Elizabeth Day on Making Peace With Not Becoming a Mum

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1:36Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of Happy Mum. I know I say that I'm excited about guests a lot, but I am so excited about this week's guest. It is the incredible Elizabeth Day. If you've not listened to her podcast, How to Fail, where have you been? Where have you been since the, you know, over the last eight years of podcasting. It's amazing. I have so many memories of COVID actually walking up and down our drive because we couldn't go out anywhere else and just literally having loops, just listening to her episodes, which are just absolutely incredible and highlight to everyone that there are moments in life where we feel like we've failed, but actually, what is failure?

2:19Looking at that, it's kind of what is failure? And actually, it's quite often it opens up the door to so many other things happening and we cannot go through life without that failure. So it's about embracing it in lots of ways. One of the catalysts for Elizabeth starting that podcast is her journey through fertility of trying to have a baby, something that she tried to do for 12 years. She had three failed attempts of IVF. she went through three miscarriages and this is something that she has documented so much along the way and it felt like this was the perfect place for her to come on and talk more about that time and I've done so much research and I've heard Elizabeth talk about bits of this over the years but to have her here today I get emotional in this chat just hearing her speak and talk and be so eloquent about something that is so deeply personal that affects so much of us.

3:21I think as women, we carry so much weight when it comes to fertility, when it comes to having children, when it comes to doing what we have been told is the thing that we are here to do. Obviously, over the years, over the decades, we can take that apart a little bit and realise that that's nonsense. But there's something ingrained in so many of us that feel that without that, we have no purpose. We don't have the direction that so many other people have. So talking to Elizabeth about the end of that fertility journey, about learning to live life in a very different way and finding happiness, not just peace with the fact that she's not become a mum in a biological, conventional sense, but happiness with her life.

4:10It's amazing. I loved this chat so much. so much so that she was actually on to talk about one of her books because she's an amazing I haven't told you anything about her career other than how to fail she's she's an amazing author and one of her books the party has actually been turned into um a series by tv I was meant to be telling you all about I was meant to be asking her that and I've not told you it we don't talk about it at all because we're just talking about other stuff so here I am um so the party's on itv uh you can Watch it on ITV. There you go. That's the plug. That's done. Now just enjoy this chat with the incredible, funny, delightful, shining star that is Elizabeth Day.

4:56I want to get deeper rather than more and more available. Because I think for many, many years, like many, many women, I've seen being busy as a metric of worth and value. and so that's always been very important to me to produce and I know we'll get into it but I'm sure that's associated with the fact that I am not a mother and I feel that I have to compensate probably and make my place on this earth valid yeah but I definitely have got better at saying no thank you I don't want to do that rather than giving an excuse yes and rather than my default being yes absolutely I'll make that work even though I need to squeeze it in between five other things but but I but I still have a way to go and and it's yeah a total work in progress but if you are a people pleaser it's become one of those sort of trendy terms and what I mean by that is that you have for whatever reason maybe you've been taught to be like this by your upbringing by your generation, by your gender, that you put other people's perceived feelings or requirements or desires above your own.

6:08And you've been taught that that's kindness and generosity. And sometimes it is. But sometimes what happens and what happened with me is that I lost sight of my own feelings and desires and needs. And when you don't take time to get to know what they are, you can't show up as yourself. And so you end up getting into difficult situations and imploding relationships because you can't actually name the thing that you want or the person that you are. Let's go back to your people-pleasing ways and your childhood. Yes, let's do it. What was your childhood like? It was really varied. It was very varied.

6:42Yes, that's a good word for it. My parents are extraordinary people. They're unique. My father is an adventurer at heart and an explorer. At heart? At heart. He was actually a surgeon. Oh, wow. Yes. He wouldn't explore when he was doing an operation. But in his spare time, he would climb mountains and hike up glaciers and learn to fly and got his private pilot's license and then his commercial pilot's license just because he could. That kind of person. My mother was born in Switzerland originally, Swiss mother, father from Grimsby, someone who is of the world, very cultured, can speak many languages, pick up languages so easily and really believed in the power of travel and broad horizons.

7:29All of which is to say I was born in Epsom in 1978 and I spent the first four years of my life in that leafy enclave of Surrey. and then aged four my dad got a job in Northern Ireland which is where his mother had come from right and he got a job as a general surgeon at Atna Galvin Hospital in Derry and we moved out there as a family so me and my older sister 1982 was a troubled time for that part of the world and it only became more so so when we arrived I as a child got very used to bomb scares military checkpoints on my way to school and being the weird kid with an English accent who no one could quite place because we weren't a military family.

8:15Actually, we were doing something totally different and slightly mad. But at the same time as that was going on, we lived in the countryside. So a lot of the time, my life was like reading in a rhododendron bush and kind of helping look after our donkey. We had a family donkey and rowing on the river sort of opposite the house and things like that. So it was this really interesting mix. And then I went to secondary school in Belfast. I didn't have a particularly good time there. And I ended up getting a scholarship to a boarding school in England. And so that was my life from 13 onwards, where I was kind of in England term time, then I would go back to Ireland for the holidays.

8:55Throughout that time, even before that, when you were younger, did you look to the future and think about becoming a mum? When did that sort of become a thing that sort of, I don't know, became that shining star that we all gravitate towards? That's a profound question. And I've never been asked it before. It's such a good one. Because I can't remember ever thinking I wouldn't be a mum. Yeah. So it's not as though the idea came to me. And then I thought, yeah, that's me. And that's my purpose. I just imagined that that would be my life because that was the life I saw all around me and because my parents had a conventional family life with two daughters and growing up my sister was the one who was really good with babies and children and I never really was but I just thought well that's irrelevant because I'll have my own and so life ticked by like this and as I said I you know I grew up in the 80s and 90s.

