Not pregnant yet? You bet!

Women’s bodies, women’s wisdom

We learn to see our female bodies as sacred vessels for the journey of our souls, our health improves on all levels.

Christiane Northrup

Woman’s body is wise in its own way and it acts in spite of any beliefs or conscious control. Its wisdom consists in listening to its nature and do as it says. Here are the views of midwifery and gynecology professionals who adopted holistic approach to childbirth.

Harry van der Zee cites Chamberlain and draws a conclusion that pregnancy and birth are controlled by the unborn child. It is he who produces hormones that change mother’s body. He takes care of keeping the pregnancy, defines how long it will be, decides on the time to start labor and signals to start it with the help of hormones3.

Robert Mendelsohn, US health professional, the author of the controversial Confessions of a Medical Heretic points out that when many a woman come to hospital their otherwise active contractions become weak and cease altogether. According to him, even if they had to break the speed limit to reach the hospital, because contractions were strong and frequent, the contractions slow down and even cease as soon as the woman steps into the hospital. This reaction is so common they have a name for it – powerless labor. Those who studied the question think its main reason is fear4.

I’m not surprised, because i also gave birth in this medical system and I felt like a victim of this heartless and callous medical machine. I guess it is not by chance that I chose psychology, because for me it was a painless, human, and, mainly, effective way of helping myself and others. Instead of invasive surgical procedures, non-medical psychotherapy encourages us to study nature’s ways, understand it, see what this or that symptom is to say to us. Infertility does not happen for no reason – it is always a state of mind. And the problem with medical interventions is that this is the way to devalue the discrepancy between a symptom and a person’s inner state.

Medical professionals refer to 17—20% of women who do have babies as a result of medical interventions. I agree that we can force a woman to give birth as a result of hormonal therapy, then what? We are not able tell what would be psychological consequences of such birth yet. However, we can guess that these women will still have to match their external and external state. The success of each intervention depends on how it is taken from the point of view of the soul.

Milton Erikson tells a story of his sister who desperately tried to get pregnant for thirteen years. She nursed newborns who lost their parents until someone adopted them. At last, she asked her brother whom she did not take seriously as a professional for advice. And his advice was: “You have been to get pregnant for a long time. It doesn’t work for you. Once you adopt a child and feel that he/she is all yours, belongs to you in some special way, I mean physically, spiritually – I don’t know how to express it – you will get pregnant in three months”. She followed her brother’s advice and adopted a child in March and got pregnant in June. She gave birth to several children after that. This story is a perfect example of what was said above. Psychotherapists understand the symbolic meaning of these actions.

Something from the outside should be literary taken in by the body. Childbirth is a lifelong act of taking in and letting go. I call these kind of act transitions or initiations.

Childbirth as initiation

If you don’t go out in the woods nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Initiations (lat. initiato – sacrament) are rituals that come along and consolidate changes in status as well as the transitions from one state to another. Psychologically speaking, initiation happens when a person lets go of his habit of living unconsciously and finds a way of living consciously.

Initiation is not about knowledge, it’s about mystery. Initiation ritual is always a “mysteria”, a “sacrament”. By the end of its rituals neophyte’s existence changes drastically, he becomes a part of both human society and the world of spiritual, sacred.

There are many initiations-transitions during people’s lives, both small and big – from childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to youth, from youth to maturity, from maturity to senility.

As for female initiations, the first one comes when a girl has her first period and, thus, enters childbearing age, which creates many problems for her parents. What is the problem? The problem is that she has a mature body and a childish mind, that’s why the girl becomes prey to adult morally bankrupt men.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the author of women’s “Bible” Women Who Run With The Wolves says that when she works with older teenage girls who are convinced that the world is good if they only work it right, compares herself with an old gray-haired dog: “I want to put my paws over my eyes and groan, for I see what they do not see, and I know, especially if they’re willful and feisty, that they’re going to insist on becoming involved with the predator at least once before they are shocked awake. At the beginning of our lives our feminine viewpoint is very naive, meaning that emotional understanding of the covert is very faint. But this is where we all begin as females. We are naive and we talk ourselves into some very confusing situations. To be uninitiated in the ways of these matters means that we are in a time of our life when we are vulnerable to seeing only the overt”5.

However, there is no way one could become conscious and grown-up except to have one’s own experience and make mistakes. The ability to use one’s woman power and chose suitable partners will reward all the hardships of the way.

