#atozchallenge Letters to my Embryos: S is for Spare Bedroom

Welcome to Day 19 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 we moved into our first home together, your father and I, we were delighted to find a little cottage with a spare bedroom. This was back in the early days when we had only been trying to bring you into existence for about a year and a half, and we were optimistic that you would soon be joining us to take up residence in the spare room.

Of course, you didn't. And so it became a general dumping ground.

Occasionally we would talk about having a clear out, or we'd go up there with bin bags and be ruthless in sorting out the junk that had accumulated, with a view to making it ready for becoming a nursery.

I'll admit. We had a couple of wobbles. There was a worn out old desk, covered in junk, up there for the longest time because our first go at IVF had been cancelled and we weren't sure we were going to give it another go.

We decided to stick a bed in there so we could actually use it as a bedroom if guests came to stay and secretly hoped that some day it might be your bed. For a while it was 'the boys bedroom'; the rats had a bedroom all to themselves. I stuck a couple of bookcases up there, optimistically filling one up with children's books that I hoped to be able to share with you some day.

But I planned for the day when that room would become a nursery. I thought about where things would go as you grew, how we would fit more than one of you in there should we need to. I looked at that room as a child would, as a teenager, and I panicked about where the hell we were going to put all our crap when that day came!

It would be nice if we've been able to raise you in a house with a spare bedroom, but if not, I hope we've been able to drop the 'spare' bit of its title and that for you it's just your bedroom. Perhaps it's not the biggest. Perhaps you're limited on where your wardrobe can go because of those sloping ceilings. Perhaps it sucks being right opposite the bathroom. Perhaps you bang your head occasionally getting in and out of bed (those sloping ceilings again). But it's the one spot of the house that is truly yours, and we've been planning it that way since we first set foot in the door.

And I hope I finally found somewhere else to keep all those books!

All my love,

Your Mum.