‘I’m worried the pandemic has ruined my chances of having a baby’

After three happy years of being single, lockdown has created anxieties about meeting the right man in time to have a family, says Hayley  Mortimer
Hayley Mortimer: my biological clock has ticked louder during the pandemic
Matt Writtle
Hayley Mortimer11 March 2021

Lockdown when you’re single, female and aware of your biological clock is uniquely painful. For a year, give or take the odd month when the rules relaxed, it has literally been illegal for two single people to have any physical contact. It’s been an enforced year of celibacy. A year of life on hold. Twelve months of watching the chances of starting a family slip further away.

Isolating alone takes its toll when you have no one to hold when you’re watching the apocalypse unfold on the news. On a good day, you just about get by. On a bad day, all of your emotional reserves are gone and thinking about your future becomes too overwhelming.

Life’s big questions have consumed my thoughts during the pandemic. Questions I perhaps wouldn’t be asking myself in normal times. Would I be feeling so lonely if I had a boyfriend to be locked down with? Would my life have more purpose during the pandemic if I had a family to take care of? I’m 31, what if I run out of time?

We are raised to believe that female bodies are ticking time bombs and so I started to do the maths. We still have to wait until society returns to normal. I then have to meet and vet a potential partner, that relationship will take time to develop and that brings me closer to my expiry date — the stroke of midnight when my eggs turn to dust.

Deep down I know I still have time, but I can still hear the clock ticking. I have been single for three years following back-to-back toxic relationships, choosing to be on my own to focus on myself and my career as a BBC political reporter. But I’ve had zero choice when it comes to my relationship status over the last year and without that choice, the ticking is sounding more like an alarm.

Obviously, women don’t become infertile at the age of 35, but there is a gradual decline in the chances of a natural pregnancy and it keeps dropping steadily until you hit menopause. By the time a woman is 40, the chance of getting pregnant in a single menstrual cycle is five per cent. Depressing.

I also feel a sense of guilt worrying about my loneliness, relationship anxiety and future ability to have a baby during a global health crisis when lives and livelihoods have been lost, but I decided to post how I was feeling on Twitter. The response was overwhelming. I was not alone.

Hayley Mortimer: Covid has taken away all my reasons for being single
Matt Writtle

Single women who want children feel like they’ve spent the past year stuck helplessly watching their chances of starting a family slip away. They told me how the longer this goes on, the more they are losing their social skills and the idea of dating is even more daunting than before. They told me they’ve never felt so lonely, that they’ve only felt the human touch of a parent in their support bubble for the best part of a year and that the sense of urgency only gets worse as you move into your late thirties and early forties.

One woman said: “I know families are struggling too but I feel so envious of them and terrified that all this lost time has ruined my chance of having a family of my own.”

Another said: “I’m not even sure if I want kids yet but at 31, I want that choice to be mine and not that I’ve just run out of time.”

And another: “I feel completely forgotten about by the rest of society who have no idea how hard it’s been to live this last year solo.”

There was even a suggestion that single people should get the vaccine first. I don’t agree, but I do think that there should be more compassion towards single people and that decision makers should consider all personal circumstances when setting coronavirus policies, not just the traditional family nucleus.

Single women who want children have spent the past year stuck helplessly watching their chances of starting a family slip away

I know that I am incredibly lucky — I have a job that I love and my family are healthy. For many, this year has been much worse, but that does not invalidate the feelings of single people. We’re not competing against each other in the Misery Olympics.

Most men, of course, don’t have to hear the phrase “don’t leave it too late” when they express a desire to have children in the future. I have lost count of the times I’ve been reminded of my withering womb. But I’ve never felt such anxiety about it like I have during lockdown.

I first heard my biological clock soon after my 29th birthday. When I was a teenager I made a pact with my best friend, Ben, that if we were both still single and childless by the age of 30, we would have a baby together. Thirty seemed so old.

Of course, I soon realised how ridiculous this was. I was young and had plenty of time. In fact, I was happy being single. I was living a full life, travelling the world, focussing on my career, making memories with my friends and building a home for myself. I was proud to be emotionally secure on my own and I enjoyed having no responsibilities or commitments. It was liberating and I couldn’t see how a man would fit into my life anytime soon. But I also want to be a mother one day and knew this independent lifestyle couldn’t last forever.

Hayley is a political reporter for the BBC
Hayley Mortimer

I entered 2020 watching the fireworks from a rooftop in Brixton and promised my friends that I would spend two more years being selfish and then I would take dating seriously. I still had plenty of time. But within months, the world turned upside down and the clock started ticking louder and louder.

Covid has taken away all of my reasons for being single — I can no longer travel, I can no longer have fun with my friends and career progression has slowed down. Singledom has well and truly lost its lustre.

But there is now a light at the end of the tunnel and a roadmap back to normal. So here’s to all the single ladies and their biological clocks — may they start sounding a little quieter once again.

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