The Psychology of Transference

Here are my clinic's statistics for taking home an egg donor baby (different from becoming pregnant, of course, which doesn't always yield a baby).

Transferring 1 embryo = 70%
Transferring 2 embryos = 80%

That's 14% percent better odds when transferring two, which isn't a huge difference, but it's nothing to sneeze at. The pickle is this: if I transfer 2 embryos, and the outcome is successful, there's a 60% chance that I'll be taking home 2 babies.

So, to help me figure out if I should transfer 2 embryos, the question on the table is, am I prepared to handle twins? Here are the arguments:

Twin Pros
Instant family
Kids have each other to play with
Twins are cool

Twin Cons
Pregnancy is harder on the body
High likelihood of premature delivery, linked to mental and physical complications
No sleep for the first three months and get very little for the next six
Twins are hard

The cons outnumber the pros, but that's not how decision-making works. You have to ask yourself what's in your gut: do I want twins? And my gut's answer is Yes! absolutely!! I really, really, really want twins! And even though I was afraid of the prospect at first, I've been watching YouTube videos about tandem nursing, and I'm totally ready for the challenge.

Especially because twins are so cool. I mean really, really cool. Everyone loves twins. Twins are so cute, and if you have twins, then people everywhere will stop you to tell you how awesome your twins are, because twins are so cool!

It was during a particularly long daydreaming session that involved a double-stroller at a shopping mall that it hit me: did I only want twins so that I could feel special? The truth was, Kinda. Yeah.

After years of infertility, I wanted to compensate for my uterine inadequacies. I was craving a level of cooing that would make up for all the attention I'd been missing. I needed to show the women who had effortlessly bred before me, "sure, you have kids, but I have twins."

It was ego and pride. It took me a while to figure that out, but once I did, I had to let the idea go. I wasn't willing to let pride win at the cost of premature delivery. Ego doesn't beat out health complications. Ultimately, there was no way I could allow the next steps of my fertility treatment be dictated by my emotional damage, no matter how cool twins are.

This means that (besides obviously needing to to schedule an appointment with my therapist) I'm committed to transferring only one embryo. It's the more rational decision, and the truth is that I can still give my kids siblings to play with; I would just need to build my family one child at a time like normal people do. Besides, even if I do transfer one, there's still a chance that the embryo will split, and I'll still end up with twins, and they'll be identical. Wouldn't that be cool?