“It’s a bit as if we were being told of a fatal illness”: between hope and failure, the fight of PMA patients in Montpellier

For women, finding their place in society is not always easy. For millennia, the role of mother was assigned to them, imposed, as a matter of course. However, this consecrated evidence is not always so. For some by choice, for others, by fate.

And precisely for the latter, for whom this visceral desire to bear a child does not work, hope comes most of the time through PMA, the famous assisted medical procreation which can give a boost, but which can also prove unsuccessful.

To understand this care journey strewn with pitfalls, Véronique and Marie embarked on this “traumatic” process punctuated by existential and multiple questions.

A fight which is not necessarily crowned with success, for one it was the case, for the other not.

Changer l’image

Véronique Siharath has not given birth and she never will. Ten years after the end of her PMA journey, the 54-year-old woman took a step back and chose to work to change the image of infertility in our society.

“A kind of activism”she says, laughing. “A subject that is still taboo conveyed by an image that is painful to me. A woman who cannot have children is not that of a jealous, envious woman, who will lose her temper as we systematically notice in the films I would like to break the myth but also warn that fertility is not necessarily given to everyone.”

And to engage: “The non-success of a PMA is part of a reality, not being able to have children too. And the desire to have children is legitimate”she insists.

A diagnosis like a cleaver

Véronique met her husband “late”, at 37 years old. The couple wanted a child, but… They took steps to explain the cause. Until the medical announcement addressing the theme of infertility. “It’s a bit like being told about a deadly disease.” Far from being so, it is all the same a brake on life, “which creates an existential crisis”.

For Marie the story is quite different: PMA worked, she gave birth to little Théo a few months ago. But before this happy ending, she endured the stages.

When she became a couple with Fabrice, she was 27 years old and he already had two boys. “I learned to be a stepmom before I was a mom.”

The couple tries, but there too it gets stuck. The terrible diagnosis of endometriosis falls. Words with: “You will definitely never have children.”the doctor prefers to warn her. But the sentence will resonate in his head until the end, even today…

A fight against time

To postpone fate, the two women then embark on a race against time. Daily life is transformed and everything revolves around this quest: hormonal stimulation and its share of side effects, injections, medical appointments, reports… “even to work meetings, to travel so as not to lose a month. Little by little we are in a bubble in which everything is suspended from this procreative agenda”, explains Véronique.

Grandma’s remedies, alternative medicine, diet, the cycle of the Moon… the smallest detail is understood to succeed. “I even became superstitious about it.”

At the same time, pregnancy announcements are multiplying among those around us. “I am not naturally jealous. But at the same time, it had this mirror effect which reflects failure,” confides Marie. “There is a smile on the surface, but when we come home we cry”, admits Véronique.

The glamorous moment of IVF

As Marie and Fabrice like to tell it with a touch of humor, IVF (in vitro fertilization) and the moment of embryo transfer is not a glamorous moment. But “making a baby like that is still more deserving”proclaims Fabrice.

Before Marie details: “We are in a room with screens and a small window, me with my bladder half full, my legs in the air. On the first screen, the embryo is filmed in the laboratory adjoining the room. It’s only a few cells, but for us it is already our baby It is then that the window opens, the embryo is thus passed from one hand to the other before being transferred to my uterus. the other screen we see this implementation, it looks like a bubble when it’s done.”

From failures to disillusionment

The first transfer will be a failure. “Big question, hasn’t life just reserved the role of mother-in-law for me? Why isn’t it always my turn?”questions arise. The second try a few weeks later will be good.

Véronique will not experience the same outcome. She will spend five long years trying. “At first we say to ourselves it’s for a few months.” But the few months turn into years, it’s trying. “It’s becoming more and more imperative.”

For years, this woman will oscillate between hope and despair, guilt, and other feelings. “It’s complicated to explain what we feel.” However, she became pregnant twice, but it was unsuccessful.

The last IVF carried out in Spain when she was 44 years old marked the end of the fight. “The decision had to be made: I will never have children.” We have to resolve it. “There’s this strange relief with the constant emotional yo-yo stopping, but it’s also thrown me into a hole.”

She then begins a curious mourning, that of children who only existed in her wish,“who were not incarnated”. Her husband makes her a promise: “We’re going to be happy and it won’t be a downer,” he tells him. “We changed our lives, we left our respective jobs.” From all his experience, a book was born, “The Waiting Room” with this epilogue: “They married, had no children and yet they still lived happily.”