Mythbusters: Baby Mama Edition

Let me preface this post by saying that I love Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. When these two comedic powerhouses teamed up for the 2008 movie, Baby Mama, I was all in. The film was cute and clever, albeit predictable. I've recently been thinking about the myths and misperceptions that surround infertility and the movie came to mind. For those of you who haven't seen it, the basic plot centers on a very ambitious and career-driven woman (Tina Fey) who desperately wants to have a child and has been unable to get pregnant with insemination. She opts to turn to a surrogate (Amy Poehler) and hilarity ensues. After the required plot twists and turns including the loss of her surrogate, the movie gets its beautiful happy ending. SPOILER ALERT: She gets pregnant!

The moral of the story is that the tightly wound, Type-A, baby crazed lady decided mid-film to cut loose and relax with the adorable smoothie shop guy around the corner (Greg Kinnear) and low and behold, miracle of miracles, her previously impregnable womb is with child. I appreciate a happy ending and enjoy when things are wrapped up nice and neat at the end of a movie, but I've been contemplating how these messages continue to propogate one of the biggest myths about infertility. "Relax", "Don't stress so much," "Maybe you should just quit trying so hard," or "Let go and Let God," no matter how you phrase it, the message belittles the fact that infertility is a disease, not a condition that a quick vacation and some Mai Tais can cure. We infertiles are also guilty of buying into this myth. We desperately want to believe that we could be the chosen lucky ones. Many of us delaying treatment hoping that this month could be THE month.

The other "baby mama" myth that's been on my mind lately is the idea that women who turn to donor eggs to build their families are somehow less "mama" than if they were able to use their own eggs. I'll confess that until we made the decision to use donor eggs I had never heard of the term epigenetics, but now I'm completely fascinated. Epigenetics is a field of biology dealing with information held above and beyond the gene. Did you know that 99.9% of your genes are shared with all humans?! Only 0.1% of our genes result in the variations we see in humans.  In studies of epigenetics scientists have found that a baby conceived with a donor egg gets his/her genes from the donor, but gets the "instructions" on the expression of those genes from the woman who carries them. 

There is an amazing example from horse breeding that shows when pony embryos are implanted into horses, the foals that are born are different from other ponies and are bigger and more like horses. Crazy! 

The bottom line is that if we are successful with our treatment, our baby will have 3 biological contributors: our egg donor, Ken, and ME. I will be growing this child, and it will literally be my flesh and blood that will create this child's flesh and blood. The uterus isn't a passive incubator, but an active part of the life creating process, influencing the expression of genes and development of the baby's body. (Can you tell I'm a little geeked out about this?) So, consider this myth BUSTED!  :)