I always knew I wanted to have kids, ever since I was a kid myself. My friends and I would push our baby dolls around the house in prams, jumpers balled up under our T-shirts to resemble the bulging pregnant bellies we saw on the women around us. As a teen, my fascination with pregnancy and babies remained, and I think my mom worried I was obsessed enough to try it out for myself. But I wasn’t ready yet, there was still too much to learn. All of it fascinated me. The very fact that you could grow a whole person from scratch, just two silly people fumbling around in the dark and then bam, a whole new being is created. Now, I’m not religious, but there was something truly magical about that. I read everything I could get my hands on about pregnancy and childbirth, but even still when I would stare at pregnant women on the bus or at the supermarket I could never quite believe that there was actually a baby in there.
It didn’t surprise anyone when I ended up becoming a fertility scientist. Studying the intricacies of conception, that sacred moment. I had toyed with the idea of becoming an obstetrician but the horrible hours and the screaming put me off. Don’t get me wrong, birth is wonderful and magical and special but it’s also pretty damn full on. I didn’t need to get my hand broken every time someone wanted an epidural. So, fertility science it was. I excelled at university. It was easy really, I had been learning everything I could about fertility, pregnancy and birth since I was ten. So, it came as quite a surprise when the actual task wasn’t as easy as I had imagined.
I don’t mean the job, no that was perfect. I loved being a scientist, learning more every day about the intricacies of where we all began and knowing that the work I did would really help people. I could make a baby in a Petri dish with my eyes closed, but when it came to making my own baby, we stumbled. Well, I guess I stumbled.
I met Tim about six months after I graduated. He was shy and funny and just the right amount of nerdy by which I mean that he dressed well but he liked to watch weird indie films with me. We talked, we clicked and that was that. We were not ones to rush into things, but it was always just so easy with him. Comfortable and secure. I know that probably sounds boring to some people, but to me it was perfection. I didn’t need some high-drama romance with declarations of love on hilltops and then fights in party bathrooms. I wanted to come home and hear about his day and tell him about mine, to get excited about making a nice dinner on Saturday night, to be proposed to cosy in bed on a warm Sunday morning with the light scattering through the blinds. He was perfect. After four years together we got married. I was doing better than ever at work, bringing in more grants than any of the other researchers, but we both knew it was time for us to start trying. I was so naive then. I know all the stats, that even with perfect health and perfect timing there is only a 30% chance of fertilization each cycle. Every day I saw couples that couldn’t conceive, but somehow it just never crossed my mind that it would happen to us.
But it did, and the next two years were hell. I thought I had a pretty good understanding of what the couples I worked with were going through, but I didn’t. I had no fucking idea. Infertility is a hellish black cloud that descends over your life and your marriage and your very self. In the beginning, we were so giddy with joy and excitement. We picked out names that we liked and I dreamed of a beautiful baby with round cheeks that looked a little like me but mostly like him. I foolishly believed that our love was strong enough that it would just happen, just like that. But the first month it didn’t, then it kept not happening for month after endless month. Each month when my period started the pain would be just as sharp and painful as the month before.
We were somehow so hopeless, but hopeful. It seemed impossible but also inevitable that we would eventually get pregnant. We were young and fit, we ate right, we had sex on all the right days. I stopped drinking booze and coffee and I made sure I got enough sleep. I meditated. I did yoga. I became more and more desperate. I got a palm reading and got my chakras aligned. The scientist in me wanted to hurl at how stupid I was being but the future mother in me had to try, just in case. I became bitter and hateful, pulling away from family and friends. With each new pregnancy announcement on my feed, I died a little more inside until not one part of me felt like me anymore. I had believed that our marriage was strong, that tragedy would pull us together but instead it tore us apart and sometime around the two-year mark we stopped talking to each other. Our grief was the same but also so different. His was sadness but mine was rage. Rage at how fucking unfair this was, and rage at my body for not being able to do the one thing I asked of it. I know I wasn’t the only one to deal with this pain, but it was so lonely, so isolating. I let myself sink into it. I know some people struggle to understand what I eventually did, they think they would never do something like that. Well, you can sit up there on your high horse all you want but until you have been to hell and back I don’t give a shit what you think.
