Can there be a fear of rejection of the child born through egg donation?

Egg donation is the most frequent reason for consultations, and it’s the technique of Assisted Reproduction that involves most emotional process.

Why does having a child with this technique affect me so much?

Because we start from a mental construction about motherhood made with half the information, that is to say, initially we count on a pregnancy that will come naturally, with our own gametes and when we decide it, and the reality is that this is not always the case. And the fact is that we were only told what we had to do to avoid pregnancy but nobody told us about the difficulties that can arise in the search for pregnancy, nobody told us that the road can be longer than we could have imagined.

Our mind needs to understand the new way of having a child in order to accept it before we welcome it. So egg donation requires a process of genetic mourning, which, as the word says, is to feel the pain of losing the possibility of having a child with our own genetic load, so we have to say goodbye. This process involves an emotional cocktail necessary to reach acceptance, the perfect state to receive it.

This is what egg donation is like:

Egg donation is a word that shook me when I heard it for the first time, a word that means a lot, a shocking word that my mind was not prepared to digest without further ado… I refused to accept that my child was not going to be mine, that it was going to belong to another woman… a series of jealousies awoke in me because I was not going to participate…. and just the thought of who this unknown girl could be made me sick to my stomach and I was filled with doubts about the motive that led her to donate, what her personality would be like, if she would have nothing to do with me… many thoughts began to invade me that tortured me and I realised that I was not ready, that I did not want to have a child this way, because… what if I reject it? What if I don’t identify it as mine? What if I love it less? What if all these thoughts will always be with me?

I never thought it was the beginning of a process of transformation, an opportunity for personal growth, a turning point to live motherhood in a different way, in a conscious way, a unique learning process…

And what did I learn from this hard work?

• That a wonderful person, like a fairy, allowed me to fulfil my dream of becoming a mother.
• I learned to feel gratitude for an unknown person who did something miraculous for me….
• I learned the importance of generosity and sharing, she shared a cell that I needed. A true act of love between two strangers.
• I learned to accept and embrace that wonderful egg with love.
• I learned that a child is not a cell.
• I learned that bonding is what really matters, not genetics, and my child comes from the project of love.
• I learned that the unconditional love I have always heard about is only in the love for a child, all other loves have some kind of condition.
• I learned that unconditional love with awareness is the best gift I can give my child.
• I learned to trust that unconditional love begins to gestate in me from the moment I decide to bring it into my life, and I loved it before I saw its little face.
• I learned that the process of acceptance is not to live without fear, but that fear is not maladaptive in order to achieve my dream.
• I learned a good resource, to carry out an internal dialogue to stop having thoughts that did not help me like “it is not going to be my son, he will not have my blood… and I answered myself… whose is he going to be if he is not mine, if during pregnancy amazing things happen where my cells, my blood, my nutrients, my placenta…”, I learned not to believe everything I thought.
• I learned that my child has to come into the world the way it has to come, not the way I want it to come, at the time it has to come, not when I want it to come… giving it the opportunity to come is my job as a mother.

Egg donation transforms the way we live motherhood, don’t lose focus of your love project.

“What you resist, persists. What is accepted,is transformed”

Carl Jung.

Natalia Romera, Psychologist of Instituto Bernabeu and specialist in reproductive problems.