Parenting After Infertility
When you've spent months or years trying to get pregnant -- not to mention large sums of money -- the effort you had to put into having a child can affect the way you parent. Parents who've conquered the challenges of infertility still have to deal with the aftermath once their baby finally arrives. Not all parents handle this new experience in the same way, but many feel extra pressure to be a good parent. Some also fear losing their child after putting so much blood, sweat and tears into bringing him into the world.
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Fear of Loss
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Fear of losing the one thing you wanted more than anything else in your life is natural. If you suffered through several miscarriages or losses, you might have a heightened fear of loss all through your pregnancy and delivery. After conceiving through assisted reproductive technology, you might have a heightened fear that you'll lose the pregnancy right up until the moment of delivery. You may put off decorating the nursery or having a baby shower for this reason. This fear won't just disappear once you have your baby in your arms. Over-protectiveness and overindulgence often follow fear of losing this hard-won blessing.
Guilty Feelings
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When you're undergoing fertility treatments, every month seems like a win-or-lose proposition. Once you've won the prize, you might feel the need to prove that you were worthy of earning it by being a super-parent. But being a super-parent all the time is impossible, which leads to feelings of guilt over your failure. You might feel guilty because you're not thrilled with your baby every minute of the day, or because he cries and can't be comforted. Other people -- partners included -- can make this feeling worse by insinuating that complaining about child-care issues or having difficulty with parenting isn't acceptable, since "You asked for this," fertility therapist explains Dr. Andrea Braverman, writing for the American Fertility Association.
Overprotectiveness
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If you worked very hard to get something in life, like a child, it's natural to move heaven and earth to keep anything from happening to him. For some parents, this turns into hovering and over-protectiveness. An Australian study published in the March 2000 issue of "Fertility and Sterility" found that parents who got pregnant through in vitro fertilization felt their children were more vulnerable and precious than parents who conceived without medical intervention.This attitude can put undue burdens on a child, who must then be everything his parents hoped for, to make the struggles and expenses of infertility treatment all "worth it."
Less Confidence in Parenting Skills
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In the 2000 Australian study published in "Fertility and Sterility," mom who conceived via IVF had less self-confidence in their parenting skills than moms who got pregnant without intervention. Both moms and dads of IVF-conceived infants had significantly lower self-esteem than parents of normally conceived babies, which may have impacted their confidence in their ability to parent a child. Lack of confidence can lead to unspoken competition between parents to be the best. This leads to criticizing their partner's parenting, which causes not only strife in the relationship but more feelings of inadequacy in the person being criticized.
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