#atozchallenge Letters to my Embryos: D is for Diary

Welcome to Day 4 of the A to Z Challenge, an April blogging challenge where you aim post every day during the month following the letters of the alphabet (with every Sunday bar the last one off).

In the past I've used the challenge to blog about my infertility and the IVF process. I'm following a similar theme this year as we wait to begin the process for a Frozen Embryo Transfer, having completed a Freeze All IVF cycle in February.

We currently have nine embryos sitting on ice, my little bubbles, and this April I am blogging to them about the process of how they came to be.

Dear Bubbles,

Have I ever shared my diaries with you? If I haven't by the time you're reading this, remind me and I'll dig some out for you to look at. I expect you'll have a laugh.

I've kept a diary in some form since I was about twelve (though sadly the pencil is very faded by now so by the time you're old enough to delve into my twelve year old musings, they may be indecipherable). Some of my diaries were kept online, like in the blog where these letters were originally published. Other's were kept in paper notebooks with slips of paper sandwiched between the pages from hospital appointments or parking tickets.

A diary is kind of a necessity when you've got lots of different meds to take at set times of each day. I even devised a(n admittedly complicated) chart to help me see all my medications, appointments and other important things during our treatment process.

Still tucked into that diary is the sheet from the hospital which serves as a diary, of sorts. It's got a treatment checklist where we were supposed to enter dates and times for the aforementioned appointments, pills and potions. You can see that I dutifully filled in the dates and times in the beginning, when those dates and times were given to us at the hospital appointments themselves. Later on there are scribbles all over the back of the sheet, haphazardly filled in anywhere there's space, because I was making those notes wherever I happened to be when the hospital called; on the train, on the ferry, sitting in an awkward position in the living room hoping that my phone signal wouldn't disappear.

I'll warn you though, the diaries aren't all happy reading. Yes, there's a lot of rambling about Tara and your father and random shopping trips, but our journey to you wasn't all plain sailing. You weren't the result from our first round of IVF, you weren't even from our second. So there's a lot of stuff in there about those previous attempts.

And I'll share those with you when you're ready.

All my love,

Your Mum.