’t mind at all, but I couldn’t imagine that it would work. The clinic made a mistake and over-stimulated my ovaries and then wanted to scrap the procedure. I felt furious with them as it seemed to prove their lack of humane interest in our case. It would have been very dispiriting for everyone to have to begin again, so we insisted on carrying on. The day of the beginning of Seth’s conception was bizarre and very moving. As I staggered down the corridor to the theatre where the eggs were to be harvested (by this time, because of their miscalculation, I had so many in my ovaries it was uncomfortable to walk or sit up), I turned back to wave at Flora in the hall and to Hugh who was climbing the stairs, with great dignity, to the room where he was to produce the sperm.

Three days later three fertilised eggs were placed in Flora’s womb, five others were put in a deep-freeze. Flora’s pregnancy had the same wonder about it as the Virgin Mary’s except, unlike Mary, we never got over our disbelief, even when we looked at the scan and could clearly see a boy. The closer it came to Seth’s birth the more incredible it became. Waiting at the hospital on the day of Seth’s birth, while Flora and Hugh were in the operating theatre (it was a Caesarian section to minimise risk, so I was not allowed to be with them), was an agony of anxiety. I had sat with them during the stillbirth of Dora in the same hospital and was fully expecting to go through the same experience. I think we all were. It was impossible to separate the happiness from relief when Hugh finally appeared to tell me that Seth and Flora were safe and well.

Today our family have just got back from Seth’s fourth birthday party. Flora had cooked a delicious tea for Seth and his guests; she had made him a Thunderbird Two cake. Seth is crazy about Thunderbird Two. Flora and Hugh made the party fun, warm and hospitable for us all, and everyone, especially Seth, surrounded by his friends and lovingly presided over by Melody, who is now six, had a lovely time.

When Flora approached the clinic to carry out the donation the consultant was anxious about our being siblings. For me it has made it beautifully simple; we share the same genetic pool—the way Flora does things is familiar—her cooking (which we both assimilated from our mother), the chaos we share in our separate houses, ideas about a good day out—and I know her great sense of humour, her outspokenness, her great pleasure in things. Both Mark and I and the boys love Hugh very much and admire and respect him, not least for the incredible support he gave Flora in her pursuit of children. (Hugh had mumps when he was nineteen and so wasn’t figuring to have any children.) If I had any doubt that Seth or Melody were not being so fully loved and cared for in every way, I should be overwrought by it, and in Seth’s case regretful and angry. But I was convinced that with Flora and Hugh this scenario would never happen. I am aware too that if I didn’t love and respect Hugh I would have felt anxious about entering into our new relationship and then the joy of its success might be made awkward.

Flora and I have survived a quarrel since then and not a polite one either but a real fight in the style of our childhood; Flora torpedoing me with well-aimed missiles and then it ending up with me throwing her a punch. It was a bit shocking for everyone—especially Mark and Hugh—who had not witnessed us in our childhood roles before. We got over it though.

I don’t feel any more maternal for Seth than I do for Melody but when I am with him I do feel very happy that I could help in his beginnings. While Flora was pregnant, the four of us had a conversation about whether Seth’s biological mother should be an open issue, or whether it would contravene a basic right for Seth to be able to choose whether he wants his origins to be out in the open. It has become an open subject and it would have been strange had it been otherwise as it is a house without taboos. After Seth was born and for his first couple of years I stood back a little more than I might have done had I not thought there was a danger of Flora feeling I was hovering about too much. Now, Melody and Seth often come over to our house and spend the day with us and we spend weekends at their house in the country. One day I picked them up to bring them over to South London. We were driving through Hackney and Melody said from the back of the car, ‘Emma, you know, Seth and I both have two mothers. I have my mother and Flora is my mother and Seth has you and Flora is his mother too.’ It was said with absolute certainty and without a trace of confusion. I looked round and Seth was nodding his head and grinning.

If we hadn’t gone ahead with this egg I would have regretted it for ever and who knows what sadnesses may have followed—but only now do I know how much we all would have missed.

Chapter 11

Seth

Flora Scrimgeour

Flora Scrimgeour is a barrister and lives in London with her partner and two children.

Seth doesn’t seem a particularly inconceivable person. I suppose in our eyes he has left his strange beginnings behind, although when he was born I do remember other people’s, not always well-disguised, shock that a Frankenstein’s monster was so ordinary and sweet. I suppose from our point of view he was as ordinary as we could manage, the product of quite extreme pressures, great generosity and desperate improvisation.