Another important female initiation is making a union with a man, which opens up new horizons for her. At first this relationship is immature, and the woman is forced to live as if two lives – inner hidden life and outer apparent life. This is very similar to the life of Tsarevna The Frog from Russian fairy-tale who is forced to appear in the form of a frog by day, and shed her frog skin by night to become Vasilisa the Beautiful who could do magic: bake bread, weave carpets and mesmerize by her perfection. It takes power and courage to be true to oneself whenever and wherever possible. To make this happen your male partner should not be ashamed to reveal you to others and go to get you on a magic steed far-far away to defeat Koschei The Deathless himself. In the fairy tale this man is Ivan Tsarevich, but psychologically speaking, it is not about a man, it is about animus archetype. To put it simply, from the very beginning of her life a woman should accept her masculine side – bravery, courage, vigor, strength, self-sufficiency and independence of authorities to become whole.

Childbirth is the third big initiation for a woman. It means discovering her creative power to make, produce, and I don’t mean just literally, but also figuratively. Everything we make: things, ideas, projects, books, children, even ourselves, our life-story are products of our creativity. If we can’t find our purpose in life at this point, we risk becoming infertile, because for our body this means betraying oneself. Infertility is a message that a woman lost her way in life, lost her purpose, cannot hear the voice of her soul.

Finally, the third big initiation is going from childbearing age to late maturity. Milton Erickson said that with the first period a girl becomes a mother – it’s joy; with the last period she becomes a grandmother – it’s happiness. Now the goal is to cultivate powerful qualities valued by people in the young generation. Now she is the person who initiates others, she has the power to punish and pardon depending on whether they succeed or not. In fairy-tales such a person is the one who gives the gifts – Old Mother Frost, Baba Yaga – they reward the hero and punish the anti-hero. In real life this is a wise mentor who feels “like an old grey dog” when looking at cocky young people. The main challenge of this stage for a woman is to leave the territory where she felt valued, respected and in demand by our unconscious society when she was young.

Unfortunately, we as a culture are not any more mature and conscious than teenages. Carl Young noted in despair that for the most part our old people try to compete with the young. In the United States it is almost an ideal for the father to be the brother of his sons, and for the mother if possible to be the younger sister of her daughter6. Clinging to one’s youth as well as an adolescent clings to his childhood could become the main issue at this stage. This means a person is unable to leave the previous stage. The aging Queen from Pushkin’s fairy-tale of The Dead Princess And Seven Knights asked her magic mirror if she was the prettiest woman in the kingdom jealousy comparing herself to her step-daughter. And this is the question every woman asks herself when the time for this initiation comes.

Women experience each transition as internal and external transformation. Internal transformation is a near-death experience when old non-adaptive patterns of behaviormust die-away to give place to new ones. This “destruction-transformation-reconstruction” cycle causes suffering, pain, a range of negative feelings, nightmares on the subject of death. Externally these transitions were accompanied by different cultural rituals. Finally, as a result of each initiations a person become more and more conscious.

Initiation in fairy-tales

Fairytales teach us so many great things: don’t take apples from strangers, best men look like beasts, and a girl needs to sleep around to find her true love.

Internet meme

Fairy-tales reflect at least two thousand years of initiations experience. However, it is important to keep in mind that fairy-tales were not made to entertain, their true purpose was to pass on important philosophical, spiritual and psychological notions in such a form that even a baby could get it. For example, the most common fairy-tales tell a story of transition from childhood to adulthood. It is at this stage that a person causes many problems to society. This is why the society made special rituals for them to go through the crisis and become independent, i.e. stop being a burden on others.

Sometimes it happens, sometimes it does not. In fairy-tales hero and false-heroes show examples of successful and unsuccessful initiations. For example, in Russian fairy-tale Old Father Frost there are both a hero – the step-daughter, and a false-hero – her step-sister. The step-mother forces her step-daughter out of the house to the winter forest where she would die, and she sits in the snow under a tree waiting for anything to happen.

This is typical for fairy-tale heroes – go somewhere unknown, bring something unknown. Psychologically speaking, a person should experience adult life to become self-confident and self-sufficient as a result. They blindly move into the unknown and the only thing they can rely upon is believing in miracles. Eric Erikson brilliantly defined the uncertainty of initiation process when he said that, just like a trapeze artist, a young man should in one powerful move let go of his childhood, jump and seize his maturity. He should make all this in a short period of time, while counting on those of whom he should let go of, and on those who are to catch him on the other side7. This way E. Ericson states that this transition is both unreal, impossible and necessary.

When Old Father Frost meets half-frozen girl in the midst of winter forest, he asks her: “Are you warm enough, beautiful?” – the step-daughter says the only right thing to say: “I am warm, Father”. Although, trivially speaking, she tells a lie, still her answer is correct. It is correct, because in this way she says she agrees to go through with the challenge. Mind you, that she asks for no guarantees in return, she agrees with either outcome, otherwise it wouldn’t have been a challenge. This is what we call a near-death experience, and this kind of experience is necessary to be initiated. Old Father Frost rewards the girl for this by giving her rich dowry, as well as a decent fiancé. When she returns home, her step-mother feels disgraced and jealous that her own daughter did not receive any gifts from Old Father Frost.

