I Once Was An Egg
by Lori Ramsey

I live in a place that I’ve been all my life. In fact I’ve been here since my mother was born. My mother is someone whom I haven’t met yet on the outside. Ever since she was about 12 I’ve watched my sister eggs get to leave the cozy confines of our ovarian home. It’s a marvelous process really to watch them go, one by one. First they mature and grow larger then they get to pop out of the ovarian wall in a grand exit. It’s really quite beautiful.

Meanwhile I sit, nestled with some hundred thousand others just like me. I hear there is another home on the other side filled with more of us. Each month, year after year I have awaited my turn. As one of us gets lucky enough to make it to the ovarian wall, they are taught some wise teachings before being sent off into the unknown area. They always leave with hope of finding something. I patiently await my time.

Finally, I can hear my mother talk about wanting a baby. We all become excited – because this is our goal – to become her baby. Each one of us craves and wants that chance. But alas only one is chosen, only one is sent. As the months go by – and as one egg after another leaves our confined home, our mother becomes more anxious for that baby that never seems to be made. I wonder why the eggs that have gone before me won’t do their job.

Finally, the day arrives and I’m picked along with several others to approach the wall! With great eagerness I make my way to the wall, feeling myself grow with each step toward my freedom. Once at the wall we are hit with a burst of follicle stimulating hormone. This helps us to grow and gives us knowledge. I find out that if I make it outside the wall I must go down the long tunnel and sit and wait for my daddy to fertilize me. I’ll know him when I see him and I must allow him entrance into my own wall.

I look at myself and see that I’ve grown and grown and indeed have a nice outer shell that wasn’t there before. This hormone really helps me to get strong. Finally the moment I’ve waited all my life happens and I’m the chosen one to break free to my destiny. As the follicle I’ve been in ruptures it propels me into the tunnel, dark and covered with tiny hairs that help to glide me along, slowly and surely. I have one thing only on my mind as I leave the ovary behind me.

At first I feel a spasm in the tunnel, and then I see something looming ahead of me. I see him! I know him, for he looked right at me, swimming with all his might. My daddy has finally come to fertilize me! It’s truly going to happen. I settle in, waiting for my seed that will take me onward to a different life. Daddy approaches with his fellow companions. I feel him tapping my outer wall, as do his traveling brothers. I soften only for him as he bores his way through my outer shell.

When he breaks through I produce a substance that keeps his brothers from entering in with him. Then a most wonderful thing happens, I begin to divide. First I was 2, then 4 then 8, then so many I lost count. I began to slowly make my way toward the other end of the tunnel. I tumbled and floated, leaving my ovarian home a vague memory at the other end of the long tunnel. Gently I’m propelled along, through the grand opening into the vast expanse of what’s known as the uterus.

I finally float to a nice warm, soft spot and snuggle in. Then I begin to take the shape of something different. First I looked like a long narrow tube, split at the top, and then I began to form a head and body and buds for arms and legs. As my memory of my sister eggs begin to fade I become more aware of my new home. Something inside me begins to make a noise – thump, thump thump. And it’s constant. When my mommy had a thing put on her belly that amplified this sound so that all in the room could hear – she cried, I felt it.

The thump thumping of my heart grows stronger and stronger with each passing day. I now fill my new home, having sprouted arms and legs, quarters are tight. I grow and grow and grow. Until one day, suddenly, I have an urge to break out of my warm and now very snug home. I feel myself pressing onward, feeling immense pressure on my head. I hear the soft muffled cries of my mother as I move onward.

Squeezing through a very narrow space my mind flutters back, way back, to another place I once lived. I vaguely remember being a one cell egg, living within the confines of the ovary. I vaguely remember snuggling in, as I grew and finally busted out of my only home and floating aimlessly through the tube where I met up with my daddy. And as quickly as I vaguely remembered – I forgot.

Suddenly I was squeezed out of my mother and into a bright light – where my lungs were forced to breathe. There I met my teary-eyed and smiling mommy and my daddy, grinning from ear to ear. There I heard my first words on the outside “It’s a boy!” New sensations, all new things, my life is ever changing. But yet, way back in my mind in a forgotten corner I will remember that I once was an egg.

Lori Ramsey of Stages in Pregnancy

©2005 by Lori Ramsey