The gloriously absurd reality of making a test tube baby in your 30s

"So," my Great-Aunt Maureen leaned in over a plate of increasingly stale buffet sandwiches at a family wedding, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Are they test tube babies?"

I looked down at my twin girls, who were currently attempting to eat the same soggy breadstick from opposite ends. I considered explaining the intricacies of modern assisted reproductive technology, but instead, I just nodded. Maureen looked vaguely disappointed, as if she expected me to unbutton their cardigans to reveal tiny barcodes stamped on their collarbones.

Let's just demolish the biggest, most persistent myth right out of the gate: there are no test tubes involved in making a test tube baby. I know, the phrase conjures up images of glowing green cylinders in a subterranean laboratory run by a bloke in a lab coat who laughs manically during thunderstorms. The reality is far less cinematic. They use a shallow, entirely unglamorous plastic petri dish that looks like something you'd use to grow mold in a year 8 science class. If you're going to endure the physical and financial bruising of IVF, you at least hope for some cool glassware, but alas.

The whole process of creating a baby in a dish strips away every last shred of dignity you didn't even know you were clinging to. You find yourself speaking a completely new language. I was on a late-night forum once, bleary-eyed and desperate for success stories, and saw someone refer to their frozen embryo as an "e baby." It sounds like an abandoned dot-com startup from 1999, but when you've been staring at clinic invoices for months, the terminology just sort of seeps into your brain.

A fridge full of hormones and zero dignity

Before the actual laboratory part happens, there's the small matter of the drugs. We had to clear out the bottom shelf of our fridge—evicting my expensive craft ales and a half-eaten wedge of mature cheddar—to make room for thousands of pounds worth of injectable hormones. My wife, who previously couldn't watch a medical drama without fainting, suddenly became a sharpshooter, casually jabbing herself in the stomach while watching Bake Off.

Our consultant, a man whose glasses cost more than my first car, tried to explain the science to us. He drew a graph about age and success rates that essentially looked like a terrifying ski slope of despair. From my hazy understanding, after you hit your mid-thirties, your chances drop quite dramatically, which is exactly what you want to hear while handing over your credit card. He muttered something about blastocysts and cell division, but the main takeaway was that we needed to produce a lot of eggs, and I needed to produce a... well, a sample. The less said about the windowless room where I had to provide said sample, complete with its sticky leather chair and stack of vintage magazines that looked like they'd survived the Blitz, the better.

The absolute hellscape of the two-week wait

Nothing the clinic tells you adequately prepares you for the Two-Week Wait. The TWW is an exercise in psychological torture that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. You suddenly become hyper-aware of every single bodily function. If my wife sneezed, we spent an hour debating if it was an "implantation sneeze." If she felt tired, it was obviously a sign of early pregnancy, completely ignoring the fact that the woman was pumped full of enough progesterone to sedate a racehorse.

Our house became a prison of banned activities. Google was only forbidden because the internet will tell you that a mild cramp means you're either pregnant with triplets or you've terminal appendicitis. We banned hot baths. We banned lifting anything heavier than a mug of decaf tea. I spent those fourteen days walking around on tiptoes, convinced that if I slammed a door too hard, the tiny clump of cells we'd just spent our life savings on would simply fall out.

By day ten, the bathroom bin was overflowing with early response pregnancy tests, all of them dismantled because I was using the flashlight on my phone to check for a second line that existed entirely in my own fevered imagination. The tension was so thick you could carve it with a bread knife.

The embryo transfer itself? Basically a five-minute speculum situation where a polite nurse checks your name tag and then you're sent to Costa Coffee to await your fate.

If you're currently in the middle of this waiting game and panic-buying things for an impending arrival just to feel some sense of control, maybe just browse Kianao's organic baby essentials instead of googling signs at 3am—it's significantly better for your blood pressure.

What the doctors actually tell you about long-term health

Once the girls were actually born, looking like furious little aliens covered in cream cheese, the anxiety mutated. Were they going to be fundamentally different because they were conceived in a dish?

