EXPERIENCE
I was 31 years old when
I thought my boyfriend Alex
was about to propose. We’d
been dating for a year and
were sitting under an oak
tree at The Cloisters, a romantic, leafy park
at the tip of Manhattan, when he turned to
me with a serious look in his eye. I felt he was
the person I should be with forever. But there
was no ring. Instead, he finished with me.
“My stomach lurched as he explained
that he didn’t feel the kind of ‘intangible
connection’ he needed to marry or have
children with me. Suddenly everything
I imagined about our future blurred:
walking on my father’s arm down the aisle;
our baby splashing about in a paddling
pool at a Sunday barbecue. I wept because
he had shattered my fantasy of who I
believed I should be at that age: a married
woman on the path to becoming a mother.
“The realisation that what was starting
to happen for my friends wasn’t likely
to happen to me for a long time, was
horrendous. Alex said he was sorry he had
wasted my time. So was I. But I realised I
was actually more in love with the shiny
fantasy of our future than with him.
“Over the next few years my life felt like
it had stalled. I’d always flirted with the
idea of being a mother, but suddenly
finding the father of my imagined children
became my priority. My approach to dating
changed. I no longer had much faith in
fate, so I put my profile on several dating
websites, and began assessing every date
as a potential father. I didn’t interrogate
them and ask if they’d change nappies,
but inevitably it took away the romance
and I felt frustrated that I had to find a
man before I could have a baby.
“I’d always imagined love, marriage and
a family would just happen, but four years
after breaking up with Alex, I was still
����WWW�STYLIST�CO�UK
“THE RACE TO BEAT
MY BIOLOGICAL CLOCK”
At 38, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt hasn’t found herself in the
marriage-and-baby fairy tale of her dreams. She tells Stylist how
she’s taken control of her fertility and future
X Originally pioneered as a technique for those about
to undergo fertility-threatening chemotherapy, its now
used for women who want to postpone having a family
until they’re ready. Egg freezing allows women to choose
a conception date by freezing eggs in their 20s for use
as late as their 50s.
single and childless – while he announced
his marriage in The New York Times.
“Frustrated, I went to see a therapist.
She asked if I’d ever thought about freezing
my eggs as an insurance policy with the
option of using them to become a single
Freezing your eggs: what’s involved
RACHEL FEELS MORE
POSITIVE NOW SHE'S
FROZEN HER EGGS
mother. The thought terrified me. I didn’t
think I’d have the confidence to go through
it alone. But over the next two years, my
attitude began to change. I met a number of
single mothers – one who had a child alone
at 30 before going on to marry and have
X The ovaries are stimulated to produce eggs, which are
then removed under a sedative or anaesthetic. The eggs
are then drained of fluid, injected with a sort of antifreeze,
frozen and stored at -196˚C in liquid nitrogen. They can be
stored indefinitely and it costs between £2,500 and £3,000
per cycle. Visit fertilityfriends.co.uk for more details.
another two children. She told me that her
first choice was not any ‘less than’ having a
child with a man she loved, and I started to
feel less like a desperate Bridget Jones and
more like a calm, confident woman who had
the option to raise a child on her own.
“I continued to date, and at 37 I met and
fell in love with a man called Jacob. We’d
been together for nine months when I
suggested that at the one-year mark we
should decide whether we were going to
commit to marriage and a family. He said he
wasn’t sure what we had was ‘enough’. It felt
like a death. But it made me realise the main
“I hope that, one day,
there will be a father
figure in my child’s life”
problem wasn’t that I was alone, it was that
I was in a biological race. It was then that
I decided to freeze my eggs, and by doing
so I bought myself some time and ensured
that my biological clock couldn’t distort yet
another relationship.
“The process of harvesting my eggs was
tougher than I thought. There was a week
of injections, which I did myself at home,
alone. After three days of shooting myself
up with hormones I felt like Wonder
Woman, but the following night I woke up
in a cold sweat, feeling dizzy and sick. The
actual surgery to remove the eggs was no
worse than having your wisdom tooth taken
out. Afterwards I felt exhilarated because
I’d made a move to preserve my fertility.
“I’m now closer than ever to making the
decision of whether to use my eggs, and I’ve
given a lot of thought to how I’ll explain the
situation to my child. Hopefully, by the time
they’re ready to have the conversation, there
will be a father figure in their life. Of course
I worry they’ll resent the route I’ve chosen,
but children always resent their parents for
something and I think I’m going to be a
really good mother.
“I’m not a radical girl. I would rather be
choosing baby names with my husband and
am still holding out hope that I’ll meet the
love of my life. But, until then, I feel a lot
more confident knowing I have
options in the freezer.”
Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is the author of In
Her Own Sweet Time (Basic Books, £14.99)
WORDS��RACHEL�LEWIS���PHOTOGRAPHY��SHANNON�TAGGART
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