9:59And at that time, the only sex education I had at that single sex girl school was don't whatever you do get pregnant accidentally as a teenager. It was inculcated in us. And it was because these amazing teachers wanted us to have the opportunities that they weren't afforded. So they taught us about the contraceptive pill, they made us put condoms on pieces of plastic, and that was it. That was the sex education. I was like, okay, right, I mustn't get pregnant. And so then I went to university and started having first of a few long-term relationships and I just went on the pill without even thinking about it.

10:40And I was on the pill for 14 years straight. Again, I didn't have a clue about my fertility. I really didn't. I find that so many of us have done exactly the same thing where you're so scared of getting pregnant, you go on the pill and you don't even question the fact that you're on it for such a long period of time and we have no idea what happens when we come off of it exactly there is no other medication that I have ever been on for that length of time and if I were I would 100 % question it but for some reason the pill it just it's just it was just a thing that we as women were lucky to get to do so I emerged from those 14 years and I am now married to my ex-husband and I think I'll come off the pill and I've heard so much about this fertility bounce and I think it's then that I start thinking very specifically about motherhood because at that stage I'm in my late 30s and so I'm aware that if I want this to happen no I'm not in my late 30s I'm in my late 20s my early 30s I'm aware that if I want it to happen and I always had this like niggling little granule at the back of my head which was saying it's not going to be easy for you so interesting isn't it like um and I thought okay well when I come off the pill I'm basically probably going to be pregnant within seconds so I need to time when I come off the pill appropriately so I'll get married first and by then it was I was sort of 32 and I came off the pill and it didn't happen did your periods come back they did come back yeah they did come back it took a few months but they absolutely did come back and I had a regular cycle but when I was confronted with the fact that it wasn't happening and it and then it didn't happen for two years and then I went to the doctor and then we started IVF for unexplained infertility which is just one of the least helpful terms ever that's when becoming a mother became ever more a guiding star in my life I was like no I really really want this so it was almost the inability to have it made made it so much clearer for me which just taking away the the the mother baby aspect of it we know in life when there is something that we're told we can't have suddenly that is everything yes and it is everywhere and that's all you see back to jacob elordi again oh god i really i'm joking i've actually i think i've got the ick finally so i'm really relieved yeah i watched weathering heights on a flight and um i mean this is total tangent and i literally for i i had to cover my face during some of those scenes because i was like i can't believe other people can see that i'm watching this and at the end i cried so much that's flights that will do that to you i know no i want to watch again i just want to my advice to you is to watch him um on the front row of the bottega catwalk show recently he's got this goatee which is i even though he's the most attractive man in the world joint equal with my husband that that goatee is just does him no favors in my personal opinion okay okay anyway back to your very profound question your yes exactly that and i think again when it's such a cliche, but for a sort of A-type people-pleasing perfectionist who was used to working hard and getting good results as a result of working hard, then to have biology throw this curveball and not to know really what I could do because it felt like the medical establishment didn't really know either.

14:18They were just sort of throwing lots of stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. And that is the world of fertility medicine. It's got better, but so much of it is still so under-researched and misunderstood that the advice was, okay, well, let's do a round of IVF and see where we get to. I imagine it must have been a big thing, even after the two years of trying, to even go to the doctors in the first place and say, something's going on, we need help. Yes, it was. I had a really nice GP at the time and they were great and did blood tests. And then that came back and said oh you've got low progesterone um so we think this is the next stage and so in a way it felt like a gradual step and in a way because of that a type personality i was like right well now we are getting information we can do something about it but it got more of a team at that point yeah it was soul crushing having unsuccessful ivf and i had it in 2014 so early 2014 and at that time and it sounds so crazy because it's not that long ago but it was a different era yeah I remember going to my local bookshop and trying to find a book that would help me understand IVF I knew one person who had been through it and I thought this is how ignorant I was it was I'd take a pill a day or something like that and there was nothing on the shelves there were lots of mum and baby books but there was nothing that spoke to the experience I was about to have.

15:51I'm so grateful to my one friend, Jenny, who'd gone through IVF, who was really my guiding light through the process, because it's so much more invasive than I'd imagined. And you are taking hormones and feeling slightly out of control of your own emotions. And it's like having another job because you have to go in every other day for scans and to have medicines tweaked. And And then that first round of IVF, you know, I only had sort of one follicle that seemed like it contained an egg and I only got one egg from it. And then that egg did fertilize and I had the embryo transferred. And so then at that stage, you think, OK, it's meant to be.

16:33And I'm technically pregnant now. And then you have the horrendous two week wait where the advice at the time was like, don't have any hot bars, which is one of my regular pleasures in life. Like, don't do anything strenuous. I just remember listening to a lot of audio books and just trying to get through that period of limbo and then to have the pregnancy test and not be pregnant. It's so crushing. And I did two rounds back to back. The second round, they upped the protocol. They upped the medicine levels. I got, you know, it was like six eggs, four of them fertilized. Two of them were deemed worthy of transferring.

17:08Again, I'm now technically pregnant with twins. And I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, this is why. And then that didn't work. And after that, I just felt so hollowed out and numb. It was that thing of not being aware how I was feeling, which I now understand in myself is a bit of a red flag for me. I'm feeling numb. It means I'm feeling very low. And that was a very tough start to 2014. yeah yeah and especially when you find the team and you're like right this is you don't I think when you're going on a journey like that you don't even question it because you're surrounded by people that know what they're doing yes and especially if you've not heard many stories of you don't know about how how it goes so differently for different different people yeah no exactly and and I always remember being treated by a male consultant and my experience you know my fertility journey lasted 12 years.