Old Farther Frost plays a role of gift-giver in this fairy-tale. Baba Yaga, Old Mother Frost are also gift-givers from other fairy-tales. There was a time when this function was performed by shamans, the elderly of the a tribe, witch-men. Nowadays it is not defined, but it was, is and will be there as long as the mankind exists. Presently, this role was adopted by non-medical psychotherapists who work to “bring to order” the minds of their clients. As mentioned above, cultivating humane values among the youth is the main task of the older generation, one of these values being psychological separation of grown-up children from their parents and their ability to live their own lives.

Old Farther Frost fairy-tale does not end with the initiation of the heroine. It shows yet another pattern of behavior inherent in people, not a few people for that matter. Those characters who demonstrate non-adaptive strategies of behavior are usually called false-heroes. In this fairytale it is the step-mother’s own daughter who follows her step-sister. This is already wrong as it is, because going by well-trodden road is not the same as going to terra incognita. But the girl makes another mistake – she mistreats Old Farther Frost by demanding to give her a fiancé and dowry. The forthcoming punishment is that she dies in one version of the fairy-tale, and in the other she goes back disgraced and she stays unnoticed by potential suitors, because she is still a girl, not a grown-up woman.

All grown-ups were once children, so we all know this and other similar fairy-tales, so we all have both ways – right and wrong – imprinted in our minds. However, it does not guarantee that we chose to be heroes when it comes to making existential choices. When it comes to motherhood initiation we are scared to death, because even today, despite all medical advances, there is a risk of dying in labor. And if there is a risk of death, there are feeling accompanying the near-death experience: fear, panic, frustration, anger towards the “guilty”, bitterness, self-pity, desperation. We do not really have much choice, it’s either be scared and do it, or be scared and not to do it. In the first case we are heroes, in the second one we are false-heroes.

Chapter 2

Male factor

Male infertility

I wanna fly

As a free bird in the sky.

And go back to my love

Only to hatch a baby-dove.

Gleb Starodubtsev

Now let us talk about male infertility – a man’s inability to fertilize a woman. In this case Wikipedia suggests one more reason than it does for women. They are: 1) ejaculation disorders, 2) sexual disorders, 3) changes in genital anatomy, 4) endocrine disorders, 5) seminoferous (sperm-producing) epithelium damage, 6) genetic, chromosome damages, 7) inflammation, 8) immunological factor.

Again, I abridged the text a lot, but this time i did it, because I have nothing to write about men – no man ever came to me with an infertility problem. Nevertheless, women are the reason of infertility only in 60 per cent of the cases, it leaves men 40 per cent out of 100. My version is this: firstly, many (Russian) men have no idea that a psychologist could help; secondly, that psychologists could help with infertility; thirdly, that I could help as a psychologist.

Actually, when I was writing this book, one man did find out that it was about infertility. He said that in his family both he and his wife were infertile and they had been trying to conceive for five years, and he would come to my forthcoming seminar. He didn’t, he sent his wife instead.

When speaking about the reasons for male infertility, I would like to share an observation: Wikipedia points out that infertility in women has psychological reasons, it does not point out such a reason for men. Does this mean they don’t have a psychological level? However, Wikipedia profoundly describes various sperm pathologies (if you’ll excuse me, I will skip this, as it is not relevant).

I have noticed that in a childless couple the biggest contribution a man does into dealing with infertility is making a sperm deposit for analysis (semen analysis). The rest is for the woman to deal with, even if she is utterly healthy and it’s her partner who is the reason they are childless. I cannot explain this paradox by biological reasons (woman’s ability for childbearing), but rather social and psychological reasons. Many of my healthy women-clients went through with harmful IVF procedure, because they were scared to discuss other options with their infertile husbands.

Ruediger Dahlke brilliantly voiced one of the reasons for this, by stating that a man’s inability to have children could be tied to the fact that on subconscious level he does not want to undertake any obligations and responsibility for a child8. I agree with this statement, still, I think there are other reasons, but I haven’t got a chance to exercise my knowledge – as I have mentioned, no man ever addressed me as a psychotherapist with an infertility problem. But women do address me on the subject of MALE infertility.

I will unfold the underlying reasons using examples from my practice below. One of them is lack of a better choice. It is well-known that a person always chooses the best of currently available options. I would like to show other options and may be people would like to change their behaviors and their lives.

Women who love too much

I love humans

I love animals

I love neighbors

I love hobos

I love doing laundry

I love vacuuming

Give me more of those pills.

