The pandemic put our BABY DREAMS on hold

For would-be mothers for whom the biological clock is ticking, this past year of lockdowns is time they can’t afford to lose. Here four women bravely reveal how...

Twelve months since the first coronavirus cases were confirmed in the UK, many of us feel as though we have lost nearly a year of our lives to lockdowns and restrictions.

Understandably, there has been much concern over the students missing out on the formative experiences of university life; the parents attempting to meet the impossible challenges of juggling homeschooling and careers; the pain of ageing grandparents unable to see their beloved grandchildren for months.

Much less talked about are the single women who feel their biological clocks ticking. For them, with dating near impossible and fertility clinics closed during the worst of the pandemic, a lost year could mean the difference between conceiving a longed-for baby or not.

In a normal month, the UK fertility sector carries out 6,000 IvF cycles — at the height of the pandemic this spring, almost all private clinics closed while NHS staff were redeployed to Covid wards.

All of us are finding our lives temporarily altered by forces outside our control but, for these women, the pandemic may have a far more profound affect.

Here four writers share their experience of a lost year of fertility...

MY IVF ATTEMPT WAS CANCELLED — AND SO WAS MY WEDDING

KATIE GLASS, 39, lives in Cornwall. She says: IT WaS my fiance who really wanted to have children, so perhaps this should be his ‘lost year of fertility’ because, when I left him at the start of lockdown, his chance to have children was also suspended.

Still, I am 39 years old (six years older than my now ex), and biology being what it is, the question of how, when and whether I can have children is a more urgent problem.

When I was with him, I was totally invested in the idea of us raising a family together. Practically, it made sense. We had the means to bring up a child and my fiance, who came from a big, extended family, seemed like he would be a wonderful dad.

I was more hesitant. But I was in love with my partner and romantically caught up in the idea that out of our love we could grow a new person that was a combination of us, to pour our love into.

We got engaged and, for two years, tried to have children (which is not exactly a hardship for a newly engaged couple). But when it didn’t happen naturally, I sought the help of, first an nhS doctor, then a private one to avoid waiting lists. I was 38 then, and conscious my age meant I shouldn’t wait.

a harley Street doctor prescribed me fertility medication, which I had just started taking before lockdown began.

once the pandemic hit, my follow-up appointments were cancelled. But, more significantly, a few months into lockdown, my fiance and I ended our relationship.

The break-up was shocking for both of us. We never fell out of love but, instead, the stress, miseries and worries of lockdown left us too anxious and angry to go on.

When I walked away from our relationship, I knew I was also walking away from the chance to have a child, which made the decision more heart-breaking.

after I left him, one friend suggested that I carry on taking my fertility medication. ‘you never know,’ she winked. But even if I planned to go out and get knocked up by some random man (I didn’t), lockdown made it impossible to date, let alone have sex.

at times it hurts, thinking that this year I have given up my last chance of having my own biological baby. I torture myself thinking of the day I will see my ex-fiance and his children by someone else.

Still, there are other ways to become a mother. I have had serious conversations with a very close gay friend about how we might embark on IVF together.

more interesting, to me, is the possibility of adopting. I had a difficult childhood and I like the idea that my background might enable me to give understanding, love and encouragement to a young person who has had a difficult start themselves.

enquiries to adoption charities have boomed over lockdown and, though those services are curtailed right now, they’re not shut completely. you can start the process but, because no one can meet in person, you can’t complete it.

When some friends consider the prospect of childlessness, they find it agonising. as for me, I vacillate between wondering about the special bond motherhood brings and thinking there are other ways I can better give back to the world.

THERE’S NO MAN, SO I FROZE MY EGGS INSTEAD

CHARLOTTE SMITH*, 38, lives in London. She says: IT’S the three little words no woman hopes to hear after a first date: ‘I’ve got symptoms.’

Reading the Whatsapp message, I could almost have laughed. The challenge of trying to find a life partner — no easy task at the best of times — has taken on a level of difficulty that has crossed into the absurd.

after a positive Covid test, my date later let me know he’d recovered, but my chances of starting a family any time soon aren’t looking so healthy.

Last march, as it was becoming clear just what kind of restrictions would be placed on our lives and, crucially, how long they might have to stay in place, I admit that what it meant for me personally was foremost in my mind.

‘I’m not going to be able to meet anyone,’ I cried down the phone to my mother. Shallow as that might sound, I was brutally aware of what was at stake.

every woman at the tail end of her 30s who wants children is more than familiar with what I think of as the maths of doom: ‘If I met someone now, we’d have to be together for so many months as a minimum before we might start to try...’

With most of my contemporaries settled with families, pre-virus I was already using dating apps to

‘The pandemic removed the chance to meet someone organically. Now there’s a blanket ban on dates’

meet men, like most of my (few) still-single friends.

But what the pandemic has done is almost completely removed the chance to meet someone organically. gone is all the social churn — nights out, weddings, parties — that might throw you into the path of someone new, a friend of a friend, or even a stranger.

That has left single women such as me with dating apps alone — and now, of course, a blanket ban on meeting anyone new in the flesh.

So, as another birthday passed in the summer, I decided to freeze my eggs. after I started to investigate the procedure seriously, it all happened remarkably quickly: an