18:03And until the last two years, I was treated almost exclusively by male consultants, which I think is interesting, because some of them are absolutely wonderful. But even the best male consultant can't fully understand what it is as a woman to go through fertility treatment, nor can they understand the reality of miscarriage in going through it. They can have incredible empathy. But I think that's interesting that there's still such male seniority in the health service. And I should say that I did private cycles of IVF within an NHS hospital, because at that stage, I had stepchildren. And it's one of the cruelties of the IVF system in this country that if you I don't know if it's still the case, but I think it is if you're a parent you are not given the three free cycles of IVF that other potential parents would get but this male consultant when I came to the end of my second cycle and he was quite a sort of dry laconic individual and I had an appointment with him to talk about next steps and he basically was like there's very little hope for you and I said is that oh and I said oh do you think I should stop he was like I I would and I said do you have children and he kind of rolled his eyes he's like yeah be careful what you wish for and he then recounted this story about how he'd taken his kids to a supermarket and one of them had had a tantrum on the floor and he was like you know it's just so stressful and I I understand where he was coming from but it was so misplaced at that time and it really upset me and it took me years to process and it's never left me that exchange I remember it so acutely also it's completely about whatever was going on in his life and nothing about your experience and your pain 100 % and and talking about the sort of people pleasing and sort of oh I've immediately gone to what's going on for him yeah rather than what do I want to do next and how can I be supported in that and as I say fertility medicine has changed for the better in so many ways and if these conversations and my work around fertility has been a tiny part in making that happen I feel my life has meaning and I now know amazing people who work in that sphere and I have been treated by amazing women in that sphere and I'm so grateful to them.

20:39Even the language used? Yes, that was one of my major bugbears. That was one of the things that when I decided to start writing about it and decided to start talking about fertility, it was my friend Fran who first said to me and it was when I was having this cycle when the male consultant with the kids who was like be careful what you wish for, he said to me you're failing to respond to the drugs so we need to try something different and Fran said to me maybe you're not failing to respond to the drugs maybe the drugs are failing you and I was like oh my god I've never thought about it like that and then having had my mind open to that I started noticing so many other key turns of phrase that were the language of failure that as women and also as men but particularly as women I think we internalize so an inhospitable womb that was a phrase we used a lot my friend was told she had an incompetent cervix just the whole sort of failure aspect of it like it's your failure that you are not doing something that a woman in our eyes is biologically intended to do and that has changed and I have had many messages from lovely people who work in clinics who say thank you so much for saying this and we are deliberate in our use of language now fast forward many years and I had um a round of fertility treatment in a clinic in Greece and I was treated by an amazing woman and I'm sure many of your community might have been treated by her too so I'm just going to give a shout out to Penny at IVF serum in Athens and I remember the first phone consultation she had and I had a bicornuate uterus which might affect fertility it might not and it might trigger early miscarriage but we don't know because not enough research has been done into it because it's women's health we marginalize that but bicornuate uterus is a heart-shaped womb where you're born with a septum it's a genetic thing and I actually had an operation under Penny's care to remove the septum and I remember Penny saying to me in that first consultation over the phone your womb is like a beautiful room and there are these columns at the end of the room that are making one side of it that's sort of screening off one side of it and actually for your baby to grow into this beautiful room to have enough space we're going to take those columns out and just extend your beautiful room and I cried because I'd never had it explained to me like that I'd had it explained as something I had failed in and that needed to be fixed because it was a problem.

23:22And a very scientific approach that's wordy and from a textbook versus a human. Exactly that. So after that, those two rounds with the doctor with the unhappy life, where did that leave you? That left me a bit nihilistic, to be honest, a bit like, well, what's the point? I'm just going to let it all go. I am going to see what happens and I'm going to go on holiday with my then husband. And it's really annoying because you get such well-meaning advice, often from people who've had their children without any issue, saying, just relax, just stop thinking about it. And it will happen and just go on holiday.

24:08And why I say it's annoying is because that doesn't feel real. It feels like in the realm of fantasy, but also because we went on holiday and then I did get pregnant. And I'm like, that's so irritating. But it wasn't because I was relaxed. I actually think there's been some interesting research done into how IVF ran sort of stimulates your womb. And so sometimes you get pregnant afterwards. So we got pregnant naturally. And that was a... How did you feel in that moment? Great question. It was a bit of a head fuck if I'm allowed to swear on this part. Yeah, yeah, yeah. because I was coming to terms with it not being able to happen naturally and it was really unexpected and because I'd already had these negative experiences of a failed pregnancy it meant that I couldn't give in to uncomplicated joy and very sadly that pregnancy ended at three months I remember I was due to go in for my three-month scan and I started bleeding and then I had an emergency scan and I had what was called a missed miscarriage which was another term I hadn't heard before I was like oh I've even failed at miscarriage I've had a missed one where my baby had stopped developing and that was so devastating.

25:37Had you allowed yourself to feel the joy of being pregnant by that point? Yes. Yeah. And it was more a kind of contentment where I was like, oh, I started to relax into it and thinking, oh, this. And I don't know if this was your experience, but everyone started treating me with such joy. like it felt so good to be part of this exclusive club and you know getting the like telling your GP and getting the special card that helps you get medicines and signing up to prenatal classes like all of that felt so everyone was happy strangers were happy for me and it was so lovely It was really lovely. And yeah, finding that out, I then had a pretty traumatic, I now understand it, as miscarriage where I was sent away and then booked in for a procedure the following week because of my uterus.

