With in vitro fertilization, they decided to have a baby together without knowing who the biological mother will be.

Nayá Madeira, 34, already had two children and was married when she met Renata Vanucci, 40, on Instagram.

She was looking for women who played football and lived in a nearby region in order to increase her team, and from the photos, Renata seemed to be a goalkeeper, just what the team needed.

Renata took a while, but returned the “follow”. “As I’m a physical therapist, I thought I might be the mother of one of my patients,” she recalls, smiling.

That was not the case, but the profession was the topic of many conversations, and ended up bringing the two closer together. “I’m a biomedical doctor and we both used lasers for treatments with different purposes, so we exchanged experiences about it”, says Nayá.

Months later, Renata signed up for a solidarity trip in the backlands of Bahia and extended the invitation to Nayá, who accepted without thinking twice. “More and more, we were finding similarities between the two of us, we have similar principles and interests.”

It didn’t take long for them to fall in love and Nayá decided to end her marriage with her husband. “It had become a friendship for a long time, we weren’t a couple anymore. At first he seemed to feel relief. I know it’s not easy for any ex-husband in this situation, but for us it was really easy. He didn’t keep trying to put the boys against him. us, none of that.”

​As for Renata, who also ended the relationship with her partner to stay with Nayá, the change was more delicate.

“It was troublesome to think about being with a person who had lived as a heterosexual, with life already in place, with children. My relatives thought I was destroying a family and I also questioned myself a lot about that. But everything was very light and very clear. . Even with the pandemic, things happened naturally. There was no way it wouldn’t work”, he recalls.

Building a new family

The “scare”, as Nayá describes it, was all at once, as the couple decided to live together after just a few months of dating so as not to stay away during the pandemic.

Nayá’s children, João, 14, and Diogo, 11, found the situation strange at first and were afraid of their friends’ reaction, but it didn’t take long for them to get closer to the “mother type”, as they call Renata today. . “Living with them and working in a neonatal ICU made me awaken a maternal feeling that I had never experienced. I started to want to have a baby generated by me, to feel that love in the process”, says Renata.

That’s how, after six months of relationship, they decided to do in vitro fertilization, a pregnancy process that joins the egg and sperm in the laboratory and places the already formed embryo in the woman’s uterus.

The idea is that the pregnancy is carried out by Renata, but with the possibility of an egg from either of the two.

“To increase the chances of success, we both went through the process of stimulating the eggs and asked our doctor so that, when it works, we don’t know who the egg came from”, explains Nayá.

Today, they share the process and other routine events on the same social network where they met, on the page called “Família Descomplica”.

The couple turned to the semen bank in the United States. There, it is possible to choose the donor based on genetic characteristics – not only appearance, but also health issues – and men receive money to provide the material, which greatly increases the number of candidates.

“We chose a person with characteristics of both and we both have the same blood type, so we will never know who the egg was from and we will always be mothers equally”, says the biomedical doctor.

In practice, explains Fernando Prado, a gynecologist, the genetic material of the pregnant woman is not passed on to the fetus. In this sense, only the egg matters.

“So, since one of them is 34 and the other is 40, the chance with the youngest’s egg is about 40 to 50 percent per embryo transfer. If the egg that is used is from a 40-year-old woman , this chance drops to between 15 and 20%. Even in the youngest, it is common for them to need two, maybe even three transfers to have a real chance of pregnancy, around 70%, adding up the embryo transfers”, points out the doctor, who is a member of ASRM and director of the Neo Vita clinic in São Paulo.

Now, already formally married and together for two years, Nayá and Renata have already gone through two processes of “IVF”, as in vitro fertilization is called, without success. “The second time, we had a positive in the pharmacy test, Renata surprised me and everything, and then, in the beta HCG blood test, she was negative”, says Nayá.

Christians, they rely on faith and believe that the pregnancy will come at the right time. “Now we are going to redo the exams and, if everything is ok, Renata’s endometrium begins to be prepared again. We still have two frozen embryos that we will implant at once and hope a lot. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll have to start the whole process over again. “

How does in vitro fertilization work?

To stimulate the ovary, the woman is given protein hormones called gonadotropins by injection. Then, a procedure known as “follicular aspiration”, performed by transvaginal ultrasound, captures and removes as many mature eggs as possible. In the case of Nayá and Renata, both went through this part of the process.

Each of these eggs is placed in a culture with thousands of healthy sperm from the partner or donor so that spontaneous fertilization can occur. The best formed embryos are transferred to the patient’s uterus or can be frozen.

According to SisEmbrio (National Embryo Production System) from Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency), more than 35,000 cycles of in vitro fertilization are performed in Brazil, and supporters of the procedure have grown 168% in the last 7 years.

The estimated price, according to physician Cybele Lascala, a specialist in Human Reproduction at the Ideia Fértil de Saúde Reproductive Institute, can reach thirty thousand reais.

“Semen costs between R$ 5,000 to R$ 7,000, plus medication, which can reach R$ 10,000, and the rest goes to laboratory tests and doctor’s fees”, he explains.

One way to reduce the cost is to donate eggs to the chosen clinic. “Let’s assume that this woman induces ovulation and gives fifteen eggs. She keeps eight for her and seven she can donate and this lowers her cost of an IVF. Depending on the number of eggs you donate, the discount may be higher or lower. “, says Lascala, who is currently following the case of Renata and Nayá.

IVF is not available in the SUS (Unified Health System) and is not covered by most health plans. However, there are some cases of hospitals, such as Pérola Byington and Hospital das Clínicas of the Faculty of Medicine of USP (University of São Paulo), in São Paulo, which perform the procedure for free. Despite this, patients usually have to pay for medication and there are health criteria and age limits.