So, my marriage was in tatters and I had isolated myself from my friends and family. I couldn’t even speak to my parents anymore after one too many times being asked “When are you going to give us a grandbaby?” What was I supposed to do?
The only thing going right in my life was work. I had been leading a team in a world-first study on the ability to grow human embryos in vitro beyond the accepted 14-day limit. With ethics so strict, we were unable to push the research as far as we wanted, so we mainly focused on embryonic degradation modelling to determine how long they could theoretically last. Now, I had always been a conscientious scientist, strict on the rules and protocols. But like I said, the last two years had changed me. I am honestly surprised the thought didn’t cross my mind sooner. It was easy to do really, we still had 3 embryos frozen. Our future babies. Only my uterus seemed not to be the home they wanted.
I waited impatiently until the end of the year, when most of the staff went on leave for Christmas and it was just me and the duty security guard in the lab. There was no one there to catch me, but I still felt like I had to tip-toe around the lab, jumping at every noise. Holding my own embryos in my hand was a surreal experience, I could almost see who they would be. Him, blonde and good at math like his dad, her, more mousy brown with a passion for books. I picked one at random, holding my breath as I pipetted the microscopic dot onto the tray. How could something I couldn’t even see hold so much promise?
It thawed and I waited.
I slipped it into the growth medium.
It grew and I waited.
It grew and I waited.
Under the microscope I could see the cells dividing, my baby growing.
Our baby.
At 14-days I knew I should stop, but how could I stop now? I could already feel who he would be. Perfect, in the imperfect messy way that the people we love are. I was already in too deep.
At 15-days I snuck him home. It wasn’t easy getting a petri dish all the way out of the building and into my home office in the basement, but somehow I managed. I slipped him into the incubator that I got for preparing samples while working from home during covid. I told myself that it would just be a few more days, that I just wanted to spend a little more time with him, with the potential that he held. But really I already knew that wasn’t true. I had already started researching.
See, the ethics of IVF are complex and very well-regulated, but it wasn’t always like that. In the early days, as always happens with scientific advancements, science rushed forward ahead of the laws, and some scientists did things that you would never get away with now. A team in the UK grew sheep fetuses in artificial wombs until they were nearly full term. Advances like that could change the very face of fertility medicine, but the religious fanatics put a quick stop to what they saw as “messing with nature.” But what if it was just improving nature? After all, nature left my womb barren and empty, how could that be right?
So I read, and I read and then I began to gather my equipment. It was easy enough with access to a world-class laboratory. Even with the Christmas break over most staff were on extended leave to see family or focusing on office work to get their grant applications in for the new year of funding. I took in a large handbag and smuggled home a few new things each day. Beyond our thrice monthly timed intercourse Tim and I were still not talking and he knew never to set foot in my lab for contamination reasons so I was basically free to do as I pleased. Turns out it isn’t even that hard to build-a-uterus. All I needed was a few gallons of growth medium to act as the amniotic fluid, basically a large cellulose-based bag for the womb and a gas compressor to provide oxygen. The rest was just tubing and a heat source.
I think I just got so caught up in it I never stopped to think. I always convinced myself it was just another day, I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him yet. But he continued to grow, and I continued to wait. The invisible lump of cells became visible. He continued to grow, and I continued to wait. He grew a little tail and arm buds. When I first saw his tiny heartbeat through translucent skin I gave him a name, Adam. It seemed fitting, the first of his kind. A human of course, but grown in a whole new way. He wasn’t without his mom though, I was there every step of the way. When I stopped going to work they called and emailed, but I just ignored them. I had more important things to do now.