26:36They wanted to do it with a camera. And so they couldn't fit me in until the following Tuesday. And then over that weekend, I started miscarrying naturally. And I went into hospital and stayed overnight and it was incredibly painful and lonely it was very lonely and after that my marriage imploded because it had brought lots of things to the surface and what I now realize was depression for me but at the time felt like numbness just played itself out and sometimes what happens if you're not in a mutually supportive relationship of equals is that you can't communicate or you're trying to communicate how you're feeling and the other person can't get it doesn't want to get it won't get it and so my marriage ended so so 2014 was a tough old year and my I I left my marriage in February 2015 right and that was a turning point in many ways but it was also I was only although I didn't know it then about halfway through my fertility journey but I'd had my first miscarriage so that's an experience that never leaves you well exactly that and I think that plays into everything that comes afterwards I don't think after you've had when you've experienced a loss it it just it just changes everything.

28:04Yeah. You know, you've seen that glimpse of hope, of something different, of what your life might look like. It's become a very real thing. And the loss and the grief that comes with that, it's just heartbreaking. Exactly. You express that so well, because you are grieving an absence, but you're also grieving this imagined presence. And it was present. My pregnancy was present I know what it is to be pregnant you know I went off food and I felt again I felt so thrilled that I did not feel like eating a green vegetable they made me want to be sick all I could eat was hummus I just had to eat base food I was like I am properly pregnant I felt exhausted I was like oh this is actually happening so it's a physical thing and as you say as soon as you get that positive pregnancy test you can't help but imagine and project and think of names and all of that and so you agree with that too what that year gonna look like the due date yeah my due date was almost exactly the same time as princess charlotte right and so now i have this special connection really with um with princess charlotte because and i was convinced i was having a girl and i was like oh that's it's it's kind of interesting and i know that anyone who has experienced a miscarriage will often have that yeah they'll they'll remember how old their child would have been.

29:26Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And there's the failure aspect again. You know, so I, my first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage and there was this feeling of failing the baby, failing myself, failing the first experience of being a mother, failing my partner. And even, you know, you can rationalise it and go, no, no, these, it's, it's, it's heavy. It feels like it's you. There's no else it's you definitely definitely I'm so sorry for for you and in that moment and also I there was a slight complexity with my situation because I was a stepmother as well so then it really felt like no it is me like I am the one who is uniquely failing at this because my husband's had kids already with someone who didn't fail yeah and uh yes it's very tough that and no matter how many people tell you it's not your failure to hold and very often I mean all the time it isn't your failure to hold but it doesn't prevent you feeling like that yeah and again you know so much of infertility 40 % of it is male infertility which doesn't get spoken about anywhere nearly enough not just to make women feel better but also to make those men who are experiencing it feel like they're less alone.

30:44But it isn't our failure. It is just, it is one of those cruel quirks of individual biology. So then you find yourself in 2015 in the single world. Yes. Where does your mind go to then? Because I say 2015, people are starting to do it on their own, you know, find sperm. Do you kind of leave it as something, is it settled for a little while? Yes, I realised innately I needed some time to recover yeah so I went to LA I pitched the idea to I was a newspaper journalist at the time and I said to my editor you need an LA correspondent and I will fly myself out there and I will pay for an Airbnb and then I'll be there to do lots of movie junkets and bless him he went for it and that was an incredibly healing time for me and in LA at that time it felt like LA was such a special place where you could tell your own story it's a city founded on storytellers.

31:42And there were so many women that I met who were living unconventional lives, who were single like I was, who had met someone later in life or were doing it on their own, or they were freezing their eggs and they were taking control. And I found that so invigorating. But I had always been someone who wanted to have the romantic relationship in place and to have children within that. And I think that's an interesting point of data, because if I'd wanted to be a mother to the exclusion of all else, then I could have done that and I could have gone out on my own and I had all of the resources available to me to look into sperm donation, etc.

32:24But I didn't feel I wanted it as much as I wanted the relationship. So in that time, did you feel yourself relaxed within this topic? Yes, I did. And actually, I was then 35 and I still felt, I'm going to meet someone and I'll still have time. And I did feel that I relaxed. What I then did, which I wouldn't advise, is that I met and fell madly in love with a much younger man. Right. It wasn't Jackie Malorty, was it? No, although they don't look dissimilar. No, it wasn't. And he was a really wonderful person in so many ways. and sort of what I needed in terms of like refreshing my spirit. Here was someone who was asking nothing of me responsibility wise.

33:13And so I wasn't giving any of it responsibility wise. During that time, I did freeze my eggs because I understood that he was not ready. And so it turned out and we dated for about two years. And then he said, I'm just not ready. That wasn't ideal for me because I was about to turn 39. yeah i'd frozen my eggs but again i'd only i'd failed to respond to the drugs jivana and i'd got two which is sort of nothing really um and i do think there's an honest conversation that has to be had about egg freezing too because i think a lot of people use it as a panacea and they think i've got them in the bank i'm fine but actually the success rates with frozen eggs are very low and many of them don't survive the defrosting process you have higher success rates although not great with frozen embryos but that then places like a whole other pressure on you and it's expensive and fertility clinics are increasingly being taken over by venture capitalists and um have i got that right was it private equity i'm so bad at anyway people who want to make money people that are chasing the money there we go and so they'll want you to have lots of rounds and and they sort of want you to fail so that you then book in for another round and so i just want people to be aware of that it can be great but there are also there's a cost to it so i froze my eggs then I was single again about to turn 39 and that felt really bleak because as I go now I'm back at square one my fertility isn't great anyway and now I'm about to fall off a fertility cliff in my 40s and I feel so vanishingly far away from all of the things I thought I wanted and that was a difficult period of time and I had to do a lot of self-reckoning and I worked on trying to be at peace with not having children and I was getting there and then I met an amazing man on Hinge in March 2018.

35:16It was the year that I turned 40 and he is now my husband and he's an amazing person and we spoke about children. He also has children. So I was a stepmother again. Great joy. And I said, I don't, you know, I think I'm realistic about the fact that it won't happen. And he said, OK, that's good to know and absolutely fine. And so we dated for a year. And then just after my 41st birthday, I found out I was pregnant naturally. Hey, we're Nick and Jack hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets.

