Being a woman and being a mum

The territory of assisted reproduction is fertile ground for subjective projects, involving constructions of motherhood and family for both patients and professionals. Constructions about the unspeakable of the feminine that unfold. With reproductive medicine, procreation has been separated from sex and the desire for pregnancy does not translate or equate to the desire to have a child. Motherhood tends to be idealised by women who share in their discourses the subjectively internalised mothers through traits that are particular to each one. The multifaceted fragmentation present in motherhood goes hand in hand with the difficulty of dealing with being a woman, with the feminine that cannot be represented by either women or men. The psychoanalytic reading of Repeat Gestational Loss (RPL), one of the diagnoses of women monitored by reproductive medicine, and of "Tender Loving Care" (TLC), the care recommended by evidence-based medicine for such women, highlights central elements of the interviews. Each woman, continually mobilised by the task of building herself up, turns an immense gear of care and technique around her.