RSBM
This is something I hadn't considered before, but could well be true.
Could a mother have a different attitude towards children who she believed were entirely the results of her own efforts, bought and paid for using techology? Basically the opposite of 'a gift of nature/God", but rather: I made them, so I'm entitled to destroy them?
I also don't understand how the aggression against the children can be so strong, but the suicide attempt so weak. I would think that, especially after killing one's children, the self-loathing would be profound and continue even if that first suicide attempt failed. But, she didn't appear to express self-loathing and self-hatred, she's made excuses for herself.
ETA: I do agree though, that her husband didn't provide any support, isolating her terribly. My impression from other cultures/past times, is that those women don't bother expecting men to be equal partners in pregnancy, childbirth and raising small children. In traditional cultures, it seems to me, other women support each other more. Mothers, sisters or paid nurses move in to take the sole burden off the mother.
JMO
JMO. I have met many women who, after multiple failed IVFs, adopted babies. I would say, if the instinct to become a mother is strong, it doesn't matter that she didn't carry the baby, even if she is not breastfeeding, the gets attached to the baby as her own, despite the child not carrying her genes and having not been carried in her womb. About egg donor babies, all I have heard or read were thankful words to those unknown women who had donated her own...
I think several things play a role here.
1) presence of a severe mental illness. I have a feeling that it was way more than depression and was associated with very strong, perfectionistic, suffocating personality. That needed to be treated. That played the major role. She should not have stopped that medication. Worse, not sure that Citalopram was holding her well enough.
2) perhaps, all these IVFs created the hormonal milieu that exacerbated mental symptoms even more.
3) I don't know if Lauren fit the mother's role. At all. Raising a baby is anything but perfect. In fact, everything is a chronic mess. If LD was taking "happy moms" posts on SM for reality, like "it is perfection", or "I am so happy", or "just wait till your mother's instinct kicks in", she was in for bitter
disillusionment. (Other moms have perfect babies, and her baby is hungry, poopy or colicky.) I wonder if LD, who was undoubtedly smart academically, somehow did not understand that what people post on SM is not for real? That could have been the reason for blaming her kids for being less than perfect, because "see what other moms post."
4) strangely, I am not sure if Lauren truly wanted children. The way i see it, she was trying to cross some lines off her "to do" list. MOO. Become a doctor. Marry a doctor. And tbh, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon is very high on a medical totem pole, so she overachieved there. Make a beautiful house. (Everyone mentioned her wonderful house in South Africa.) Then, have a family, a big one! And it didn't work. And Lauren, with her exceptionally high expectations of herself, was pushing her body into producing these babies... I thought GD was making her go through the IVF. Now I wonder if he was afraid of saying "no" to her, because in her eyes, infertility equaled own failure.
5) I think she would have managed one child, Liane. Remember how one of her friends said, "her perfect child". But again, this obsessive idea of a perfect family, and she got twins. And I think the real crash happened when she found out that one of them was having a cleft palate. This is anything but perfect. Perhaps that's when she got angry with the donor and the baby, but I don't think it was the money. Just, "imperfection". And even when Karla was born, and her cleft palate appeared to be minimal, she could never "forgive" it to Karla, because Karla failed her, and ultimately, Lauren failed herself.
Remember, she started murders with Karla. The least perfect one.
But, I think LD absolutely wanted to kill herself. Why things didn't work? Maybe she started vomiting, maybe GD returned home soon. One thing I am almost positive about, LD could have been broken in childhood. Obsessive perfectionism is also inherited, and if one of parents was like this (put too much pressure from the outside), and LD did the same from the inside, it must have created an unbelievably strong, achievement-driven but already faulty character. I think she hates herself and blames herself now and feels like a total failure. As to why she made excuses? I think she wanted to be deemed not guilty, get out and kill herself.
I think her husband did not provide support, but I also suspect that deep inside, he was tired of his home life because of Lauren.
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