36:06No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work, around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. Observe the North American dad, 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling. No hassle. No one called him boss.

36:48He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. I mean, even suspecting that you might be, how did that feel to kind of go, I'm there again? Yeah, it was... It was a mixture. there was joyful disbelief and emotion at precisely the same time as I felt deep and profound anxiety and fear. But telling Justin I was pregnant was so healing because he had such an uncomplicatedly happy reaction. Right. And then it became something that we could both get excited about. And I believe in the universe and I believe that there is something greater than us. And so part of me thought, oh, this is meant to be.

37:47And very sadly, that wasn't meant to be. And I had an earlier miscarriage this time, which was sort of seven weeks. Oh, God, you know, I've had every form of miscarriage now. So that one was the natural one where you just, it feels like you're bleeding out for days. Um, but that experience taught us both how we did actually want it. And so then I went back into fertility treatment again. The term meant to be is one that really, um, hits me because I feel like when you are trying, um, everything that's coming up, oh, I'm meant to get pregnant now because then it's, it's my birthday or it's the new year or it's this and it feels like there's, well, this is happening and wouldn't it be amazing?

38:36we have kind of been I don't know we've grown up romanticizing certain things happening yeah so then we just we do feel like it's meant to be yes and we take everything else kind of slips away because of that it's meant to happen absolutely and and because there's so much uncertainty in the world of fertility there's also so much magical thinking that's kind of corollary so I spent a lot of time on websites I mean I learned to stop doing that being like how do you get pregnant and have a safe and healthy pregnancy and there were so many pieces of advice ranging from after you have sex make sure that you do a shoulder stand you have your legs up to go to this like chalk drawing in the middle of the countryside under a full moon like rub the nose of the horse and I have a sage leaf and sort of drink mead and then you get pregnant and And then there's a lot of like my cousin's sister-in-law's stepdaughter's husband said this thing.

39:35And all of that feeds into it. And you end up feeling quite unhinged all the time. And alongside all of the hormones that you might be injecting as well. So, yeah, it's a lot. So with you and Justin, after that miscarriage, you decide that is absolutely what you two want to do. Yes. And the timing wasn't great because we didn't know it. but the pandemic was about to happen. And this is when I started being treated by some terrific women. Professor Leslie Wegan, Queen Mary's, was just so practical and brilliant at her job. It was my first experience as someone who was compassionate, not being sort of sentimentally empathetic in a way, but just compassionate because of the practical things she put in place.

40:22She was like, right, well, we need to investigate this and this and this and this. did anyone keep any tissue from your previous miscarriages and examine them I was like no she said well that's shocking you know just little things like that and she did lots of investigation and then I can't quite remember what happened she I think her advice was go away and keep trying and then the pandemic happened and it became more pressing for me because now I'm like in my early 40s. And that's when I started, it was before the pandemic actually, that's when I found Penny at IVF serum. And we flew out and I had this procedure to remove the septum on my womb, came back, had, sorry, for anyone who is of a sensitive disposition, block your ears or look away now.

41:11This procedure, there's nothing about it online, or there wasn't when I went through it. They remove a septum and then they put, essentially like a plastic bag, like an udder up your uterus. with sort of tubes hanging out of your vagina because they don't want the scar tissue to form over the space that they've created. Right. It's so uncomfortable. So is that how you have to heal? Yes. You have it for like a week. And it's so weird having a sort of foreign object in your intimate area. And all the time, I'm like going back to being busy, all the time I'm like carrying on with normal life. I'm giving a talk at Birkbeck about creative writing and I've got these sort of plastic udders dangling out of me.

41:55Anyway, that operation was a success. And within a month, I was pregnant. And then, can you imagine, I'm like, right, everything. We've knocked down all of the obstructions skittle by skittle. And now this is going to happen. Found out I was pregnant on a Tuesday, I think it was. On Wednesday, lockdown was announced. Oh, wow. So that was also completely mad. It was a very surreal period of time. And it meant that I was, as anyone knows who went through something similar, the fertility clinic shut down anything other rightly than like an emergency and urgent medical procedure. there was just no hope so um scans were tricky yeah um but I did find a way of getting a scan and I can't now remember the timings I think it was at seven weeks and we went in and heard and saw a heartbeat which was utterly amazing was that the first time you've had that actually no I had it with my first pregnancy as well the missed miscarriage um oh god it was amazing um hearing it again and it was like a strong heartbeat as well and the sonographer was so lovely and she said this all looks great um it the babies the embryo i don't know what terminology she used but she's like it's looking a little small so i wonder if actually the conception dates maybe you got them slightly wrong yeah can you come in again next week so we can monitor and we went in the following week all masked up and i remember it was before masks became readily available and i'd ordered one online it was like a fabric mask that a fabulous designer in North London had made and we went in and I was really nervous and then she did the scan and the heartbeat had gone and she was so compassionate and said I'm so sorry and I was devastated again and then I had a medically managed miscarriage.

