My child.

When I met Rafal I didn't immediately know that he would be the father of my children. A bit clumsy, a tad too loud, although very charming. I took a liking to him and he courted me a lot. As far as I was concerned, he was a 'beta male'. He didn't have that alpha element in him that always attracted me to men. However, he won my heart - with his upbringing, his personal culture, his sense of humour and his care for me. Every day I realised more and more that I wanted to have a child with him.

After two years of relationship we started to think about offspring. For the first year, we only and as far as not securing each other. Nothing came of it. In the meantime, his brother's baby was born. His whole family was in love with the baby. There was no end to the delight and I was getting sad. They could go on for days listing which body parts, facial expressions and behaviour the baby had inherited from its dad and which from its mum. - He takes after Christopher's feet. Identically crooked big toe - laughed father-in-law. - And her eyelashes are like Aśka's, so thick and long. Beautiful. Beautiful. - my mother-in-law was delighted.

After two years of trying, we finally decided to go to an infertility clinic. First the tests. It turned out that Rafal had great results, both general and semen tests showed that the problem was not on his side. With me, the diagnostics were a little longer. However, the tests confirmed the doctor's suspicions. My ovarian reserve - despite my young age, as I had just turned 30 - was very low, in fact negligible.

First the crying. Pain and grief. I blamed myself for not giving my beloved a child. I even wanted to walk away from him so that he could arrange his life and start a family with someone else. Today I think that I didn't really want to leave. I wanted him to keep me. For him to say that our love was the most important thing and that we would get through this. He did. It was as if he read my mind.

We started talking about adoption. For the time being, without revealing our problems or ideas to anyone. Then, while searching for information on the subject, we found an article by a doctor from one of the infertility clinics about egg cell adoption. Admittedly, this solution had previously been suggested to us by a doctor, but mentally I think I had dismissed it because I didn't remember it.

We made a decision. Oocyte adoption was - I am speaking subjectively here - the better option for us. Genetically it would be my husband's child, and I would carry it under my heart for nine months. After all, it must give birth to a bond - I thought.

We started trying and looking for a donor. At Invimed, this procedure took a really short time. A few months later we were listening to our baby's heartbeat during an ultrasound.

We didn't tell anyone in our family or friends about our problems or the adoption.

Today the grandparents are still shouting at each other about what our daughter has inherited from her dad and what she has inherited from her mum. - She has such a nice bite from Ania, Rafał always had problems with it. - She walks like Ania! - Just like Ania puts her hair behind her ear! - You can't pluck a gene! - These and similar phrases resound in our family homes when we drop by to visit with their beloved granddaughter.

Matilda is our daughter. Mine and Raphael's. Although she was not born from my mobile phone. She was born from my heart, under which she spent 9 months. She grew up in my love, which I have surrounded her with for 5 years. This is more important than genes. From the first day I heard her heartbeat and the moment we met as she lay on my chest just after birth I knew she was MY baby.