baby

Dear Future Baby, I've cried in fear we may never meet.

 

Dear Future Baby,

We haven’t met yet, in fact in this very moment you only exist in my dreams, but you and I have so many things in common. One day I will be able to tell you how hard we tried to make you, how long the journey was, and how thankful I am that you are mine. I don’t know what you look like, but I hope you have my olive skin and not the fair skin of your Dad. I don’t know what your personality will be like, but your Dad hopes you have his easy going nature over my impatient stubbornness. What I do know my little Love, is that you and I already have so much in common.  Because as it turns out, fertility treatment has often made me act like an irrational toddler.

I know that when I tell your Dad that you had a tantrum at the supermarket and I was mortified because everyone was staring at me, he will remind me of that time through our second cycle of fertility treatment when I lost my shit at him in IKEA and stormed off because he said I was taking too long picking between two wine glasses, that looked exactly the same.

I know that when you are finally in my arms and you are screaming your cute little head off at 3am and neither of us can work out why, and you are getting more and more frustrated with me because I don’t know what you need, I will hold you, sing to you, do whatever I need to do to make you feel calm because I will remember that it wasn’t that long ago I also lay on the floor crying and screaming out of pure frustration and nothing could settle me but love. And your Dad will be lying there thinking of all the times I woke him at 3am to tell him that I couldn’t sleep because I was worried I wouldn’t meet you one day, and I made him stay awake until I fell back asleep.

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When you are having a tantrum and throwing your toys at my head and I tell your Dad that if you do it one more time I might just throw them back he will casually say with a smirk on his face ‘hey remember that time you chased me around the house waving your injection pen at me because you were frustrated for no good reason’.

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When people are “gooing” and “gaahing” over you when we are out and about and wanting to hold and play with you, and you want nothing to do with them, I will remember back to when I wanted nothing to do with other people either. Back to when I refused to get dressed and leave the house because I was so tired, emotional and over everyone, that all I wanted was to be home and in my own company.

When you are refusing to eat the food that I am trying to feed you, after making it all from scratch and crying because you don’t like it or you want something else, your Dad will be silently laughing and thinking back to the time when my hormones made me so irrational that I sobbed just like you are now; because the hamburger bun slid off my plate and I refused to eat it and went hungry because I was too stubborn to give in.

When you won’t let anyone else near you and you don’t want to be with anyone else but me, when I can’t even fit a five-minute shower into my day because you can’t be away from me for that long, when all you want is to lie on my chest and be with me that will be ok, because I will know that there were days when I couldn’t be away from your Dad. That there were days when I needed him literally next to me all day every day, and that sometimes there’s only one person who can give you comfort and they make sacrifices that you don’t know about at the time. I will give that to you, even when it’s frustrating and I smell like three-day-old baby vomit.

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One day when we are driving in the car just you and I and all of sudden you are throwing up in my once clean car, and I can’t pull over despite the fact that you are crying, I’ll think back to the time that I was driving to work through my very first cycle of fertility treatment and feeling so ordinary and nauseous when all of a sudden I had to throw up in a three-day-old coffee cup because the traffic was horrible and I couldn’t pull over then either.

The facts on fertility. Post continues below.

When you are starring aimlessly at the little sheep mobile I already have for you, and you are so happy in your own little world, I will leave you be. I will know that sometimes zoning out and staring aimlessly at something brings comfort, for you that is a sheep mobile, for me that’s a TV playing a Keeping up with the Kardashians marathon.

When you are learning to walk and you’re clinging to the coffee table as we clap our hands and cheer you on, and you are too scared to let go because you are frightened about what will happen to you and if you’ll hurt yourself, I will encourage you and be there to pick you up when you inevitably do fall, because I know the feeling of being so terrified of letting go and doing something you know you have to but you just can’t bring yourself to do it. The night of my very first injection I held on to the metaphorical coffee table for hours before I let go and took my first step towards making you.

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When you are learning to speak, and you are trying to say your first word (please let it be Mum not Dad…pleeeease!!) I’ll know how hard it is to learn, because in making you I had to learn a whole new language just to be able to communicate with other girls like me. (It was a long TWW before I could POAS to see if the HPT said BFP or BFN…see, a whole new language).

When you have been crying for hours and I am at my wits-end and just don’t know what to do to make you feel better, I’ll know that this is how your Dad, your Nana and your Aunty felt when I was uncontrollably crying to them in true fear that you and I might never meet.

I haven’t met you yet, but I know you by heart.

Love your future Mum x

For more from Emily and her journey as she tries to conceive, you can read her blog, or follow her on Instagram.