De Graaff, who later called herself "Princess Alexandra," claimed that she had actually been born in 1903, the year that Tsarina Alexandra experienced either a "hysterical pregnancy" or a miscarriage. According to letters and diary entries by the family that were later published, Alexandra did not give birth to a child in 1903. However, de Graaff claimed that because Nicholas and Alexandra already had four daughters and there was pressure upon them to produce a male heir to the throne, they decided to place their supposed fifth daughter with adoptive parents. Philippe Vachot, a doctor and "holy man" at the Imperial court from Lyon, France, supposedly arranged for the baby to go to Hemmes. De Graaff's claims are seen as plausible by some because Vachot was supposedly hired by the Romanovs at a time when they were desperate for a male heir, pursuant to his claims to be able to influence the sex of children at an early stage of pregnancy. Accordingly, when the fifth girl, later to become de Graaff, was supposedly born on September 1, 1903, Vachot had motive to secrete the child away and claim that the Tsarina had not in fact been pregnant. Her pregnancy had been previously reported in the European press.