Rimma Efimkina - Not pregnant yet? You bet!

Finally, her third bold step was to question her own marriage that lasted more than ten years, but still had not resulted in having children. Marina decided to leave – she rented an apartment and moved away from her husband – literary crossed the threshold! She said she wanted to live alone for a while and try to understand who she was, what it was that she wanted, what she could do. She found the apartment for just a penny after one phone call – some friends of hers were going away for a long period of time and asked her to watch over their two-bedroom fully furnished place. All of it was very easy to do. It is in the quiet emptiness of her friends’ apartment that she understood that she wanted to live with her husband and with her husband only. She chose him unconsciously back then, but now she knew: he was the one she chose all by herself.

One week after she came back to her husband, she found out she was six weeks pregnant. It seems like the decision to be independent was already there, so, when it happened, the woman was able to be fully creative.

When the first emotions went away, I asked her a question:

– So, now what?

– What do you mean “what” – I came back. I understood that people do to me exactly what I was doing to people. I did not value my husband, the efforts he made trying to keep our relationships together. When I moved, we talked for two hours on the phone per day. When I realized I did not value him, I cried all day, and then all this happened… It’s amazing how things turned out, I’m shocked both with what happened and with myself.

– Does your husband know?

– Of course! He COULDN’T be happier, he asks what he should do to take care of me and to support me.

– Marina, I think it’s great!

– Rimma, it’s a MIRACLE, I cry when I think about it. I tried like 154 times and nothing. And now it happened just like this, it’s wonderful! My business, my pregnancy! I wanted to share this news with you. I thought you will be happy too.

– I am! But I don’t agree that it all happened just like that. You made it happened, you pushed your limits – you changed the way you think!!!

– I believe I should change it more in the future, but this is the whole other story. Thank you for helping me.

By the way, try and guess the sex of the baby Marina is expecting. Of course it’s a girl!

As mentioned above, psychologists and health professionals view the reasons for infertility differently. Health professionals imply a more materialistic approach approaching conception as a result of biochemical factors and seeing uterus as a lab with good conditions for the fetus to live in. They take childbearing under control (and preferably, the conception as well) as soon as possible to prevent any malfunctions in baby-making process.

Those malfunctions are accounted and pigeonholed just as well. Medically speaking, there are seven physiological reasons why women could be infertile: blockage in or lack of both fallopian tubes, adhesion process in the pelvis, endocrine disorders, pathology or lack of uterus, endometriosis, antibodies to sperm, chromosomal abnormality. This is the text I took from Wikipedia shortened by the factor of one hundred.

However, I copied the eighth reason carefully: “Psychological reasons for infertility could include both conscious and subconscious wish not to have a baby. Sometimes it’s fear of pregnancy and giving birth, sometimes it’s the man the woman does not want to see as the father of her children, sometimes it’s resistance to bodily changes pregnancy could lead to, etc.” I’m glad that they do not discount the eighth – psychological – reason, although they make it sound overly simplistic and thus nonessential. However, if there was no this psychological component in creating new live, women could long be relieved of pregnancy and its side-effects and replaced by mechanical uteruses.

I had a lot of thoughts in this regard that strived to be written down for a long time. I noticed that even though health professionals are aware of psychological reasons for infertility, generally they do not account for them, still treating it in medical and not psychological ways. For instance, even if a woman is healthy, but does not get pregnant within a year or two, health professionals prescribe pharmacological treatment or a surgery. It is not entirely fair, because they take the bread out of our mouths. I’m not offended, however, because women who have some of the seven reasons mentioned above do get pregnant and do give birth after psychological sessions. And sometimes even after huge medical interventions, which I would personally put as a whole separate reason for infertility: medical control on its own might make conception and childbearing problematic.

This same Marina I mentioned above is a great example. When she came to one of the groups twenty weeks pregnant, the members of the group were excited to hear her story, Marina told her “medical history” in her own words:

– I always had troubles with my periods. Ever since I was nineteen I took hormones to keep them going. However, as soon as I started my own business it magically came about all on its own!

I smiled as I was listening to Marina. This is so obvious that now Marina is the mistress of her own business and her own life. She does not work for an employee as she used to, she creates according to her life task.

Speaking about the hormones, to be honest I’m really concerned about hormonal therapy. The word “hormone” itself kind of sounds like the word “harmony”. I know that etymologically they are different, however, the right hemisphere of our brain does not think logically, it uses images and associations: so, hormones regulate certain processes in different organs of our body to sustain the homeostasis, i.e. harmony. When a woman stops counting on her own system in sustaining homeostasis and turns to external ways to sustain the homeostasis, she gives up her responsibility for her own harmony and becomes dependable. I believe that the healing process should be about taking back the responsibility for one’s own body and environment. Organizing her own business was for Marina her way of sustaining homeostasis – it was her brainchild causing her a number of feelings, both negative (anxiety, fear, anger, sadness) and positive (joy, pride, believing in herself).

When Marina came to my psychological retreat this summer, her periods stopped again. She was shocked, but it did not occur to her that this could be pregnancy. The group was amazed at this:

– But why? This is so natural: no periods, you go buy a pregnancy test!

– Well, yeah… It is natural for you. When I don’t get my period for me this means my hormones are failing me yet again, and this means hospitals, doctors, yet again. I cannot tell you how frustrated I was. I tried everything for the 14 years! I even had laparoscopic ovarian surgery 1 1 Laparoscopic ovarian wedge resection is a surgical technique performed to reduce the amount of androgen producing tissue in women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). It is used to improve the effectiveness of other ovulation induction treatments. The surgery involves a cut of the ovary tissue in the form of a wedge. It raises a chance of pregnancy in many women (70—80%). , but it didn’t do me much good.

– Having perfectly healthy ovaries cut?

– They say, it helps some women to get pregnant.

I have to say I am suspicious about messing with nature’s way with the help of surgery as well as about hormonal therapy. Today’s medicine enabled people to live dozens of years longer and surgeries saved many, let’s be thankful for that. However, in Marina’s case it was not live-or-die situation. How strongly a woman must want to have a baby to go into surgery with anesthesia which, if successful, will give a chance to have a baby, if unsuccessful, however, will severely damage her health!