Erin Andrews is speaking out about the lengthy fertility journey she went on before welcoming her first child via a surrogate late last month.
The 45-year-old sportscaster spoke Friday on the “Today” show about watching her surrogate deliver her baby boy, Mack.
“I’m not going to lie, I get really queasy, and I’ve been known to pass out … it was like, this is actually happening,” Andrews said.
Both Andrews and her husband, former NHL player Jarret Stoll, were in the delivery room during the birth.
“We’re so into sports in our family and we were cheering for her like she was our quarterback,” she added. “I’m kissing [the surrogate’s] head, and Jarret is looking like he just won the Stanley Cup again. It’s the perfect picture of surrogacy.”
Before sharing her excitement, the Fox Sports reporter discussed her fertility struggles.
“For so long I just wanted to be quiet it, ‘Please don’t say my name loud in the [fertility clinic] waiting room,’ ” she said. “But then you look around and these places are packed. You’re not the only one going through this and I felt like if I could be a voice, maybe just somebody people could look at and be like, ‘She’s going through it too,’ it would help the whole process for all of us [potential moms].”
Andrews described her many rounds of failed in vitro fertilization as “10 years of hell.”
In an interview with Glamour, the Sports Emmy nominee elaborated on the grief she and Stoll went through in 2021 after the first two embryos they placed with a surrogate didn’t make it to term.
“We lost the two babies. And that was really, really hard. It was awful,” Andrews said. “It was right before Father’s Day … We went to our friend’s house after we lost the babies and we were a mess. … It’s hard seeing other couples have kids. After we lost ours, you see things like, ‘So and so is having their second.’ And we’re like, ‘We can’t even get one. Like, what are we doing here? What are we doing wrong?’ I told [Stoll], ‘It’s going to be OK. I don’t know how it’s gonna be OK, but it’s gonna be OK.’ ”
In 2016, Andrews, who had started freezing her eggs a few years prior, was diagnosed with cervical cancer. After undergoing several surgeries she was declared cancer-free and found herself “on a mission,” she told Glamour, to harvest more eggs and create embryos.
Andrews penned an open letter in 2021 discussing her challenges with infertility.
“I have been trying to do IVF treatment for a while now, but sometimes it doesn’t go the way you want it. Your body just doesn’t allow it,” she wrote. “Every cycle is different in a woman’s body, so some months are better than others. … [M]y body is kind of stacked against me.
“The entire treatment takes such a mental and emotional toll on your body. You feel like s—. You feel bloated and hormonal for a week and a half. You could go through this whole experience and get absolutely nothing out of it — that’s the crazy part. It’s a ton of money, it’s a ton of time, it’s a ton of mental and physical anguish. And more times than not, they’re unsuccessful.”
