We dreamed of becoming mothers, but pregnancy froze

Now we are not leaving Russia, because here the embryos are frozen here

Maria and her girlfriend dreamed of a child for a long time, searched for a donor and prepared to become mothers. Maria became pregnant with the help of IVF, but the child was never born - a frozen pregnancy occurred. Now, despite the danger and persecution of LGBT, they remain in Russia, because they stored frozen embryos here .

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"We want to become mothers"

Already at the age of 12, I knew that one day I want to become a mother. I remember that my brother’s acquaintance became pregnant at the age of 15, and then I thought that I would not be able to have an abortion. For a long time I met a girl who did not want children. Then we parted, and I met Katya. Two years later, we decided to have a child and began to act actively.

We thought for a long time about who should become a dad. They wrote to familiar guys, met someone personally. It was very difficult to choose the words: "We want to become mothers, do not want to help us?"

They also considered anonymous donation, but this idea was to me. It seemed strange to choose a person by color of the eyes, hair, zodiac sign. In addition, I would like in the future a child could, if desired,communicate with his father , to know what he is. The search took two years. As a result, we found a suitable acquaintance, he came to us in Kaliningrad and handed over sperm.

I had to give birth - it was decided by itself. I was sure that I wanted to experience the experience of pregnancy and childbirth, and Katya, on the contrary, was afraid.

We began to prepare for IVF. To join the protocol ( proceed to the first stage - “braid” ), you need to take a lot of tests. Each analysis has an expiration date. It happens that you are treated to take one analysis, and during this time the results of others are already invalid. We have to retake.

When the folder with analyzes is collected, the process itself begins. The first stage is ovulation stimulation. From the second day of the cycle, the woman begins to prescribe hormones and monitor how follicles grow. Hormones need to be chopped into your stomach every evening. In the middle of the menstrual cycle, the trigger of ovulation is hidden. Then, under general anesthesia, the doctors of the needle suck the ripened eggs.

Everything is transferred to stimulation in different ways. My body reacted very poorly to hormones, and I thought I was dying. I felt better only when the operation-puncture occurred.

After it, fertilization occurs. The embryologist connects the eggs with sperm, and they begin to grow. I had five of them, and five days later they gave them grades. It turned out two excellent students, two goodies and one three -year -old.

One egg was planted. This is done without anesthesia: a catheter is introduced into the uterus. The procedure must come with a filled uric bubble. Because of this, at some point I began to think not about how great it is, that they made me pregnant, but only about how not to get wet directly into the doctor’s face.

Now we have four frozen embryo, and I often think: does this mean that I am a mother of four children? Are they generally children or not yet? How to sign an agreement, that in which case I agree to dispose of them? And if not, do you have to give birth to all four? Do they have a soul?

"The whole department is focused on the toilet"

The transfer of the embryo occurred in December 2023. Since then, I regularly passed hCG ( analysis for the hormone, which is produced during pregnancy - “braid” ), went to an ultrasound. The embryo grew, we have already begun to hear the heartbeat. I was set by the date of the first screening.

Shortly before the reception, I had the feeling that I suddenly ceased to be pregnant. Toxicosis passed, sharp urge to urination stopped, physically I felt too well. We bought a home doppler for listening to the child’s heart, but did not hear anything. Soon on the screening we were told that pregnancy was not developing.

I was sent to the hospital, we went home to collect things. I poorly remember these minutes, they seemed to fall out of memory. I remembered how I arrived at the address, and there is a maternity hospital. It is not clear where to go, around pregnant women, to give birth to many. I can’t climb forward with the words: “You know, but I would be cleaned.” I waited half an hour, in the end it turned out that I needed at all in another clinic.

I come to the new address, and there I am not the only one with a frozen pregnancy. Someone cries, someone retains calm, there are mothers with girls who are abortion. I realized that I would go crazy in this room, if I won’t switch my attention to something, and downloaded a dull game on the phone. I spent the next two weeks, without dropping from the screen.

I had a neighbor in the ward, and I could not sob with her while she was hanging on the phone. At such moments, I went to the toilet. It had creaking doors and two toilets without rims. I sat down on them and wiped off my tears with a sleeve - there was also toilet paper.

Someone walked by, blurted out, someone also sobbed, someone directly in the toilet endured a miscarriage. The entire department was focused on the toilet. At night, life also did not stop there.

And I sat and waited for what would happen. And day after day they told me: today there will be nothing, the doctor will come only tomorrow. I thought that for several weeks I have been wearing death inside myself, but still I love this child, he is still with me.

"It doesn't look like a child"

I chose an abortion using pills. Firstly, it is more gentle. Secondly, I hoped to collect “abortive material” to find out why the pregnancy was aboiled. The hospital was told that they would not do histology ( study of fragment of tissue - “braid” ). But I found a laboratory that makes such research, and I was sent a container with a solution where I had to put the material.

And so, the doctor gives me a pill. I ask: "What will happen?" He replies: “There will be nothing. Tomorrow we will insert another vaginally and there will be a miscarriage. ” I am going to the ward, I have this tablet on my nightstand, and right now I have to drink it. And I don’t want this so, although the fetus inside me has not been alive for several weeks.

