Erin Andrews gave fans a first look at her son Mack. The former “Dancing With the Stars” co-host and her husband Jarrett Stoll welcomed a baby boy on June 28, 2023, via surrogate, Page Six reported.
Two weeks later, Andrews, 45, gave details about her son’s birth story and shared the first photos of him on her Instagram page.
Erin Andrews Held Her Surrogate’s Hand During the Delivery
In photos shared on her Instagram page on July 14, 2023, Andrews was pictured kissing her baby boy on the forehead as he snuggled in a bassinet. The newborn wore a red and white onesie adorned with images of moose and the Canadian flag and a second photo featured the baby on an L.A. Kings onesie. Stoll previously played NHL hockey for the Kings and won two Stanley Cup championships while on the team, per the Los Angeles Times.
Another photo featured the baby sleeping with the family’s dog snuggled beside him.
Andrews shared details on her son’s secret birth on her “Calm Down With Erin and Charissa” podcast on July 14, revealing there was “a little bit of an emergency in the delivery room” after her surrogate being dilating fast and the baby’s heartbeat dropped.
“All of the sudden, a nurse grabbed me and said, ‘[The surrogate] wants to hold your hand,” she said. “At that moment, Jarrett and I turned into the biggest sports fans. ‘Come you, you can do this! You’ve got this girl!’”
Andrews also shared the birth story during an appearance on “The Today Show” where she revealed that when she held the surrogate’s hand she “had this tear coming out of her eye.” Andrews added that amid all of the cheering, the surrogate pushed just one time and the baby came out.
Erin Andrews Was Vocal About Her Long Fertility Journey
While the baby’s arrival was a surprise to fans, Andrews had kept her social media followers in the loop during a long fertility journey that lasted a decade. The sideline reporter was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2016 and had multiple surgeries. The following year she told Health that given that setback she was unsure when she could have a baby.
“It definitely took a serious turn for us,” she said at the time. “I’m not young, we don’t know when we’re gonna have a baby, we don’t know if this is going to come back.” She took the advice of an oncologist who advised her to have frozen embryos available if she ever needed them.
In an August 2020 post on her blog, “The Real Deal,” Andrews revealed that she had been undergoing IVF treatments for eight years. “This is my 7th one, and I’ve been going through these treatments since I was 35 years old,” she wrote. “I’m now 43, so my body is kind of stacked against me,” she added at the time.
In November 2022, she told Shape that she had not given up on starting a family. “I’m 44, I’m married, we want kids,” she said. And in January 2023, Andrews told Us Weekly that she was still trying to conceive a child nearly 10 years after first starting the IVF process.
In June 2023, Andrews did not reveal that she was expecting a child via surrogate when she spoke to The Messenger about her fertility journey. “There’s so many women and men that go through this thing,” she said. “I don’t want to be the spokesperson for all this stuff. But I’m pretty honest and open about it. It sucks. It’s not the way you want to go about things.”
Following her son’s birth, Andrews penned an essay for Glamour in which she revealed that during the pandemic she began to face the fact that she may never get pregnant.
“We started touching base with surrogacy companies,” she wrote. “We had a lovely family we were paired with in 2021 and we transferred the embryos, and we were so excited.”
Andrews revealed that they lost the babies, but that the loss led her to another surrogate. “Experiencing pregnancy with our surrogate was amazing,” Andrews wrote. “I tell everybody she was the perfect fit for us because she was calm, positive, and just so loving. …My girl was very special. When the baby was starting to get bigger, she’d turn on the playoffs because she’d say, ‘I want him to hear your voice.’”
Andrews added that she formed a close friendship with her surrogate and her husband. “She is an angel,” she said of the woman who birthed her baby boy.
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Erin Andrews Shares First Photos of Newborn Son