43:57So I was given the pills to take back home. And that, for me, was the worst experience of miscarriage I've had. Do you feel going into that second appointment, did you wonder if that was going to be the case? Yes. I felt great trepidation. And, you know, one of the things that happens when you have recurrent miscarriage is that you are completely robbed of the experience of having a peaceful or joyful pregnancy that I was riven with anxiety every single second and then seeing the heartbeat I was like okay now I can relax a bit but I did feel anxious going back and I still feel anxious when I have to have a smear test or an internal scan because now I'm menopause or perimenopause whichever one um because it triggers me and I remember all of those pain points yeah but but a medically managed miscarriage again I and I understand why but people don't talk about enough the pain was celestial it was awful and being in lockdown at home again alone that's that's a journey that you go on on your own as loving as your partner is is it's only you who can bear it physically and yeah I remember that was that was that was that was a tough one is it is it a case of it essentially being forced out of you yeah it's you take the same pills and this is troubling for it's only troubling for kind of psychological reasons it's the same pills as you for an abortion um and yeah it basically you go through my experience anyway was something akin to labor pains and tell me if this is too much detail or cut it out if you'd like but I took the first pill and within half an hour I was throwing up like that's what the pain was like and it would come in these great swooping surges and then recede and I just had to get through it um and yet of course you're sort of bleeding and that's really tough and yeah it was it was a very tough experience.

46:13Were you worried about wiping and what you would see? Yes well was I um I think I'd had the experience of the first miscarriage of seeing. And in a way, I wanted to. I think there's something about seeing the reality of it is crushing. It's also a form of love for me. And it also helps me understand what's happened. And that magical thinking that I was talking about, sometimes you have to present yourself with the ugly reality in order to be able to move on and over time I have healed that part of myself and I have felt it and I have understood it a lot more and for me talking about it really helps because again it sort of makes it real again um so so talking to other people and to you and writing about it and talking about it on my podcast and making it one of those things that I don't want any other woman or man to go through on their own has given my life purpose in a way that I thought motherhood would.

47:29Actually, I feel strongly now that my purpose in this lifetime is not to be a mother and to speak to those who couldn't either. I would imagine this part of you and Justin trying together as well, the conversation has changed by that point compared to 2014. Yes. So going through IVF, going through miscarriage, there are people talking about it by that point. Yes. And I'm one of the people talking about it. And that's quite interesting as well, because it used to be that when I went through something difficult, my immediate impulse was to share. And I learned during those miscarriages and then the egg donation round that we went on to do, that actually that didn't serve me or my community in the best way possible because I was too upset by it when I was in it and actually I needed to leave time to process and denumb and feel the feelings and then understand what I wanted to say about it and I learned that through that process.

48:35Time and perspective is a fascinating thing and I think to talk about stuff in the moment compared to how you would talk about it a month later, a year later. I think it's all important. I think it's all relevant. Agreed. But it is that kind of, it's, yeah, it's just fascinating to see how your mind shifts from one moment to the next. Definitely. And I, you're so right. And actually, I'd like to clarify something I just said there. I was talking about it to my loved ones, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I wasn't, I wasn't talking about it on Instagram. And that for me serves me best. Yeah.

49:09And there are some people who do talk about things when they're going through them on Instagram and other platforms and are amazing. And I really respect the hell out of them. But I've learned that my process, this is helpful. And that's why I always, always think it is so important to remember that there are people on Instagram that you will look at and have assumptions about. And they are so often carrying a weight that you know nothing about. They are going through something really difficult that they don't feel ready to share, if ever. And that is entirely their prerogative. And we have to remember that.

49:44And that's also why it's so important that people that feel like they can share do share. Yes, exactly. So after that miscarriage, at what point do you ingest and go like that? So then because we're in the pandemic, we just take the decision to have a rest. And I need to rest my body at that stage. And we decided to concentrate on our relationship and on getting through something that is really tough for the world. And during the pandemic, we also get engaged and we get married. So we had a sort of in-between lockdown wedding where it was just me and him, a couple of registrars, my best friend and her then husband as witnesses.

50:31and it was so romantic in a way that I never could possibly have imagined so that's what we were kind of focusing on and that was really lovely and um and unnecessary to like find ourselves again so uh then by the end of where are we now so 2022 so when the pandemic is well when the lockdowns when we're released from our sort of internal captivity and we emerge into this vastly changed world, I start thinking about egg donation because I feel that the story is not over yet. And I'm still in a place where I really want us to have a child. And a friend of mine recommended a clinic in LA and LA is at the forefront of a lot of fertility medicine.

51:19And we had a Zoom call with this consultant and we decided to give it a go. And that was a whole other exhausting process and I won't bore you with the ins and outs but it felt like at every single point there was some unimaginable obstacle and looking back it does feel like the universe was saying this ain't for you okay there were just like so many difficulties it took us a year to find a donor which is an unusually long time and then finally got to the stage where we'd done a dummy round which the doctor wanted me to do was to see how I responded to the drugs etc etc finally got to the stage I can't even remember when it was now was it like January 2023 yeah where fly to LA everything's looking great on paper the levels are good the lining is juicy I'm on the right dosage the embryo is fantastic sort of triple A grade would get a double first at university and a contract with the modeling agency like it was the most amazing embryo etc etc go in have acupuncture have all of them eating protein with every meal I'm taking all the supplements go in have the transfer it's right after Christmas I remember and then you have to wait this time for 10 days and everything feels like okay well surely this is going to happen you know I'm writing the name that we picked out for the baby in the sand on Venice Beach I'm sort of sending all of these signals and at the 10-day point I get an email from that clinic and there are many things that I will never forgive them for and that's one of them saying you're not pregnant seesaw medication immediately and that was it and that was I mean the way they have since apologized they're under new have they apologized because you've highlighted it uh no I haven't no So it's because, so after that round of egg donation, we got two embryos, one of which we transferred and one of which was still on ice.

