Watercolor Embryos

I’ve always had it in the back of my head that I wanted to do something with Olivia’s and Emelia’s embryo photos, but I didn’t know what. Then I found Embryo Designs on Instagram. She does watercolors of embryo photos and they’re gorgeous.

I knew this was it. This was the perfect way I could really preserve and display them. I’ve always been so amazed at these little embryos. Of seeing my babies in this state of miraculous development. Somehow, seeing them in watercolors makes them that much more breathtaking.

Olivia’s is a pink/orange color. The artist has so many color combinations to choose from, and I knew I could easily go down a rabbit hole, so I made myself decide fairly quickly. The pink is just perfect when I think of her.

Emelia, bursting out of her shell, is this mix of purples and blues, and the two embryos together just make me so happy. It’s crazy, looking at these watercolors and seeing the babies they became.

I’m so glad I have these. I’d love to do something like this for all my embryos I’ve lost in the seven IVFs we did.

These two. They were created at the same time in this lab in Houston. Olivia and her twin were the ones that apparently grew the best initially. Emelia and the other two siblings were all frozen together and they stayed that way, paused in time for four years. All six of these embryos hung out together in a petri dish and two of them grew into babies. And now they’re reunited. Science is amazing. It blows my mind. They’re back together, only now they’re sharing secrets and making each other laugh.

These photos are hanging in the hallway, so we pass by them multiple times a day. (No, this isn’t some retro wallpaper, though now that I think about it, that would look totally funky. It’s my living room rug.)

I love it. I don’t know how the idea came about to paint embryos in a mix of gorgeous watercolors, but I’m glad this was an option to really display them.