Third-party reproduction refers to building a family with the assistance of another person or donated reproductive material. It may involve donor sperm, donor eggs, donor embryos, or a gestational carrier.

For intended parents, these paths can involve important decisions about genetics, pregnancy, disclosure, relationships with donors or carriers, and how a child's conception will be understood within the family.

But third-party reproduction is not only a medical or logistical process. It can also represent a profound psychological transition. You may be moving toward a deeply desired future while simultaneously letting go of a future you once imagined.

That combination can create emotions that feel confusing or even contradictory.

One of the most difficult aspects of third-party reproduction is that hope and grief can exist at the same time.

You may be moving toward becoming a parent while grieving the fact that you could not become a parent in the way you originally imagined. You may be grieving the experience of carrying your own pregnancy, having a genetic connection to your child, or experiencing parenthood without the involvement of a donor or gestational carrier.

This grief can be difficult to recognize because there is also something wonderful happening: you may finally be moving closer to the family you have wanted.

But gratitude does not erase grief.

You can be deeply grateful to a donor or gestational carrier and still experience sadness about what you have lost. You can love your future child completely and still mourn the reproductive experience you hoped to have. You can feel hopeful about the future while grieving the path that is no longer possible.

Making room for these emotions does not mean that you are rejecting your child or your path to parenthood. It means acknowledging the full emotional reality of what you have experienced.

Infertility can affect much more than your plans for having a child. It can challenge deeply held beliefs about your body, sexuality, competence, identity, and sense of yourself as a future parent.

You may find yourself wondering:

Why couldn't my body do this?

What does this mean about me?

Will I feel like a real mother or father?

Will my child feel like my child?

Will I feel different from other parents?

For some people, using donor eggs, donor sperm, donor embryos, or a gestational carrier can bring these questions into even sharper focus. The experience may touch beliefs about biology, genetic connection, pregnancy, motherhood, fatherhood, and what it means to create a family.

These struggles are not signs that you are failing to cope. They may reflect the profound impact that infertility and reproductive loss can have on one's sense of self.

Third-party reproduction can bring emotions that are difficult to acknowledge, particularly when you believe you are supposed to feel grateful.

You may feel jealous of people who can become pregnant without medical intervention. You may feel angry about what has happened to you or resentful that someone else is able to provide something your own body could not. You may experience envy toward pregnant friends or family members. You may even feel shame about having these reactions.

At the same time, you may feel enormous gratitude toward a donor or gestational carrier and tremendous excitement about becoming a parent.

These emotions do not cancel one another out.

From an attachment and relational perspective, complicated emotions often make sense when we understand what they represent. Anger may contain grief. Envy may reflect a painful longing. Shame may emerge when an experience challenges a deeply held sense of who you believed yourself to be.

Psychotherapy can provide a place to explore these emotions without judging them or trying to make them disappear.

Partners do not always experience third-party reproduction in the same way.

One partner may be ready to move forward while the other is still grieving. One may feel strongly about using a particular donor or gestational carrier while the other has reservations. Questions about genetic connection, pregnancy, disclosure, or the future child can bring longstanding differences within a relationship to the surface.

Sometimes couples become focused almost entirely on the decisions that need to be made and have little opportunity to process what those decisions mean emotionally.

Third-party reproduction can therefore affect not only how partners become parents, but also how they experience themselves and one another within the relationship.

Psychotherapy can create space for partners to understand their different emotional experiences, communicate about difficult feelings, and remain connected while navigating an extraordinarily complex transition.

My approach to psychotherapy is attachment-focused, relational, and psychodynamic. This means that I am interested not only in helping you manage difficult feelings, but also in understanding what those feelings mean and how they connect to your sense of yourself and your relationships.

The experience of infertility and third-party reproduction can activate deeply rooted beliefs about worth, adequacy, dependence, control, vulnerability, and belonging. It can also affect the way partners turn toward or away from one another when they are under stress.

Therapy provides an opportunity to slow down and understand these experiences rather than simply moving from one reproductive decision to the next.

Together, we can explore the grief beneath anger, the longing beneath envy, the shame beneath a sense of failure, and the fears that may be difficult to express. We can also work toward integrating your reproductive history into a coherent sense of self and developing a more emotionally grounded relationship with the family you are creating.

You may benefit from psychotherapy if you find yourself struggling with:

• Grief about not becoming a parent in the way you originally imagined

• Feelings of failure, inadequacy, or diminished self-esteem

• Anger, jealousy, envy, resentment, or shame

• Conflicting feelings about using donor eggs, donor sperm, donor embryos, or a gestational carrier

• Questions about genetic or biological connection

• Concerns about whether you will feel like a “real” parent

• Changes in your relationship with your partner

• Anxiety about how your child will understand their conception

• Difficulty talking about your feelings because you believe you should simply feel grateful

• Feeling emotionally overwhelmed even though you have found a path forward

Third-party reproduction does not have to be emotionally simple simply because it offers a way to become a parent. Psychotherapy can provide a space to make sense of the complexity and to move toward parenthood with greater self-understanding, self-compassion, and emotional connection.