Medical successes and couples' psychological problems in assisted reproduction treatment: a narrative based medicine approach

Objective: 1) To explore the psychological processes that develop in women and men during their first pregnancy obtained with assisted reproduction treatment; 2) to individuate the main plot that women and men use to recount their transition to parenthood. Methods: A face-to-face semi-structured autobiographical interview was administered. The interview was aimed to investigate the story of pregnancy. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed in order to merge principal themes. Participants: 15 Italian couples waiting for the first child after a conception with assisted reproductive technologies. Results: Medically assisted pregnancy constitutes an extremely stressful, highly medicalised experience, that the couple, however, narrated according to a basic plot consisting in four phases: doubt, final sentence, victory, monitoring. Conclusions: Results suggest that physicians can benefit from knowing the phases that infertile couples experience during pregnancy because these can serve as a framework to use in monitoring their transition to parenthood and in planning psychological support and health interventions for them. Keywords: Narrative based medicine, pregnancy, transition to parenthood, assisted reproduction treatment