I’ve been struggling with a very modern dilemma. The consent forms I received this morning require me to write a letter to my unborn children telling them about our family and why they aren’t a part of it. Tears dripped onto my keyboard and I couldn’t think how to begin. The reason for the paperwork is that my husband and I are considering whether to donate the two unused embryos from our IVF treatment to an infertile couple. The embryos are currently in frozen storage at the clinic where we had our treatment. It’s a shocking thing to say, but the cold reality is, we don’t “need” those embryos. We have two gorgeous children — our sweet boy (nearly three years old) through IVF, and our roly-poly, apple-cheeked girl (18 months), who was a happy surprise. Even if we were to want more children, we’ve demonstrated we could probably do it ourselves without going through the trauma and expense of IVF. And it is expensive. Anyone who tells you that a cycle of IVF costs £3,000 to £4,000 is misleading you. Admittedly, we went private, but including all the tests and drugs, our treatment cost £12,000 for one cycle. We can’t afford that again. Now, as I have chosen to stay at home looking after our children instead of going back to work, even the £300 per year we have been paying to keep the embryos in storage is increasingly hard to part with.

There are three options open to us (we’ve discounted the fourth option of keeping the embryos in storage for ever, because what would be the point?). We could have them humanely destroyed (which sounds too much like putting down a sick dog), donate them to research (where they’ll die, but at least they’ll be helping others), or donate them to an infertile couple. But when it comes down to it, the choice is stark: we either let our embryos die or we let them (potentially) become other people’s children.

How many of the 35,000 women who undergo IVF treatment in the UK every year consider this scenario? Very few. There are no official figures, but from our clinic, which treats several hundred women a year, there are only four couples in our situation. Most people use up their embryos during the course of their treatment. We were lucky to produce several viable embryos in the first place, then luckier still to need only one cycle of treatment; most people require three or four. And if I’m honest, even if we’d been told about the possibility that we could find ourselves in this situation down the line, I know we would have gone ahead anyway. When the months are ticking by, each one punctuated by a secret lift of hope that this might be the one when your future as a family starts, only to be sunk by that familiar dragging feeling in the belly, you’d do anything. You’re so focused on achieving that first pregnancy that anything beyond it just seems irrelevant.

For us, the IVF came as a relief: we felt we were finally able to take control and do something about starting a family. I didn’t mind the daily round trips to the clinic for blood tests, the nasal sprays to stop my cycle that made me feel bloated and dizzy. I was stoic about injecting myself twice daily in the stomach and thigh to kick-start my ovaries into overdrive and I even welcomed the costly IV drip treatment intended to stop my immune system rejecting the embryo.

And it all worked — first time, beautifully. I went into labour 10 days early, while my husband was away on a business trip. He flew back and just made it in time to see our beautiful boy sucked into the world by ventouse. When our baby girl was born, 15 months later, we joked about our Bogof baby (buy-one-get-one-free). Lately, though, it hasn’t seemed so funny as we’ve considered the fate of their potential brothers and sisters. I’ve always been pro-choice and, after all, the embryos are just collections of cells with no consciousness. Yet, that thought doesn’t lend any comfort now; it feels far more personal than that.

I think I want to give the embryos a chance at life — and an infertile couple the chance of being parents. I know the desperation they feel; I’ve been there. Yet, what if they aren’t good parents? Egg, sperm or embryo donation isn’t like adoption. The recipients aren’t screened for six months and every aspect of their life examined to see if they’re suitable. As long as they’re of the same race and can pay, the embryos could be theirs. They could be criminals, racists or drug addicts. If a child is born, the parents could be abusive, or simply not love them enough.

The child (or children) may be told about us, their biological parents, or they may not. What if they came looking for us when they were 18? They’re legally allowed to now, hence the family information and the letter. At first I thought that would be great, but then I began to worry. Would that mean they hadn’t been happy with their own parents? Would something have been missing from their own lives that meant they had to seek us out? For all that, I have felt that this would be the option I am most comfortable with. My friends think I’m “brave” (meaning foolhardy?), my husband is still unsure. He doesn’t know if he can bear the thought of the siblings of our own children being out there somewhere. He might be for ever looking for them in the street.

Our IVF clinic offers free counselling to people in our position. My husband tried it and it helped him make up his mind. He didn’t want to put our own children in the difficult position of knowing they had a brother or sister that they may not meet. Or may meet — imagine them spotting their doppelgänger in the street and wondering if they’re the lost sibling. My husband was also wary — in this climate of lost dossiers — of having so much of our personal information sitting in government files. Donation has to have the agreement of both parents, so I couldn’t go ahead without him even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t try to change his mind. The embryos are going to research.

I’m secretly relieved. My conscience would never have let me reach that conclusion myself, but my husband has taken the burden of responsibility away. Does that make me the worst kind of coward, not fighting for my own flesh and blood? I hope not. I hope it just leaves us free to make the most of the lovely family we’ve got, without living with a series of “what-ifs”.