The Dawn of Grace: A Gift From God

My mother pushed the ultrasound picture back across the table, angry. “I don’t want to see that.”

My sister was newly pregnant, but not from the old-fashioned method. She’d been given an “Embryo Transfer” and Mother was not too happy about it.

‘Snowflake Babies’

A lot has changed since my sister and I were born. My sister had “adopted” embryos that another couple had given up after their successful IVF procedure. My sister had numerous shots to build the lining in her uterus and then the embryos were implanted. According to my sister, “a person in a lab coat came in from a back door and handed them to the doctor. He hummed a song the whole time.” These babies are called “snowflake babies” because as embryos they were frozen. 

Mother admits she wasn’t nice to my sister, who already had four boys. “I would tell neighbors and friends who were my age and they would agree, ‘this is ridiculous.’” But she noted that the younger generation — millennials — looked at the procedure as “saving babies.” These were embryos that could have been destroyed, but their biological mom and dad chose to give them up for adoption.

Melting Mother’s Heart

When my sister needed another ultrasound, my mom took her. “When they came to take her back for the ultrasound, I asked ‘Can I go back?’” My sister told her “Yes, if you want to.”

It was at that point that my mother’s heart began to melt. She had worried about whether the baby would be healthy, especially since my sister had developed gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. But then my mother saw the baby, moving around inside my sister. “I was getting emotionally and mentally ready.” And they found out that it was a little girl.

‘Dawn of Grace’

Not long after, my sister began to have problems. She didn’t feel the baby move and went in for a check. The doctor rushed her back and performed an emergency C-section. The baby — named Aurora Grace — was born a month early. 

“Her name means ‘Dawn of Grace,’” my mother told me. “She’s the beginning of grace.”

Aurora Grace came home from the hospital to my parents’ house for a while, to let my sister heal. There was plenty of time for baby bonding with my mother and father.

My mother keeps Aurora Grace while my sister works, and the love she has for the baby is mutual. As she holds the baby in her arms, she is filled with guilt. “I’ll be rocking her when she’s sleeping and I look at her and feel so much guilt that I didn’t want her in the beginning. I’ve confessed it as sin over and over.”

As for the procedure that started it all, my mother says her thoughts about it have changed. “I don’t think many people know that this is an option,” she said. There are about 600,000 frozen embryos in storage, but only 6,573 embryos have been “transferred,” like Aurora Grace.

The Gift

Aurora Grace, interestingly enough, looks very much like my sister, her mother who carried her. She’s got my father’s temperament — my mom said she’s happy in the morning and cranky at night! She knows her “Ima” (Grandma) and “Mama.” And she’s a really strong-willed not-quite one-year-old. 

“We didn’t expect [her]. We weren’t going to get this one [grandchild] and look what we have now. … she’s definitely our Christmas angel this year.” 

My mother thinks about the connection between the grace Aurora Grace has brought into her life and the grace of Jesus’ birth for the whole world. “There’s no way I deserve to have this baby in my life,” my mother said. “We didn’t deserve Jesus — that was unmerited grace.”

Jesus was born as a baby conceived unconventionally, to say the least. God’s unmerited favor brought our Savior into the world as a tiny baby. We didn’t deserve His love. We didn’t deserve the salvation He brought to us. But we have it just the same, should we accept. 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. — John 3:16-17