53:24And I would get these notifications saying, you owe us money because we still got this embryo on ice. And one of those one of those communications, I can't remember, but it was so badly phrased and so hurtfully phrased that I replied saying, I never want to hear from you again. I made the very difficult and complicated decision to let that embryo go and after the way that we were treated at your clinic like I just never want to have this communication again and someone called me really and she was the new manager and I give her a lot of credit and she apologized and said she said she said you know Elizabeth you're still young and I'm like am I am 45 now you can still do this and we'd like to offer you a free round and I thought that was interesting because I'm like hmm I am I just being like suckered back into the system here and when they say free they don't really mean free anyway I give her a lot of credit for apologizing and that apology meant a lot to me because I wasn't gaslighting myself anymore also though that someone opening the door again had you and Justin already decided by that point to kind of stop yes exactly that's hard isn't it you've got so hard is this now meant to be yes it's really difficult it's really difficult and I I had to speak to my best friend Emma about it and she was amazing and she really helped me see what was mine what was ours to carry and what they were saying yeah and there was a big part of me when I decided because Justin was very respectful of the fact that it was ultimately my decision when I decided to stop trying and to be at peace with not being a parent in the biological conventional sense there was part of me that felt I was letting people down who had believed in me who who who believed I could if only I kept trying and I remember saying that to a dear friend of mine who'd been so supportive and she was like absolutely not she's like I'm relieved to hear it and it's been such a gift this is what I want people to hear I'm not Pollyanna-ish about it like I went through some tough times not having the baby I yearned for has also been a gift I've met incredible people I've healed I've connected more deeply with my friends with my husband with myself and I get so much purpose from talking about it and helping others in some small way feel seen and acknowledged and I am so lucky that I have a very fulfilled life I don't feel the lack of course I will always be sad about it and yes it's seeing my friend's children grow is a source of joy and their sadness there too I will never look at, encounter, play with another child and not also think of the child I didn't have.

56:33And I am at peace with that sadness and it's part of my life and it shaped it and it shaped it in beautiful ways as well. And I found other ways to parent and to create and I'm very grateful that life has given me that. Did it take a while to get to this point from the moment of kind of going right let's stop because obviously that's it the way you talk about it is so beautiful and eloquent and detailed and you know complex but to get to that I imagine there's a lot of grief that sits from the decision to here so much so much and I'm glad you used the word grief because that is what it is and a lot of the time when I was feeling it I didn't feel I felt fraudulent I was like it's not really grieving like is it and now having experienced conventional grief I'm able to see oh no it is absolutely that and it was a process of years it was many many years like every single time I had a failed cycle or injected myself with drugs that weren't working or was told by another person that it wasn't going to happen to me every single time that that was part of the process of becoming at peace with it like the relationships I had along the way all of it but it took me the final round of egg donation I was so confused and unmoored after it and I really wasn't sure what to do and you know the advice from the male consultant was surrogacy and that was a whole other you know that's a fraught and complicated process for many reasons and I wasn't sure that I was sort of willing to go there.

58:22And of course, there's adoption and many incredible friends of mine have adopted. And I think that's beautiful. What I would say is that that is pretty complicated, too. And that is a process of years as it should be. And it wasn't just my decision. Yeah. So people will often say, why don't you adopt? And you just have to trust me that there are reasons. So having sort of talked through all of that with Justin and also thought about it and sat with the feelings myself I and I've spoken about this before but I had an amazing reading with an incredible psychic I love this and I'm so glad to bring it up I absolutely love this you were my soul sister in this like I just forgot how to feeling um so this so in January 2023 flew back from LA after this unsuccessful round of egg donation feeling completely hollowed out and confused and really quite depressed.

59:17And I went for brunch with a dear friend of mine and she gave me great advice. She was like, why don't you let the idea go for six months? Just put the idea of that down and give yourself a break and just have six months not trying and see how you feel at the end of it. And she also said, oh, I had this amazing psychic reading. Do you want her number? And at this point, is your mind, are you someone who leans into that? Yes, I massively lean into it. And I've had psychic readings and tarot card readings and astrological readings. I'm very interested in what lies beyond because I absolutely believe and know that there are things that lie beyond.

59:56It would be the height of arrogance to assume that as flawed humans, we know everything. We don't. And so I can also identify like a really gifted psychic from one who isn't. It can just like Google you. So with this psychic, I was given her phone number. she's based in America and I texted her to set up a session I told her nothing I told her my first name that was it so she knew I was called Elizabeth but very often people give her fake names and I've sent friends to her and they've given fake names and she calls me up on a Wednesday evening and she said okay I didn't ask her any questions deliberately because I didn't want to give her any guidance the first thing she said was well you love words I was like I do I love words so much and then she identified my husband said his name began with a j identified what he did for a living which is kind of offbeat yeah um and then she said and who's m m's my best friend and uh then she said oh you i know you love words i can't quite work out whether you write books or you write screenplays and she kept kind of coming back to it she's like no i think it's books but i think screenplays lie in your future and so again if she'd had the ability to google me the first thing that comes up is journalist or novels.

1:01:11And she didn't say any of that. And then halfway through, she goes, I know you write, but do you do something else? Are you a kind of life coach talking to people about the things that go wrong in their lives and what they learn along the way? I was like, that's hilarious. I'm not a life coach, but I know what you're getting at. So to me, I'm like, that's the podcast How to Fail. Of course. And then she says a number of other things. And then two thirds through, and I haven't mentioned babies at all. I haven't mentioned anything about fertility. I haven't mentioned that's why I wanted this reading.

1:01:44She says, I feel that you are grappling with letting go of a lifelong desire. And I don't know what that desire is, but I think it might be to do with children. She said, I don't know how old you are. Should I feel like you've got a lot of kind of vibrant energy and you're just getting started, but I think you're older than that suggests. Like I think you might be in your 40s. If you have tried to have babies before now, you might have had to have had fertility treatment or you might have experienced miscarriage. And are you just staying silent throughout the whole thing? Totally silent. Like I'm probably being like, I'm probably saying things, oh my gosh, I'm like crying, but otherwise I'm not saying anything.

