The seed greenhouse: explaining assisted fertilization to the little ones

The seed greenhouse it has been sprouting like an incipient seedling that wants to open up to the light. A few years ago, during a therapeutic intervention with a family that requested guidance to explain to their daughters how their fertilization had Through an egg donation, the parents request guidance to elaborate and transmit that story that is so vital and decisive for their daughters and for themselves; from that meeting comes the first draft.

Parents sensed and believed in the importance of their daughters developing accompanied by a narrative of how was your gestation process. That process was carved, sculpted by the difficulties and the impulse that had led them, full of hope, to form a family beyond the couple.

Subsequently, that first outbreak was developed in the illustrated book The seed greenhouse.

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The creative process behind the book

In the illustrated book, I wanted to collect the conflicts and responses that other families have been expressing to me, some single parents and others non-single parents of the same or different gender.

All of them share the difficulties to achieve a gestation and the struggle to have children that are intensely anticipated.

Address assisted pregnancy and know how to relate this process to the boys and girls gestated and born from assisted fertilization, regardless of its modalities, involves reconciling culture, medicine and biology.

Pregnancy has a biological substrate and a cultural and social implication that must be harmonized and matched properly so that all members of that symphony sit appropriately and comfortably, with the leading role they have had within that group that is developing a family.

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New families linked to assisted fertilization

The family begins long before the children are born; it is fertilized when you dream of it, when you yearn for it, when you begin to project yourself as a mother and as a father. That dream or that illusion can be forgotten throughout the gestational medical procedure.

The seed greenhouse aims to recover that first illusion that leads to embarking on the journey of assisted fertilization and tries to explain the process from the connotations with botany, loading with beauty and warmth a procedure that can be stressful and aseptic. Through the beautiful illustrations of Zuzene Seminario we have tried to make the charm of nature present and cover and harmonize the entire narrative.

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Times change, people develop

Around 30,000 babies are born each year by assisted reproduction in Spain; As we can see, each year more families turn to help for reproduction.

We cannot be oblivious to how fertilization, gestation and the family have evolved and changed. Reconciling culture, biology, science and technology can be extremely difficult. At the present time, all of them, especially the biological, technological and cultural, determine and condition our behaviors and the emotions and beliefs that accompany them. Integrate the incessant movement of emotions, doubts, sensations (especially in women, mediated and amplified by the entire process hormonal) is not easy at all.

On the other hand, the moment of our fertilization, gestation, the uterine environment and how we come into the world are probably one of the most important events of our lives, and influence our development and our identity beyond what we we suspect. And of course, they leave a great emotional imprint on the mother and on the family that is forming. Addressing these aspects seemed really important to me.

What are the objectives of this book?

This book attempts to answer each of your questions: How can I tell how they were conceived, how they were fertilized, what their genetics are? Telling that story, which is part of the family history, can involve touching wounds that are not yet closed; the very act of telling it can help to close it or help to become aware of them and give them the attention they deserve.

Any story about the fertilization of our children, whatever it may be, It should be part of his stories, of his first memories since his birth. His natural and spontaneous approach should be part of everyday life.

That the story of how they were dreamed, fertilized, how they were born and cared for gradually adapts to age and maturational cycles. In addition, in the book we propose highlight the longing, the illusion and the affective component that has accompanied the entire process. Every child needs to feel special and hear that his arrival in the womb was unique and full of love.

Why this story and highlight these aspects?

Because being able to put words to your story (and your story begins before you are born), when fathers and/or mothers began to dream of the child they wanted, helps us to be able to travel throughout our life cycle, to consider ourselves protagonists of all our life. And as, help to understand our beginning, so decisive in our development.

If that story is narrated, it also participates in the construction of a story in which words are put to the emotion that has been experienced by the parents; and let's not forget that it is therefore perceived by their children. We contribute so that, regardless of the difficulties encountered along the way, the states that have accompanied this journey can be digested and understood.

I invite you to read not only to families who have experienced assisted fertilization, but also to educators, teachers and health professionals who accompany this process.

Author: Cristina Cortés Viniegra.