Our pediatrician, Dr. Evans—who looks like he just finished his A-levels but apparently holds a medical degree—squinted at them during their first check-up. I essentially word-vomited all my fears about epigenetics and low birth weights that I'd read about in a panic. He looked at me, sighed, and said they were perfectly healthy, entirely normal, and just as likely to catch horrific nursery plagues and wipe their noses on my trousers as any other child.

He mentioned that the slight statistical risks linked to IVF are almost entirely tied to the fact that the people doing IVF are usually older and dealing with underlying health issues anyway. It’s not the petri dish that’s the problem. It’s the fact that I've a bad back and my knees click when I stand up. So, instead of worrying about the long-term effects of the laboratory culture medium, I should probably just worry about how we were going to afford shoes for two rapidly growing humans.

Stuff that actually survived the first year

When the twins finally arrived, we were inundated with gifts, mostly from people who had watched us suffer through the fertility treatments and felt obligated to buy us things. It gave me a fairly ruthless perspective on what infant gear is really worth keeping.

The absolute lifesaver: I can't stress enough how much use we got out of the Organic Cotton Baby Blanket with Polar Bear Print. We brought the girls home from the hospital wrapped in these. It's genuinely, outrageously soft. More importantly, when one of the twins was having a meltdown at 4am, I found myself repeatedly stroking the little printed bears just to ground myself. It washes brilliantly, too, which is vital because it'll eventually be covered in milk, tears, and worse.

The one that's just okay: On the other hand, we were gifted the Handmade Wood & Silicone Teether Ring. Let me be clear: it's beautifully made. It looks like a minimalist Scandinavian sculpture. The packaging insists it's the pinnacle of sensory development. But my daughters? They couldn't care less. They will occasionally hold it, look at it with mild disdain, and then go back to furiously chewing on the TV remote or the strap of my messenger bag. It looks lovely on the nursery shelf, though.

The dark horse: I should also mention the Bamboo Baby Blanket with Colorful Leaves. I didn't think much of it initially, but bamboo fabric has this weird, almost magical ability to mop up vast quantities of drool while remaining cool to the touch. When the summer heat wave hit London and our flat turned into a greenhouse, this was the only thing I could drape over them that didn't result in two screaming, sweaty babies.

Ultimately, making a baby in a lab doesn't change the terrifying, sticky, exhausting reality of parenting. You still end up with a child who refuses to eat anything green and throws a tantrum because you won't let them touch the plug sockets. They just happen to be the most expensive free-loaders you'll ever meet.

Ready to stop reading my sleep-deprived ramblings and seriously prepare for the chaos? Shop our collection of organic baby blankets and get ready for the drool.

FAQs from the waiting room

Do IVF babies have more health problems?
Honestly, from what our doctor told us, no. The main issue is that if you transfer two embryos and have twins (like we did), they tend to be born a bit early, which brings its own headaches. But physically? My two are currently destroying the living room with the exact same terrifying vigor as their naturally conceived cousins.

Is the injections part really that bad?
I mean, I didn't have to do it, so I'm speaking as a bystander here. But watching my wife endure the bloating and the mood swings, it definitely wasn't fun. The needles themselves are tiny, but the sheer volume of hormones makes you feel like an over-inflated balloon that might cry at an advert for life insurance.

What's an "e baby" anyway?
It's just internet forum slang for an embryo, usually a frozen one waiting for transfer. It sounds weirdly clinical, but when you spend 90% of your waking hours reading fertility subreddits, you start adopting the lingo just to save typing time.

How long did it take to work?
For us, it took two full egg retrievals and three transfers before anything stuck. The clinics tell you it's a numbers game, which is infuriating when you're the one playing. Just know that it rarely works on the first try, so prepare your wallet and your mental state accordingly.

Should I buy stuff before the transfer works?
My advice? Don't jinx it by building a cot before you've got a positive test. But if you're the kind of person who needs to buy something to feel proactive, stick to a nice, soft organic blanket. Worst case scenario, you throw it in the cupboard. Best case scenario, you'll be wrapping a very expensive, very loud tiny human in it nine months later.