In the 1970s my notion of women’s liberation was that it would free women of the family ties and obligations that had suffocated so many of the mothers of my generation in the 1950s. It’s been a strange spiritual journey through the 1990s, most of which I spent in a frantic quest for a family, any old family, just so long as it did entail all that suffocating obligation I so envied in all the parents I knew.

It may sound like a tall story coming from someone who went to the extremes that we did to have a baby, but although in the end we embarked on this genetic love story with my sister, for me it was not mainly a drama about a genetic inheritance, it was much more about a stake in the future, in the form of children to rear.

Emma, my sister, was born almost exactly five years after me, and I can remember the day of her birth. My memory is that it came as a complete surprise that our mum was going to have another baby, but I expect I just blanked out her earlier announcements in horror at the prospect of yet another rival. Emma was the last of five, and it was routine in our family for the existing siblings to attempt to kill the new one. I think we filled Emma’s pram with earth, but that was later. I was happy on the day of her birth as someone had knitted a mustard-coloured garment for my doll, and I fancied that a sister would be a useful ally against three brothers. My unattractively regal reaction on the day was, ‘What a treat for me’, and so it proved, though not until we were both much older. In fact I was 20 before our sisterhood came good, but then it really did.

We are very different. Emma is creative, expansive, generous and sociable, whereas I chose to be a lawyer—for which I am sufficiently dogmatic, aggressive, and self-important. Emma had babies years before I contemplated it. I was very moved by her boys, and by her tigerish and selfless devotion to them, but I felt no twinge of envy when they were born. My then cohabitee was not a promising candidate for fatherhood, and the 1980s were an exciting time to be a dissident lawyer—a decade of protest, the futility of which was oddly not apparent to me at the time.

I recognised that my priorities had changed when I found myself in my early thirties gazing enviously at pregnant women, more or less at the same time as I started living with Hugh. He had mumps as a teenager and his sperm production was so hopeless that he used to get chucked out of andrology clinics and ordered not to come back. He was unselfpitying and practical. We used to go to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) in Charlotte Street where one floor was dedicated to the termination of pregnancy and the other to the generation of it. You could get a phial of donor sperm there in those days at a modest price and in an unpressurised atmosphere. It was a laugh, until after a year or so it became apparent that it wasn’t working.

Shortly after panic set in, and BPAS had suggested that I give up for a while and try not to think about it, I was astonished to find that I was pregnant with Hugh’s naturally conceived child. This is not a lie though I think most doctors who had seen the andrology reports thought it was.

I was deliriously happy and invested massively in the pregnancy. I think it probably did occur to Hugh that no pregnancy is a certainty, but it did not occur to me until our daughter was already dead. By that time she was post-term, and I was naturally utterly convinced that we were going to be parents. I felt some strange convulsive movements as the contractions were starting, and wondered immediately whether all our expectation was in vain. Nevertheless, when later the midwife couldn’t find our daughter’s heartbeat, I clung resolutely to the possibility that her implements were playing up, until the hospital machines confirmed it. I understood what had happened then, and held on to Hugh and demanded a Caesarian which I didn’t get.

Emma and her family had been to supper the night before, and we had all had a happy time feeling Dora’s pummelling hands and feet. Once Hugh and I had taken in what had happened, he rang Emma up, and with great courage and loyalty she came to the hospital and went through the melancholy business of Dora’s birth with us.

I think that experience was probably worse for Emma and Hugh than it was for me. I was all buoyed up with natural birthing opiates, and I dealt with the shock by being inappropriately jocular and chatty. This must have been disconcerting for them. I told Emma my memories of the day of her birth, whilst we waited for Dora to make her brief appearance. Giving birth to a dead person was more bearable for me at the time than in retrospect, I suppose because at the time I had a job to do, however futile.

Dora was born early the next morning. I was frightened to see her when she first emerged, fearing that she would be some kind of horror, but she wasn’t at all. She was just an ordinary little baby girl, remote and strange in her deadness, but with Hugh’s mum’s sumptuous mouth.

After Dora had been post-mortemed, we were encouraged to go and dress her for her funeral, and we did. We put her in a cardigan I’d knitted and embroidered with flowers, and then sat with her on our laps and chatted. Someone from the hospital took photographs of us sitting there with our dead daughter on our knees and tears streaming down our faces.

We had a little funeral for her in Suffolk where we had hoped that she would spend much of her time. There was a very nice vicar who overlooked our atheism and said a prayer of thanks for the pleasure Dora had given us. If we’d been less topsy-turvy I suppose we should have fixed up a humanist ceremony, but a baby’s funeral without any sense of redemption would have been very ha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Experiencing infertility
• Psychological aspects
• Changing patterns of kinship
• The shadow
• Afterword
• Appendix
• Glossary of terms used in ART (assisted reproductive technology)