Mélanie : j'ai porté l'enfant de ma femme - La Maison des maternelles #LMDM

A little more than two years ago, France allowed couples of women to use PMA to become parents. And two years later, many couples of women continue to go to Belgium, Spain or Portugal to have their babies. Hello, Mélanie. Hello, Agathe. Oh, little cat. I woke him up. I was talking too loud. He's so cool. He fell asleep. So, Mélanie, you are 38 years old. I'm going to draw your portrait. You are Elise's mother, who is 10 years old. And so, little Jules, who is here, too cute, and who is 4 months old. And we're going to talk about the birth of little Jules, this morning, together, because he came from a PMA, a little bit special, which was made in Portugal, which is not allowed in France. And you're going to explain to us why. Well, we're going to say it right away, by the way, because Jules was born from the ovocytes of your wife, Marilyn, but you were the one who carried him. That's it. And it's not possible, in France, to have ovocytes of your partner. We're going to go back a little bit to better understand your story, if you don't mind. You were married to a man for 7 years. From this union, your first daughter was born, who is Elise, who we mentioned a few moments ago. You separated when Elise was 5 years old. When did you meet the woman of your life, Marilyn? So, I met Marilyn a year and a half after my separation, with Elise's dad. It was right away the big bang. Well, for me, it was more than a bang, it was obvious. So, well, we got to know each other. And then, 6 months later, we decided to live together. Marilyn came to live with me in the Parisian region, in 1992. She lived next to Fontainebleau. And I couldn't go to Fontainebleau, knowing that Elise was on alternate custody with her dad. So, I couldn't break her up. She had everything, she had her school, her friends, her girlfriends. And then, knowing that her dad and I also lived next to each other, we couldn't go too far. Yes, that's for sure. So, when did you both start talking baby? So, Marilyn started talking to me baby. I mean, in my head, I already had a 10-year-old girl, well, 5 years old at the time. I said to myself, no, I would only have one daughter. I didn't necessarily want other children. Also, because I hadn't found anyone to have other children with. And then, Marilyn started to touch the ground, to talk to me about it. And then, I saw that it was going well with Elise. I said to myself, well, we're good with three. We'll be even better with four. She will make the union trait of this pretty recomposed family. That's it. So, you wanted to have a PMA, but you didn't want to do it in France. Why? So, we wanted to have a shared pregnancy. In France, we couldn't do a fetalization in vitro, but with her own ovocytes. We absolutely wanted one or the other to carry the ovocytes of the other, so that today, well, I was pregnant with Marilyn, so I had her ovocytes. Yes, that's it. So, it's a kind of fusion of the couple and the child, which is not possible in France. No. We can't do it. So, before continuing your story, Mélanie, we asked Professor Michael Greenberg, whom we know very, very well in the maternity hospital. He is an obstetrician gynecologist. He is also a doctor of reproduction at the Antoine Becler hospital in Clamart. We asked him to explain to us the difference between this method, the one you used, and the one that is used classically in France. And why is it forbidden in our country? The one that will carry the pregnancy is, in France, the one that will have the insemination or undergo the fetalization in vitro. So, in fact, we are going to work with the ovules of a woman, which will be the one that will carry the pregnancy behind. In the meal, we will use the ovules of a woman, of the partner, but it is her spouse who will carry the pregnancy. So, that means that the embryo will have for genetics the genetics of the donor and the genetics of the partner of the woman who is going to carry. And that, today, is something that is forbidden in France. So, why? The reasons are not necessarily totally clear, but what is certain is that what is a bit of a problem today is to say that it would be a kind of ovocyte gift, a gift of a genetic heritage, a gift of ovules, directed towards someone we know, towards his partner. However, in France, the gift of ovules, the gift of gametes in general, should not be directed towards someone we know. So, in fact, we have the impression that it is a rule, a kind of general rule like that, but which does not really take into account the particular stories, like yours, if I understood correctly. In any case, the doctor said it very well, it is not very clear. How does the choice of the donor go? So, the choice of the donor, at the beginning, we wondered if we were going to have to make a kind of catalog, which is the Cryos catalog, which is a catalog of thousands and thousands of donors. They come from Denmark, although they are not necessarily all Danish because there are a lot of students, so it is quite international. So, we started to look on the Internet, we only see photos of child donors. So, we said to ourselves, we want a brown, a blonde, so Marilyn is blonde, I am brown, if it is me who is carrying the child, so it will be necessary that he looks a little like me. We had so many choices that we could not choose. So, we said to ourselves, we are going to leave this choice to the clinic with whom we are going to work. It also avoids, I imagine, having mental images too, right? Absolutely, to make transfers. We did not want that, it was complicated. We saw the child donor, around 5-6 years old, we said, well, if it's a mix of you and me, no, that's not right. We put days and days, and we said to ourselves, it is better to leave this choice to the clinic, with my physical characteristics. So, we told them, well, a brown, a small P, because I am of Portuguese origin. So, they chose a brown, with blue eyes, a matte skin, we have a lot of characteristics of the donor, we have his hobbies, what he does in life. So, we chose in relation to that, without photos. Did you turn to your doctors in France before all this? Not at all. Not at all? No, because already in France, they did not know this method, the meal method. And then, no, we looked on blogs, we were helped a lot on social networks, on Facebook, by couples of women who live in Portugal, who told us, we worked with this clinic. And so, from there, we called the clinic, and it was very fast. So, it was not even worth it, you already knew that in France, it would be an end to receive us. How did you decide which of you two was going to carry the child? So, we decided that because, well, for the little joke, I am the oldest, but one and a half years older than Marilyne, and I already had a daughter with my genes, with my DNA. So, we said to ourselves, second child, first child for Marilyne, we would like him to have his genes and his DNA. Yes, that's it, so you said, like that, we will each have a child with his DNA. That's it. It's in May 2020, then. We were in full confinement. That's it. The adventure started. Yes, we were all three in Marilyne's house, next to Fontainebleau, and everything was going very, very well between Élise and Marilyne. Marilyne really considers Élise as her daughter, and I say to myself, but yes, it's obvious, we have to move forward. So, we did the steps, we called the clinic in Portugal, who reassured us.