1:02:23And she said, and I think that's because the universe has given you this lifetime to live on your own terms. She said, I don't always get past life feelings, but I feel very strongly with you that in a past life you were the mother of six and it almost melted you and this lifetime has been given to you as a corrective for you to explore all the things that you can explore I know on your own terms I've heard this story so many times of you sharing it and it still gets me it still gets me thank you that was so beautiful your emotions me too because when she said that I realized two things one was that I'd had three miscarriages and three failed rounds of fertility treatment so six and I've always felt in this enigmatic kind of muscle memory that I know what it is to be a mother yeah I feel like I've sort of held babies before and smelt their necks and and it made aligned sense to me it just felt so truthful what she said and she also said you know be careful pushing it too far because you could end up with an experience of motherhood that is not straightforward and that is very difficult and painful and what that made me realize is that so often when we're trying to get pregnant and trying to carry a pregnancy to term and we're just desperately in this battle is that we tell ourselves the dream version of the story of motherhood you know taking your child by the hand to the playground and having lovely conversations and feeling really loved by this little individual and vice versa and actually there's another version particularly in my 40s where there are all sorts of health complexities or actually you have a child who doesn't particularly like you or who has a complicated relationship with their mental health and is never fully happy and and it kind of helped me to think there's also that reality and shall I try letting this idea go and see how that feels and from that moment on I've been at peace and to begin with I thought I'm in some kind of crazy denial and clearly it won't last it's now three I mean almost four years on from that and I remember the next day I saw a mum pushing her baby in the street and until that day that sight would always have caused me sadness and maybe in a low point like bitterness and resentment and I just looked at that mum and I thought good for you and that is your journey and I bet it's not an easy one and and go with God how wonderful for you and it was like oh that's her story and it's not mine and I felt at peace ever since and I give that particular psychic and I always get asked for her details and I'm very protective of her because I can't give out her number to everyone who asks because then I'd never get another reader I owe her so much and she it was so powerful I really did used to think and I remember saying it to Justin if this round doesn't work I will need to change my life dramatically like we will need to go and live somewhere else and I will need to become a ceramicist in St.

1:05:48Ives or something and actually that hasn't happened because the radical change has been internal. For 12 years my fertility journey was the canvas upon which all else was painted and what I found during that time was that my tears were always so close to the surface. I thought that was just me as a person. I cried really easily. And I still do. But actually, it's not my default setting anymore. I would cry in an argument or I'd cry if I felt that I'd been wronged or just my tears were constantly there. And now looking back, I realise it's because I was carrying this weight of sadness. And it becomes so embedded in your life that you forget to think about it as a separate entity it just is and that requires an enormous amount of mental and emotional energy and actually not having to expend that energy anymore has freed up a lot of space for me yeah and I think that's partly why classic me I've just filled it with being really busy but it's also partly why I felt able to lean into a more empowered era of my career like things have sort of happened since 2023 because I think I've had more bandwidth for it and I am fully at peace so so if you're in the middle of a really difficult fertility journey now I want you to know that there is peace on the other side of it and it might be that peace is a baby in your arms and it might be that that peace takes another form that you can't even imagine right now but that is full of hope and promise and and that thing of looking ahead to your future without children previous to to that psychic pre you know when when that's all you're seeing for your future you're ignoring all the other things within it exactly that do fulfill you that do bring you so much joy and now being able to lean into that that must be lovely to better have that space like you said it is lovely and one of the things that I think fertility also does is it obscures the fact that you that no one has everything and so it can obscure the blessings that you already have and one of my great blessings is that I have an incredible relationship I'm so lucky to have found Justin yeah on a dating app who would have thought after after lots of like you know uh negative data acquisition about with terrible dates like I found Justin and we have a wonderful relationship there are lots of people who don't have wonderful relationships but they might have children and I think it's really important to reflect on that and so you're totally right looking forward to the future there are benefits that come from not having children.

1:08:49I can go on holidays with more disposable income. I'm not constantly riven with mum guilt. I am mistress of my own time so much more. And I do have creative bandwidth, which exists separately from being needed a lot. and those are all huge things and that is part of my privilege and yes it's a consequence of a painful experience that I went through but it's really important to remind myself of that. We ask on every episode if you could write a letter on motherhood who would it be to and what would you say? If I could write a letter on motherhood to anyone it would be to my younger but it would also be to those women who aren't mothers who either are actively engaged in trying to be a mother in the conventional biological sense or who have come to their to the end of their journey and what I want to say to those women is the journey you're on is already mothering the effort that you're putting in the consideration that you've had to give it the love that you are showing, the strength that you are showing to be in this battle is mothering.

1:10:07And if you're on the other side of it, you are still mothering in so many myriad ways. You probably don't even understand the impact that you have. But there are so many ways to show up as a parent in this lifetime, whether it's to your friend's child, or whether it's to your community, or whether it's to yourself. and that actually that's the parenting that you need to do. I promise you that you are the parent you were destined to be. And can you just finish this sentence? I'm happy when? I'm happy when I'm living my purpose. Now I'm going to cry.

1:10:51Elizabeth, I just love you. I adore you. I adore you. And I have been so worried about today because I'm like, she's a proper one. And she knows, you know, she knows how to do this properly. And you have been so delightful. When you smile, there is just, it's like sunshine comes out of your face. And it is the most gorgeous thing ever. I've loved this. I've absolutely adored it. I've loved it so much. And I was nervous coming on because you're a proper one. But I just want to thank you so much for opening up this space to include these conversations. it's so important and you make it so easy to be interviewed it felt just like a conversation I'm having with a friend I've known for many years and I thank you so so much you're just a wonder maybe we have known each other in a past life maybe that's it we were in ancient Rome we were walking through the streets in our togas

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