Feminist Approach to Desiring Motherhood

Image

 

The article is a reflective essay based on empirical data (in random sampling) in an anonymous woman’s self-narrative. Though it is not a research study, it will shed light on feminist scholarship in view to highlighting the search for motherhood in striving for the essence of womanhood via the first attempt of ivf (In vitro fertilisation). Women and medicine are connected. It is a new breakthrough for a woman’s life writing. Desiring for motherhood is illustrated. This would pose an impact on women desiring for motherhood in the perspective of women’s health and reproductive medicine.

One could not write about the search for motherhood without writing about the struggles a woman faces when doing the first IVF (In vitro fertilisation). The writing about the life of a woman experiencing the journey of the first IVF is exploratory in a woman’s life. This paper examines the conflicting minds of a woman undergoing the first IVF and argues a feminist approach will help to understand the physical body, the psychology and the social embodiment of a woman better. It is a self-writing in an anonymous identity about critical reflections over the first attempt of IVF that will benefit any woman who may consider doing IVF to aim at giving birth.

The journey to the first IVF is narrated retrospectively by the woman recollecting the memories of days of experiencing the first IVF; thereby subjectivity is constructed and re-constructed in the inner self. In this IVF journey, dissonances between a woman’s pain resulting from the IVF treatment and the anticipating birth of a child in joy ostensibly arise, constituting a paradoxical conflict of feelings in the woman’s inner self.

Taking the contraception pills one month prior to the collection of eggs for the IVF treatment is filled with uncertainty and anxiety. What if the menstruation that lies at the heart of woman’s fertility does not fall into the right time of having medical injection, leading to more anxious thoughts of what will happen next? Fortunately, faith will lead the way to the next move. There lies in no physical pain. Psychologically, a woman needs strong faith in this treatment for so many women have gone through so many numbers of times. For social embodiment, women have a natural menstruation at a right time, though human intervention of manipulating contraception pills is against the natural cycle. Biological rhythm of a woman’s body is being interrupted by IVF constructed by humans; for a woman hopes to achieve a higher fertility rate they could resort to, due to many factors underlying infertility.

Regards,
Robert John
Editorial Manager
Journal of Women’s Health and Reproductive Medicine