He continued to grow, and I continued to wait. I checked the tubes and the monitors, I topped up the growth medium. He began to move, and when I placed my hand gently on the bag I felt him kick, just like I would have if he was growing inside me. I knew that there was no going back now. How could I stop this? He was perfect, and he was mine. He was everything I had ever wanted.
As we approached 40 weeks I knew I would have to tell Tim. He must have suspected something, with me only occasionally emerging from the basement to eat and sleep but I don’t think he could have ever imagined what he would see when I lead him down the stairs, his hand in mine. I had considered the possibility that he would be mad, so mad that he would call the authorities and get me thrown into jail. He wasn’t a scientist but he knew the importance of ethics in my field. And most people would find a human baby growing in a glorified plastic bag at least a little horrifying. I had never considered that he would just leave. When he saw what I had done, what I had created just for us he walked back up the stairs without a word. I heard him pack and leave and that was that. I waited a few days, expecting the cops to come knocking but they never did. After all we had together he at least gave me that.
Adam was born on a Sunday in June, a warm but cloudy day. His birth was quick and easy, nothing like the pain and suffering I had seen so many others endure. I snipped the side of the bag with scissors and used my hands to tear it apart. The fluid rushed out, spilling loudly onto my pants and the floor as I scooped him up into my arms. He took a few seconds to cry, but I didn’t doubt for a second that he would be okay. We looked at each other, finally without the murk of the bag between us, and I knew that I had done nothing wrong.
Being a mom was everything I had imagined. He was perfect. He had a fierce cry that could probably wake the dead, but when he was snuggled up in my arms nothing else mattered. Of course, I missed Tim, I had imagined we would be doing this together and I was heartbroken that he never got to meet his son, but maybe he just needed time to adjust. And of course, there were some practical issues like my lack of milk (thank god for formula) and how I was going to get him a birth certificate, but I could figure all that out. For now, everything was just right.
And it stayed just right for a long time. I managed to pay to get him fake papers, and he continued to grow and thrive. He reached all his milestones right on time, crawling and then walking with such a cute little waddle. It was mostly just him and I exploring and figuring it out together. I reached out to Tim but I never heard anything back, and I had already driven everyone else away. But I didn’t need anyone else now, we were happy in our own little world. It wasn’t until he started daycare that I started to worry. It was little things at first, biting another kid in his class or lashing out at his teachers. I thought he was just adjusting to a new environment. It had been just the two of us for so long, of course, he needed some time to get used to being around so many new kids and adults. I took the time to talk to him about his behaviour and reward him when he had a good day, but the calls from the teachers became more and more frequent and eventually, they told me he couldn’t come back.
I told myself I didn’t care, that they were obviously a shitty centre if they couldn’t even manage a 4-year-old. It’s common for kids to have behavioural issues at that age, we would get it figured out. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I began to wonder if this whole thing had been a big mistake. To wonder if maybe there was a fundamental need, beyond what science could yet understand, for a human to grow inside another human. My life is based on facts, I had never stopped to consider that maybe growing someone in a plastic bag would mean they were missing something vital. Some part that made them truly human.
I woke in the night to a noise. Someone was in the kitchen. I slipped out of bed and into the room next to mine. I already knew his bed would be empty. As I crept down the stairs the dread was growing. It was a gut feeling I couldn’t place but I also couldn’t shake. Why was I afraid of my own son? I peeked around the corner, I didn’t need to turn the lights on, the glow of the fridge illuminated the room enough for me to see him. In his pyjamas, he looked so small. The blood dripped down his chin and onto the floor as he ate the raw mince from the tray, scooping handful after handful into his mouth. My skin grew damp and clammy as I finally understood. The teachers at his daycare centre had been vague about the biting, not wanting to go into details. But there had been mention of a young girl needing stitches. When I researched it, it seemed like biting was a fairly common behaviour in unsettled young children. I had thought it was because he wanted to meet his dad. But now I realized that wasn’t it at all. It was because he was hungry.
What the fuck have I done?