Internet meme

Here is a typical dialogue from babyblog.ru Internet forum9:

Olunja: Hi! I’m perfectly healthy, our problem is male factor… I had two inseminations10… Didn’t work… I didn’t take ANYTHING prior to the insemination, but 36 hours before hand they gave me a shot of PREGNIL. Ouch! It hurt so much!!!!! Then the inseminations… A week later ONE MORE TRY: a shot of PREGNIL to get things going and no more shots after this. Just UTROGESTAL in the form of suppositories daily for a long-long time. Then I lost all hope… Was depressed… I’m bit better now and here we are – doing IVF… Do you make the shots all by yourself? Does it hurt?

Katisha: My mother-in-law does. Did you think the shot hurt? I don’t feel any pain from the shot itself, but my breasts hurt. I do hope AI [artificial insemination] helps, otherwise I’ll have to have laparo11, and then pills, shots… waiting… I don’t want IVF so much. Cheer up, Olunja, our IVF girls go around so happy. You will be fine and it will work for sure!

Olunja: I wish somebody gave me the shots… I have to do this myself. I make them at 9 p.m…. I live in the countryside… Before the first insemination one woman-doctor prescribed 5 pills of something (I don’t remember what it was) which caused OVERstimulation. We had to wait for the first insemination for two more months. I changed my doctor and I’m happy now. And before the insemination the nurse gave me THAT hurtful shot. My hip burnt…

I didn’t want hysterosalpingography12 either – but I had to…

And I didn’t want laparo – but I had to…

And in BOTH cases EVERYTHING WAS FINE! No problems!.. But still no kids. So my last hope is IVF.

Katisha: Oh, Olunja, I get you. My tests are fine, except for hormones (hystero, HSG, but no lapro), got my ovul [ovulation] induced, I have O for two months now, but no P. That’s why I had AI, so that the spermies got there for sure. So you are having IFV with ICSI13?

The women of this society have their own slang: ovul, spermies, laparo, hystero. Some words were reduced to one letter: O (ovulation), P (pregnancy), MM (missed miscarriage) – they have to use them so often, one letter is enough to understand what they mean. It’s all fine, a typical conversation, but one thing caught my attention and bothers me from the very beginning: “I’m perfectly healthy, our problem is male factor”. So, does this mean Olunja deals with all these interventions – both surgical and hormonal (and, as it turns out, futile) – for the sake of her husband? And do all the forum readers perceive this so-to-say “treatment” of a healthy person as a norm?

I am shocked. I re-read the contradictions for medical procedures for infertility mentioned above. They include mental disorders, congenital development issues, tumors, acute inflammatory diseases, malignancies. However, I did not find only one contradiction – the woman being healthy. Is it not contradictory to offer damaging procedures to a healthy woman? Isn’t this the man who should be treated if he has problems preventing him from becoming a farther?

Medical specialist would object that today’s medicine does not have any effective ways of treating infertile men. Why do you think this is? Maybe because men are not so dependable and controllable as women are to be experimented on in such a way? Maybe the world-wide-spread discrimination of women reveals itself on this level as well? And maybe it’s high time women came to think of this: if it does not work with this partner, maybe their relationships are the reason? And this is the subject of relationships psychology, where medicine treating people as soulless bodies is powerless. This is why, Olunja, neither insemination, nor hysterosalpingography, nor laparoscopy bring any results.

But let’s go back to the “male factor”. I repeatedly spoke to healthy women whose husbands were incapable of fertilizing. One of my psychotherapy group members liked to sigh over the fact how she just loved children, but when I asked her directly why didn’t she have any, she got embarrassed and didn’t say a word. She came to me during a brake and whispered to my ear: “My husband just can’t…” I knew that she was filthy rich, but she didn’t not work. So I suggested that she is kept by his side not only by emotional, but also by financial ties and fear to step outside her comfort zone.

The other participant of my psychosomatic workshop, whose hair fell out after IVF procedure, said bitterly that she did not to go through with it for the fifth time, because after the forthcoming procedure there was a greater risk of cancer. I asked her why she even discusses the possibility of yet another try, she said that otherwise she would have a conflict with her husband who cannot fertilize her in an ordinary way because of his low sperm motility. Her husband insisted on having a baby, and she was afraid that if she refused to go through the dangerous and damaging procedure, he would leave her.

Bert Hellinger thinks that if one partner is physically unable to have children he does not have a right to keep their partner at their side. If they do stay, the other one should treat this decision exceptionally respectfully. This is very important. It is only in this case that everything is clear and consolidated between them14. I fully agree with him. Respect instead of threats, willing consent instead of fear – do you feel the difference?

Unfortunately, women often do not realize they fear their husbands, because they mistake their fear for love. But love lives where there is order, and to make this happen partners should discuss the details of the situation they are in, share their feelings. Women more often obey the decisions their husbands take on an ex parte basis. Psychologists call this widely spread fear of one’s husband “love addiction”. It is easily mistaken for love, and that’s sad, because instead of treating the love addiction with psychotherapy, women treat the supposed infertility with surgery.

There is a story of a woman who was afraid to say no to her husband below.