Pixabay A DWTS alum says she lost twins amid her fertility journey.
Former “Dancing With the Stars” cast member Erin Andrews is opening up about her struggles to start a family.
The sports reporter recently shared that she and her husband, Jarret Stoll, welcomed a baby boy named Mack via surrogacy on June 28 after years of infertility challenges. In talking about her experience, Andrews revealed that she and Stoll previously lost twins after their surrogate had a miscarriage.
“We lost twins via surrogacy and that was really hard,” she told Today.com in a July 14 interview before an appearance on the show. “I really struggled mentally. I didn’t handle it very well. I kind of tried to push it aside and act like everything was OK.”
Here’s what you need to know:
Erin Andrews Had 1 Embryo Left After Losing the Twins
Andrews, 45, has revealed that she and Stoll, 41, had been trying to start a family for the past 10 years. The couple met through a mutual friend — TV personality and NFL Hall of Famer Michael Strahan — and both knew that they wanted kids. The journey, however, wasn’t easy.
“We’ve worked really hard to get where we are in our professional careers that failing at this has been very hard to swallow. I’m not saying things come easy. We’ve worked hard to be where we are,” Andrews told The Messenger in June, just weeks before welcoming her first child.
When Andrews and Stoll decided to use a surrogate, they had a new found sense of hope, and finding out that their transfer took — and that they were expecting twins — was an incredible moment.
“‘We’re gonna put two embryos in and then we’re gonna be done, and it’s going to be a boy and a girl.’ We knew it was a risk because we didn’t have many embryos. But we just thought, ‘Okay, if we don’t get two babies, we’ll at least get one and this is going to work,'” Andrews recalled in an interview with Glamour.
Losing their twins, however, was devastating.
“I just could not stop crying,” Andrews said, according to Today.com. “(Mack) was our golden embryo. He was our last hope.”
Erin Andrews Was Overjoyed to Learn She Was Going to Be a Mom
The night Andrews and Stoll were waiting for the news from the doctor’s office was too long, so the couple decided to go out on the town to get their minds off of things. It wasn’t until the next morning that they got the call they’d been praying for.
“At 7 a.m., we got a call from the fertility office. We were both so hungover, and I was like, ‘Hello?’ And it was my nurse and she was so excited. She goes, ‘Erin, you’re pregnant. You guys are pregnant.’ I was like, ‘OK, thank you.’ I couldn’t tell if I wanted to throw up because I had drunk too much or because I was so nervous,” she recalled in her chat with Glamour.
Now, Andrews is so relieved to have a happy, healthy baby boy at home.
“I want the connection with him. I can’t wait for the chemistry,” she told Today.com.
“I’m so far from being maternal in my life because I’m on a football field and I’m working with men. I keep staring at him. I want to study everything about him. I want to make up for lost time,” she added.