By this moment, my neighbor has already been discharged, and I am alone in the ward. I drink a tablet at 12 days, and fights begin at an hour. I can’t even get to the post of a nurse or shout.

I remember how I stand, leaning on the bed, rake the sheets in my hands and lose consciousness. Then I see everything in the cinema, as if I were watching from the outside. So I am sitting on a cold toilet, I'm sick. Blood is pouring from me. I try to catch what is falling out of me, I am considering. It doesn't look like a child. I wrap it on toilet paper and put it in an urn. As I later ended up in the ward, I don’t remember. I drink painkillers and fall asleep.

But then I wake up and think: it is impossible for him to stay in the basket for toilet paper. I still have a clean T -shirt donated by Katya. I, helping myself with my teeth, tear off my sleeve, go to the toilet, I get what came of me and wrap it. I put all this on the battery so that it dries.

In the morning, it turned out on the ultrasound that the miscarriage occurred incomplete. They gave me another tablet. I asked again: “What will happen after her?” They answered me again that nothing: "go down the stairs, the uterus will be contracted." But I was flattened so that I could not get up. The sheet was all in the blood, but they did not let me change it, and I put towels for me.

Even after the second and third tablets, it turned out that the miscarriage, and I was prescribed vacuum aspiration.

I was sent to the pathology department, where pregnant women come among others, for example, if they need to remove the polyp. They all discussed their children, and I thought: “Why am I at all next to them, I listen to them?”

Pink noodles were hung along the walls, and it annoyed me. Around - a bunch ofmanipulative anti -breed leaflets of a religious nature. But in none of them it is not written what to do if you did not want an abortion, but he happened to you. Nobody talks about this. Women, smiling, ask me: "Do you have a polyp too?" I answer: “No, I have an abortion. Fourth".

I am operated on. After that, I ask where to wash yourself. The doctor points to the toilet. I walk along the corridor, blood flows down the thighs. There is nothing in the toilet again - neither bidet nor toilet paper. I take off the shirt to wipe off, and back to the ward I go naked. Everyone looks at me like a crazy one.

No one explains to me what to do next - is it possible to eat whether I should lie or move. In my department, a woman wears porridge in buckets and offers lunch. I tell her that I don’t know if I can eat. She asks: "What happened?" I tell everything, and she says so simply and calmly: "Honey, let's go eat."

"You pretended that nothing happened to you"

I retained what was left of the fetus wrapped in a sleeve. Apparently, these were just scraps of the endometrium, and not the embryo itself. But it was important for me to have physical proof of what happened to me, and not just a medical discharge.

In the hospital, I sometimes slept in an embrace with this bundle. At home I did not understand where to put it: in a pocket, in a wallet? Not in the cabinet to put it. As a result, he was lying under my pillow. I asked myself very strange questions: is it not crowded there? He will not suffocate?

I felt the need to somehow finish this story, and Katya and I decided that we had to say goodbye to a bundle. I wanted to arrange a crode - ritual burning. I soon needed to fly on a business trip, and we had only a day to make a ritual. I gathered my thoughts for a long time to introduce in Google “where to fry the barbecue in Kaliningrad” to find out in which places you can breed a fire.

We took the barbecue, I folded a pyramid of firewood, we wrote letters. I cut out two hearts from a T -shirt and laid the endometrium between them. It turned out as if a shroud. We did not collect the ashes then, and there was nothing to collect there. But I still felt guilty. There was also a feeling of guilt before the donor. He seemed to entrust me with the material, but I could not protect.

After the “funeral” it seemed to me that I was fingering. But then I met with a perinatal psychologist. She listened to me and said: “Baby, you haven’t even started to worry anything yet. You just jumped over this moment and pretended that nothing happened to you. ”

We outlined the plan that I would follow, and decided that I would help me write the play. I always liked to write, structure words and phrases. It turned out, even if it hurts you, it’s nice to prescribe it, talk about doctors how they behave funny.

The play is working on grief, it must be experienced with letters. But at some point, I had such a detachment from my own story that I could tell it as a terribly funny stand-up.

I like auto-packets, I would like to make a series of monospores to myself. But, of course, there is a problem with censorship in Russia: I would not want to edit these texts so that they are heteronormative.

"Let's go to give birth to Argentina"

During pregnancy, I had repeatedly spoiled. Even screamed in Katya: “What are you giving the child here? Collect your suitcases! Let's go to give birth to Argentina, I don’t know what money! I want us to be a family! Have you seen today's news? Someone was arrested for earrings! ” Katya also came an invitation to work in Germany. But, having lost the child, we realized that we would not go anywhere, because we have embryos here. To transport them to another country is too expensive for us.

Now I am getting ready for cryoperos - this is the transfer of embryos that were frozen. After the first attempt by IVF, I said that I would never go to the second. But now, after loss, I feel that I am ready to try, while there is enough health and money.

Recorded by Emma Dobrovich

Illustrations: Midjourney