Thursday 27 April 2017

#atozchallenge Letters to my Embryos: W is for Womb

Welcome to Day 23 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,

By the time you're reading this, it will have been some years since you occupied my womb, and you're probably in no great hurry to learn about the finer points of one of your earliest residences.

Unfortunately, that's what this letter is about. Sorry. (Just be grateful that I didn't go with 'vagina' for the letter V! Now that would have been awkward!)

Most people's lives begin in one of their mother's Fallopian Tubes. Sperm meets egg and the magic happens. If all goes well, over the next five days they'll move down the tube, growing and dividing and expanding as they go, before they arrive in their mother's womb.

Of course, you had to be slightly different. You're already aware that you spent your first five days in a petri dish, then you were frozen and finally thawed out, transferred to a catheter and then you got to where you were supposed to be. Ultimately, it's the same journey but you went via the diversion route, entirely sensible considering there's no way anything's getting up or down my tubes!

Once you've been transferred and you're in my womb, there's really nothing I can do to make a difference. It's up to you to get snuggled in and you only have two or three days to do that. I'll help out by providing hormonal support but like so much in this process, the rest of it is down to you.

All I can do is wait and hope. Hope that you find my womb to your liking, that it is comfortable and the sort of place you fancy staying for nine months or so.

If you're reading this letter, we both know that you did.

All my love,

Your Mum.

7 comments:

  1. Baby can consider the petri dish a "womb" with a view!

    Trudy @ Reel Focus
    Watermelon

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  2. That's so beautiful. I hope it works for you. Happy Birthday too! x

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  3. I hope s/he is reading this post. I X is for Xcitement

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  4. Lol, I totally would have used “Vagina” for V . . .

    Aj @ Read All The Things!

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  5. I've enjoyed reading these letters.

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  6. My friend is going through this process -- but to carry someone else's embryos because they were rejected by the mother and this is the last one left... nerve-wracking and scary for everyone...

    Affirmations for a Good Life

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Let me know what you think. :-)