Apologies again!
I’ve had a few health
issues this past month, plus a work project that I’ve had to focus on, so the
blog has gone on the back burner for a while.
I’m not sure if you
heard about the storm that happened in South Australia a few weeks back. It was
one of the biggest we’ve seen and ended up with the entire state losing power –
some areas for more than 24 hours.
Hospitals and other
emergency services generally have backup generators, and so do IVF clinics.
After all – they have frozen embryos that need to be looked after.
Unfortunately one of
the IVF clinics in South Australia lost all power and couldn’t get it back before
they lost all of the frozen embryos. All of them.
They have offered free
cycles of IVF for all affected clients.
I cried for the
clients and the embryos when I heard this news. I was also very angry. I was
angry at the loss of the embryos, but also because to most people the offer of
another cycle was an acceptable way to make amends.
But, the loss of those
embryos, at least to me, is much more than a free cycle could ever compensate
for.
When we did our IVF
cycles we got to take home photos of our embryos. We have two photos and I’ve
kept them. I won’t ever part with them. Because they are our children. Had we
lost any embryos in an incident where power failed I would have felt that our
children had died – not just that embryos had been lost that can simply be
replaced.
Does that sound weird?
I would have felt that the clinic was being flippant about the loss of our
babies.
What do embryos mean? How
early is it in the cycle to say “they are our children”? For me, our embryos
were our children – especially given they were as close as we ever got to
holding our babies in our arms.
They were never just
embryos to me. In those tiny little beings there were already so many things
that were set – their eye colour, their hair colour, whether they would have
had Kirby’s eyes. Would they have been interested in computers or writing?
Would they have loved animals like I do? We’ll never know, but we’ll always
wonder.
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| Our babies... |
No doubt the different
clients of the clinic would be experiencing so many different emotions and
thoughts. For those whom IVF does not work for, will they forever wonder if one
of the embryos that was lost could have been the one? I often wonder about an
embryo that was not put in me because it was not judged as strong enough – could
that have been the one that made it? Again – we’ll never know.
All I can say is that
our embryos were the closest to our children that we ever got, and they were a
part of Kirby and a part of me. They were more than simply embryos – so much
more.
