To my third baby, whom I may never meet

My precious, precious third baby. I love you. I love you so very much. But I don’t know if we will ever meet.

Right now you are just five days old. Although your home isn’t my womb. It is an icy storage box in the IVF clinic freezer, and you are an embryo. 

You have two brothers, well technically you are triplets, conceived at the same time but given the opportunity to grow and become the amazing little people you are at different stages.

I think about you all the time though, and I feel you. 

I long to mother you

You are here but not here and so I carry you in my heart. You are a part of me and I am of you. 

I see you sleeping in the cot that we are holding on to, even though your dad and I know, deep down, that our family might be complete.

I see you toddling after your brothers through the sprinkler on a hot summer’s day.

I picture you cuddled up on the bed with your daddy and brothers reading a story.

I imagine you all grown up and visiting us for a quick cuppa on your way home from work.

And I wonder if you are a boy or a girl, but couldn’t care either way because you are just YOU. And I want to love, raise and get to know you. I really, really do. 

If things were different, you would be in my arms, this is an absolute certainty, I know. 

But they’re not. 

Life is tricky

Life is tricky for your dad and I and we are so very lucky and feel blessed to have had your brothers. But you? I don’t know if we are going to be afforded such good fortune again.

You see, I am unwell, not all the time but often enough.

The reason you were conceived through an IVF clinic in the first place was to spare you from inheriting a genetic curse that would make your life, as it has mine, challenging.

I have been able to find windows in my health, between major surgeries, tumours and battling losing eyesight and hearing, to have your brothers (and believe me, I am grateful), but that window isn’t open to me right now. And I don’t know if it will be again.     

But I want you to know, you are a part of our family. We created you. You exist! You are here. Just not with us.

I want to give you life  

If your dad (who desperately wants you too) and I don’t bring you into this world ourselves, then we want to still try to give you life.

It pains us to think about but we would consider gifting you to good people. Those who long to be parents but who can’t conceive, for whatever reason, but who will raise and love you as their own. We want to know these people though, and be assured that they are worthy of you because you are far too precious to us. We feel, for us, and it this is such a deeply personal decision, that we would rather do this than not have you grow up at all, or exist for an eternity in freezer storage.

But this scenario feels a lot like putting you up for adoption and I just don’t know if we can do that, yet. I do believe though that the people who love and raise us are our real parents, not the ones who pass down their DNA.  

But I will always be your biological mum. You may even inherit my curly hair, sensitivity, or your dad’s gorgeous brown eyes and inquisitive mind.

So until we have resolved in our hearts what path is best for you and also if we really, really, REALLY can’t have you, then we will continue to keep you frozen in time, for now, but not forever.

But my baby, please, please know that you are loved and also that you are wanted. More than you will ever know.

Your mum, whom you may never meet. 

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Note: Due to the personal nature of this article, the author wishes to remain anonymous.