The big day

(Guest post by Neil)

Last time I posted on here, I talked about the Father’s Day card I received last year. The day has come round again, and I am hopefully on the eve of, in a sense, finally becoming a father – though not (yet) father of an actual child I can hold in my arms. For tomorrow is the day we have been building up to for the last few weeks: the day of egg (and sperm) collection. By the end of the day, if all goes according to plan, there will exist one or more embryos containing both my genetic material and Cara’s.

It’s been frustrating watching everything my wife has had to put herself through to get to this stage, and not being able to share in her suffering or take it away. I really do have it easy – I hardly have to do anything tomorrow, but she has to undergo a procedure under sedation. And just to put her body in the right condition for this to happen, she has had to inject herself in the stomach every day for the last 10 days, and put up with the bloated feeling and other physical effects (while still working shifts of up to 14 hours at a time).

But the good news is we know it’s all been worthwhile, because Cara’s scan on Friday showed that the drugs have done exactly what they were supposed to, and her ovaries have been working overtime to produce eggs for fertilisation. After that’s happened, Cara will have a well-deserved rest from drugs and scans until the time comes for implantation – probably in August. If that works, we will then be facing the very real prospect of becoming parents to an actual screaming, burping, waking-you-up-in-the-small-hours human being.

I mentioned before how God used last year’s Catalyst Festival to tell me that fatherhood was part of his plan for me, despite my misgivings about my own ability. This year, at the same event, he reassured me that I am a good father – not will be, but am, because that’s who he has made me. Parenthood is going to be massively hard work for both of us, probably harder than we can begin to imagine. But we’re made in God’s image, which I reckon makes us pretty good parents.