title: Medical successes and couples' psychological problems in assisted reproduction treatment: a narrative based medicine approach.
abstract: 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.
  
  
  METHODS
  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.
authors.affiliation: Free University of Bolzano, Faculty of Education, Bolzano, Italy. andrea.smorti@unifi.it
authors.forename: Martina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Smorti
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Smorti
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007247:Infertility, Female / Q000628:therapy; D007248:Infertility, Male / Q000628:therapy; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D062525:Narrative Therapy; D011247:Pregnancy; D027724:Reproductive Techniques, Assisted / Q000523:psychology*