The One

The call came in the morning, when the air was still enough that every chirping bird outside my window seemed audible. I’d gotten up early, pacing while I sipped my coffee, waiting for the news. 

“One embryo,” the voice on the other end said. She didn’t pause before adding, “Come in tomorrow at 07:00 for the transfer. You have the instructions.” Then the line went dead.

The room tilted under my feet. 

One. 

I repeated it. 

One.

And I kept repeating it. Out loud, over and over again, all while actively reminding myself to breathe.

After weeks of injections and one medication mistake that had nearly derailed the first round of IVF, the doctors retrieved six mature eggs just 48 hours earlier. Back in Atlanta, our fertility specialist warned that we’d be lucky to get one to three eggs. Total. But in Israel, with a different protocol and a different doctor, six eggs had felt like we’d struck gold.

And then IVF math whittled itself down to a single possibility: One round. One embryo. One chance.

If you undergo IVF treatment, you’re subtly trained to think in quantities. More follicles mean more eggs, which mean more embryos, which means better odds. I had 12 follicles, which became six eggs, which became one singular embryo. 

The language of fertility treatment is always spoken about in plural. Even if you know deep down that one embryo is all that you need for a healthy pregnancy, it’s never enough. One is a number that you try not to become attached to because it feels too uncertain, and because it can easily become zero with a phone call and a bad lab report.

In Haifa, there is one IVF specialist who treats English-speaking patients through my health insurance fund. 

Just one. 

He’s a quiet, kind, humble doctor who has helped thousands of families grow but keeps his primary office in the mall, two doors down from the Samsung store. As the former head of IVF at the local research and teaching hospital, he’s the one that developed the particular combination of medication that we were using. He trusted it, and I trusted him because the data spoke for itself. His combined antagonist protocol had a more than 60% success rate in my age group with my hormone profile. We had hope, even though we knew that it might take more than one shot.

Some families freeze embryos to plan ahead, which buys them time and choice, but that wasn’t an option for us. With no embryos to bank for the future, we didn’t have a fall back plan. If this embryo didn’t take, we’d start over from scratch. Again, for what seemed like the umpteenth time.

After the transfer, the waiting that followed felt different from any of the treatments we’d tried before. With no backup plan, the time was interminable. As every hour stretched into days, the two-week wait seemed like it would never end. Every symptom felt like both a sign and the potential for heartbreak. 

When I finally learned that I was pregnant, I didn’t know whether to guard my heart by detaching and dissociating (something that I am extremely talented at, for better or worse), or let myself love the tiny cluster of cells without reservation. I chose a kind of guarded love and moved through the days like I was holding something delicate in both hands. I was afraid to grip it too tightly, but at the same time, I was equally afraid to let go.

One day at a time. 

One week at a time. 

Pregnant for now. 

This series of phrases became a daily personal prayer.

IVF in Israel has taught me how much hope can exist alongside a precise, clinical process. As I went through the treatments, there was another phrase that I kept coming back to: Kol HaMekayem Nefesh Achat. 

Originally, it’s a legal teaching from the Mishnah, where we learn that preserving one life is like preserving an entire world—because it is. It was written to remind witnesses in capital punishment cases of the infinite value carried by every human life. In short, human life must always be valued and protected. The first time I read about the concept was in a philosophy of religion course, but as I was doing a little light reading about ethics and IVF (for funsies, of course), it kept coming back to me.

Although I didn’t set out to be philosophical during those weeks of hormone shots and early‑morning ultrasounds, it took on a new meaning anyways. After all the waiting and fear and determination, I understood what it meant to fight for one life, feeling the weight and wonder of a whole world forming around it’s potential.

Now, as I get closer to meeting the life that I’ve grown and nurtured inside my body for the past 9 months, I think about that number again.

One. 

I think back to what my husband said as I was waking up from the anesthesia, groggy, after my egg retrieval: “We got six. All we needed was one.” 

Now, it doesn’t feel like something I should have been disappointed by—such a small number. It feels exactly like it was meant to be. Like this was always the way that our Science Baby would come into the world: not as one of many, but singularly as himself. One life so deeply wanted and longed for. 

He’s close enough now that I feel him with every fiber of my being, every movement reminding me that his arrival is just moments away. My hospital bag is packed. His bassinet is ready. We bought diapers and wipes and swaddling blankets to make his first days cozy and comfortable. Now, all we’re waiting for is to meet him. All the while, I’m holding onto this feeling—the barely perceptible line between before motherhood and what comes after—knowing that our world is about to tilt upside down, again, in the best way possible.

And knowing that it all began with The One.

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