Not pregnant yet? You bet!. Rimma Efimkina

sad, I don’t have any cases of male infertility.

      – I have, and plenty.

      We discussed, theoretically, why men could have issues fertilizing. I suggested that one should analyze symbolic meanings of adjectives used to describe the sperm of a man. If they have “low motility”, one should try to find out where the man stays motionless, or, to put it in psychological terms, where he is rigid in his beliefs? If there are little alive sperm, one should find out what is dead and left unburied in the life of the man? As they say, we chatted and went our separate ways.

      In two weeks after we had the talk, my colleague called me and told that his forty-three year old client who had had low motility sperm just had his sperm tested and it turned out that his sperm was like a young man’s. It happened after our conversation: while working with the client my colleague said that the sperm mirrored his behavior. And here is the result!

      I want my readers to know: man can change and do change the characteristics of their sperm through psychotherapy.

      While he was a boy, this man fell victim to sexual harassment attempt form his older teenaged peers. Nothing actually happened, but it caused an uprising of strong feelings in the client, and he kept this “skeleton in the closet” for almost forty years. He told his therapist about this childhood memory and expressed the long-suppressed feeling of being humiliated due to which he didn’t feel fully manly. The client was able to change the way he saw himself, which was —depreciated just because of the experience.

      A more mature way to look at this is to understand that a man can’t be strong all the time. He loses in some situations, but he does not stop being a man because of this. Unfortunately, our society shares and even encourages the immature belief that a man should be on top of his game all the time. More often than not it is impossible for them to accept and take in the vulnerable side of their personality. This is why they put on a mask of “the strong one”, exercising their bodies, putting of the airs of an alpha-male (this is how my colleague described the client). And the weakness was expressed in a less apparent way – behavior of his sperm.

      As soon as the client saw the connection between the “message” his body was trying to send him and his own behavior the symptom disappeared. Why wouldn’t it, if the “message” was read? Now nothing prevents the man from naturally becoming a father. And – remember the statistics? – there are forty such man in a hundred of infertile couples. Well, now it’s thirty-nine!

      Chapter 3

      Mal (e) practice

      Cosmos means order

      Recently, I bought iPhone.

      No idea how to turn it on.

      No buttons and flat screen —

      Is that supposed to ring?

      It’s frustrating, but I’ve got no clue.

      Someone’s calling. What do I do?

Internet meme

      It is impossible to skip the topic of IVF in a book like this, IVF being the most cutting-edge and the most expensive way of having a baby in case of infertility. IVF is a proof of the mankind being able to do the things that were only God’s work before. This brings forward different ethical, moral, and psychological issues.

      IVF stands for in vitro fertilization, “in vitro” meaning “in glass”. It is an ancillary reproductive procedure used in case of infertility. Another ways to say this would be “artificial insemination”, “having test-tube babies”, etc. In the course of the procedure, the egg is removed from the woman’s body and artificially fertilize in vitro (in a test-tube). After the fertilized egg undergoes embryo culture for 2—5 days, it is transferred into the uterus for further development.

      First, this technology was successfully applied in the United Kingdom in 1977. As a result, Louise Brown was the first test-tube child born in 1978. The first child (a girl) in the Soviet Union conceived as a result of IVF was born in February, 1986. If in 1990 the number of test-tube babies was more than 20 thousands, in 2010 it came up to about 4 millions22.

      It’s been not so many years after this, just one generation grew up, and we still know little about this method and its consequences. There are lots of questions, because mankind have made a number of discoveries and didn’t know how to “cover them back” afterwards. We can see mothers who receive huge amounts of hormones. What will happen to them? If the main criterion for using any method is set in the course of time, how do we know what will happen to test-tube babies? What will happen to test-tube babies’ babies?

      It is known that there should be some spare embryos for IVF, they somehow “help” each other and there is a greater chance of pregnancy. But where should others go in case of pregnancy? They are either destroyed, or frozen for another procedure in case of failure, or used for scientific purposes if their “owners” donate them. Will humankind get away with treating human beings like this?

      In March of 2013 ELLE magazine published in interview with Victoria Zaletova – the head of Moscow clinic called “Mama”. Victoria told that they had a married couple who gave birth to twins and for whom they froze two more embryos. So, the couple gave birth to another pair of twins six years later. “It looks like a miracle. But for us it’s what we see every day, just one of the methods we use. – The doctor comments. – One can argue if it’s good or bad. Reproduction specialists have a more down to earth position: there is a couple, their goal is to have a baby, there are certain options. Cosmos, universe – we don’t care much about this stuff”23.

      But we, psychologists, do. I would like to remind you that “cosmos” is translated from Greek as “order”. In practical psychology and psychotherapy order is very important. Essentially, this whole book is about how infertile women restored the distorted order in their minds, and only after this did they receive their ability to conceive, bear and give birth. When I hear someone saying that a man put himself beyond the laws of the universe, moreover above them, I feel the fear crippling down my spine. This means for me that people don’t know what they are doing.

      What order is violated by reproduction specialists? They neglect a huge area of knowledge they are not aware of. They interfere with material stuff, as if forgetting that a man is not only a material object. There are oh so many things that are impossible to be described from a material point of view. For example, doctors believe that a personality develops only after birth. Psychologists view this differently – an individual enters this world determined by his/her prior experience: conception, pregnancy, birth – and the life goes along with this state.

      Another issue is that IVF costs a lot. Money means business, how can you be sure that you are treated and not being used? It’s a mistake to call IVF a treatment method. It’s a trick, one more experiment curious humankind does on the nature: “What happens, if?..” And who will pay for this childish curiosity and what is really the price for it?

      But the main question for me is the following: if women agreed to IVF, this means they had some reason for infertility? And the reason did not go away as the result of the procedure. Roman Nikolaevich Getmanov, obstetrician of Central City Hospital #70, shares: “We often have women who come to give birth after IVF. In my experience, they have more issues giving birth that those who conceived naturally. I think it’s due to the fact, that these women force their body to do something it probably does not need”24.

      I agree

22

Wikipedia.

23

Science of IVF. ELLE, March, 2013. P. 191.

24

http://www.pravmir.ru/eko-neopravdannyj-risk-glavnyj-pediatr-rossii-o-posledstviyax-zachatiya-v-probirke/