Love Letters to a Snowflake

Tuesday, CD5. On the table, I think about the meat under my skin; the yellow blubber into which I’ve pressed the needles, the throb of arteries and swoosh of blood and the jumble of organs inside of me. I am worlds away from the susurrus of consultation between my thighs. The rise and fall of my breaths are tsunamis and my being is displaced. So I build a boat for my mind and float away on the water. I am untouchable until they speak my name. This will all be worth it for the baby: approximately one-hundred-and-fifty cells of human potential whom the embryologist graded ‘perfect’ one October, just as the leaves were turning golden, before tucking it away for its long Winter. I have given up coffee and I decline champagne in the boardroom, laughing when when a colleague asks me pointedly if I am pregnant again. But I feel contaminated by the memories, the body-that-was-not-my-body that will belong, for a time, if it sticks, to this perfect new human. How can I convince an embryo to make a home of this toxic wasteland? I don’t know how to be habitable.

But oh, beautiful tiny human, I want you. When I picture our future I can see you; the boys and their sisters are exploring the beach together, they are investigating the rock pools, gentle hands cupping tiny crabs, running strands of seaweed through their fingers, displaying to each other tiny treasures and then bringing them to you, our baby on the blanket, for your delight.  There was a time, a brief period, when I thought that we were done with babies; when our little boys played about our feet and I held our firstborn daughter and our end-on-a-high.  But you are missing.  I know that we are missing you.

We are silly, we are dreamers, but we have a name for you and when I say the word it conjures you.  You are a part of our future so absolutely that I cannot imagine a future without you; you are so real to us, tiny snowflake, that it terrifies me to imagine that this transfer could fail, that your perfect cells could cease to divide and come to naught inside of me, that the magic could end long before its time.  It makes me afraid of myself; afraid of my body.  I love the scientists that have crafted our family; I love the researchers, the embryologists, the nurses and the doctors, I love the wonder of petri dishes and your first, perfect photo; a frozen-in-time image of the you before you.  But I am frightened of myself; I am frightened that I will fail you.

We are the luckiest.  We dreamed a dream and it was realised; two daughters and two sons, Blyton-esque.  There are mornings where I lay in bed and I can hear them telling each other stories, laughing together, and my own incredible fortune catches my breath in my throat.  I don’t know how to be more grateful than I already feel; my life often feels like a storybook, a fairy tale, a beautiful modern love story.  I find that I am always waiting for the bubble to burst, I feel that I do not deserve you – but you cannot be justified or qualified, my tiny supernova.  You are simply missing, and I cannot wait to find you and for you to join us.  And I hope so much that when we transfer you next week, you are the blastocyst that chooses to stick around and complete us.