Elizabeth Day says she has made peace with the fact she will never be a mother at 45 – but that she still thinks about having a child ‘every day’.
The How To Fail host and Magpie author, 45, who lives in Vauxhall, south London, with her husband, financial tech CEO Justin Basini, told The Times that she tried for a baby for 12 years, but was forced last year to accept her dream would never come true.
She went through two rounds of IVF, miscarriages, egg freezing and surgery on her womb – but eventually the ‘stress’ of the process became too overwhelming.
She told the newspaper: ‘My yearning to have a child has not just shaped me as a woman: it is me as a woman. There is not a single day that I don’t think about it.’
Elizabeth Day says she has made peace with the fact she will never be a mother at 45 – but that she still thinks about having a child ‘every day’
Last year, at the age of 44, Elizabeth decided to stop trying after failing to fall pregnant using an egg donor in America.
She and her husband spent a year looking for a donor, who underwent the process of extraction and IVF, and the embryo was implanted in Elizabeth’s womb.
She said that is was ‘soul-crushing’ to receive an email from the clinic 10 days later that read: ‘You are not pregnant’.
Throughout her fertility struggled Day felt that her ‘purpose’ in life was to be a mother, but her perspective has changed.
‘I realise that the bigger purpose is to speak for those who are not mothers or fathers, often not by choice. That gives my life meaning, and that’s the thing I was worried I wouldn’t have,’ she said.
She also believes adoption isn’t a straightforward process and isn’t necessarily the right option for her.
The novelist has previously opened up about her battle to have a child both during her first marriage to former BBC editorial director Kamal Ahmed, who she divorced at the age of 36, and with her current husband Justin Basini.
Her first miscarriage was with Ahmed when she was 12 weeks pregnant, which she says was the catalyst for their eventual break-up when she walked out on him in February 2015.
Day has also dated Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s brother Jasper, who was nine years her junior. She said their break up in part inspired How To Fail.
She has been married to Justin since 2021 after meeting on dating app Hinge.
The How To Fail host and Magpie author, 45, lives in Vauxhall, south London , with her husband, financial tech CEO Justin Basini (pictured together this Christmas)
Elizabeth told The Times in a new interview that she has been trying for a baby for 12 years but was forced to accept her dream would never come true last year
How To Fail now has 20 series and has been downloaded more than 45 million times, interviewing the likes of Rory Stewart and Margaret Atwood.
She released a memoir of the same name, while her thriller Magpie explores the theme of infertility.
Day previously spoke on the podcast Changes about her struggles to conceive, in a conversation with former Radio 1 DJ Annie Macmanus.
She told the podcast that women undergoing fertility treatment can often feel ‘gaslit’ by the doctors treating them, saying she’s experienced it firsthand.
Day told the broadcaster she was often left feeling like ‘I’m failing but there’s an added level of moral judgment coming on me from people who I’ve been taught to respect who have an enormous amount of power in a medical situation.’
She told Macmanus that after relaying her experiences to a friend, they suggested: ‘Maybe you’re not failing to respond to the drugs, maybe the drugs are failing you’.
Day says: ‘It was a truth bomb moment. I’m basically being gaslit by a male- dominated establishment – none of them will have any idea what it’s like to miscarriage, let alone menstruate.’
Day added that she thought ‘there are some amazing, compassionate medical professionals out there and I’ve met so many of them’ saying the profession was ‘changing for the better.’
Elizabeth’s podcast How To Fail now has 20 series and has been downloaded more than 45 million times, interviewing the likes of Rory Stewart and Margaret Atwood
Last year, at the age of 44, Elizabeth decided to stop trying to have a baby when she still wasn’t pregnant after a year spent finding a donor
Referencing the fertility struggles of one of the characters in Day’s hit book Magpie, Macmanus asked the author how much had been based on her own experiences.
The author said she wanted to write about her own experiences in novel form, saying: ‘I’ve had IVF, I’ve had miscarriages, I’ve frozen my eggs, I’ve had operations on my womb – and I really wanted to put that somewhere’.
She also told the broadcaster walking out of the marital home in February 2015, after her first marriage to Kamal Ahmed unravelled was the ‘hardest thing I’ve ever done’.
‘When I realised I was truly unhappy, it was after one gruesome year when I’d had two unsuccessful rounds of IVF, then I got pregnant naturally and then I had a miscarriage at three months. I was a hormonal wreck and numb with sadness.’
She said she knew after a ‘grim Christmas’ that ‘the level of unhappiness was unsustainable’ and she went into therapy.
Knowing the marriage wasn’t going to survive, she told Macmanus that she had ‘terrible shame’ at the idea that it had failed but knew ‘I’d hit a wall and needed to make a change’.
Day’s ninth book, Friendaholic, is out now.
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