#atozchallenge Letters to my Embryos: H is for Hospital

Welcome to Day 8 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,

When I think of you as you are now, reading this letter, I probably think of all sorts of things; whether or not you've tidied your room recently, the funny little quirks you have, what you look like when you're concentrating on a good book or film.

When I think of you as you are now, as I'm writing this letter, I picture a hospital. Because that's where you are right now. If we happen to head onto the mainland and drive past the hospital where you are currently housed, I have to wave and say hello to you. I look forward to appointments there because it brings me closer to you, even though you're not actually consciously aware of me being there. You're chilling in the freezer, after all.

Hospitals aren't exactly fun places to visit. The last time I was there (at the time of writing this) was on the day you were conceived, and that involved an operation. I left feeling fragile and emotional and kind of empty. I was leaving you being, even though you barely even existed, and I didn't know when we would be reunited.

But each trip to the hospital feels like it's bringing me a little closer to you. And we've spent so much time there recently, your father and I, that the waiting room with its stiff chairs and old magazines seems almost as familiar as our own living room.

Next time we see you, it will be at that hospital. You won't see us because you won't have developed eyes yet (they'll start to form within about two weeks of the transfer). But we'll see you and it will be amazing!

I like to think that one day we'll take you back there, probably when you're still too tiny to actually appreciate the event. You'll either sleep through it while busy nurses and embryologists take a polite look at you, or you'll cry and scream and we'll cut the visit short to get on with the shopping or whatever else we'd visited the mainland to do. Either way, I'd like to show you where you came from and that hospital is precisely where you started.

All my love,

You Mum.