Hello, you

An open letter to the alien living inside me

I am now at the stage of pregnancy where everyone feels ok to comment on how massive I am without the risk of me bursting into tears and saying I over-indulged at Christmas. My life is writing handover notes, checking the hospital bag list and watching the Winter Olympics obsessively.

“The Swedes mixed curling team absolutely messed up their 10^th end”, I say with authority. “Ilia Malinin must be feeling awful about that double salchow, but he’ll be back in French Alps 2030”, I agree with Robin Cousins. I don’t think Clare Balding has seen as much of the men’s downhill Big Air as I have, this year.

The good thing about the Winter Olympics is that they are the Summer Olympics’ extreme big brother: sure, you can run fast – but can you run fast on ice while you and other competitors wear shoes that could slice your arm off? You can vault over a high stick onto a cushion, but that’s nothing to jumping face-first onto a tray and careering down an ice tunnel. Pulled muscles? Try being airlifted off a mountain with a broken leg. All of this really takes one’s mind off impending childbirth.

Because, my little bump, I honestly do not believe (on the basis of the rest of this pregnancy) that you’re going to choose your arrival to make my life easier.

You gave us a couple of weeks’ excitement before throwing hurdle one at us. The most traumatic moment of mine and Daddy’s life arrived shortly after, when I woke up (from a dream about losing you, nonetheless) in a pool of blood. But we established that rather than you leaving us, my body was expelling – we’ll never know – but possibly an inviable twin. You, on the other hand, were clinging on for dear life. The most beautiful fuzzy blob on a screen I have ever seen.

From then on, you have made it very clear that you are here and staying put. Weeks 10 to 20 solid all-day morning sickness. A brief respite before weeks 20 to 25 brought nightly migraines, including one that had me hospitalised with dehydration. Another couple of weeks of feeling vaguely human and then the worst acid indigestion all day and night. Your growth caused a pulled muscle and cracked rib that resulted in an ambulance taking me to hospital because I couldn’t get a GP appointment and the call service couldn’t be sure I wasn’t suffering from preeclampsia (thanks, NHS). And then the acid indigestion returned. We basically own shares in Gaviscon now.

My life now (and probably until you’re here) is days of getting kicked followed by nights of two hours’ sleep interrupted by my stomach/chest being on fire or me needing a wee.

When people ask if you’re a boy or girl, I mainly think…Christ, I don’t even know if it’s human. The movements we see as you swim around my abdomen every evening more suggest you’re going to come bursting out of my stomach like the alien in Alien. It’s definitely more creepy than it is magical.

All of this is to say: I can’t wait to meet you. Not because I want this all to be over, though. Because I have wanted you for so long. And loved you for so long.

Because you’re an IVF baby, we’ve been hoping and waiting for you for nearly four years. You have been every egg I’ve stimulated and the two embryos we transferred that didn’t stick. In creating you, we have known you since you were an egg that I was growing each day with injections. Daddy sang to you every day to grow. When you were ‘collected’ with the other eggs, we prayed for you to become a five-day blastocyst. We waited on the edge of our seats for a month hoping for news that you didn’t have a genetic condition.

We prepared my body with more medication to create a nest for you and waited to hear that you’d thawed properly and were ready to try joining us. We spent the longest two weeks of our lives begging you to implant while I drank beetroot juice by the litre and Daddy sang more songs to you to encourage you to latch.

You implanted. Daddy has sung to you every night since then too, to encourage you to grow. The man can’t carry a tune, but he hasn’t missed a song since you were an egg. I have read to you for every day of being pregnant. You have been part of our family since before you were even a blastocyst.

IVF is long and challenging. But at the same time, it has meant that we have known you and loved you for longer than I’ve even been carrying you. Pregnancy is hard, but you have been so desperately wanted that every pain, every moment with my head in the toilet, every baited-breath trip to the hospital has been worth it a thousand times over.

I know enough women who have given birth that I am well aware that it rarely goes to the exact letter. It may be exhausting, painful, even scary. It feels like throwing myself headfirst down an icy tunnel, not knowing how to navigate each turn, with very little to hold on to. But even as it creeps up on me, I’m not scared anymore.

On the other side of labour will be you. And we have known you and loved you for a long, long time now. And we can’t wait to meet you properly.