TV presenter and former Miss World Australia Erin Holland has announced she is pregnant after five years of fertility treatment, including 20 rounds of IVF.
Erin, 37, shared the news with Stellar magazine, revealing the lengthy and at times devastating road she and husband, Australian cricketer Ben Cutting, travelled to get here.
That included five egg collections, seven embryo transfers, four miscarriages, one ectopic pregnancy, one round of chemotherapy to save a fallopian tube, two hysteroscopies, two D&C procedures, and a diagnosis of Asherman’s syndrome – a condition in which scar tissue forms inside the uterus.
She also injected herself thousands of times over the course of treatment.
“After 20 rounds of IVF, I’m pregnant,” Erin told the outlet. “It feels so weird to say it out loud. It wasn’t easy to get here.”
Now 23 weeks along, Erin says the pregnancy has been physically straightforward, but processing the news emotionally has proven far more complicated.
After five years of heartbreak, she admits she has struggled to fully accept that this time is different.
“I really never thought this would happen,” she said. “After five years, it was feeling like it may never happen. But here we are – I’m 37, and there’s a baby on the way.”
Despite reaching her 20-week scan and beginning to feel movement, Erin says the lack of obvious symptoms has made it hard to feel connected to the pregnancy.
“I feel like I’m being catfished by my baby,” she said. “I don’t have anything reminding me that it’s real. I’ve really struggled with that dissociation because I don’t feel anything, because I’m not very big, because it’s been such a journey to get here.”
She added: “I do hope that the scars of infertility allow me to be happy eventually.”
Erin also opened up about the toll the journey has taken on her husband. Throughout years of treatment and repeated loss, Ben largely took on the role of the strong one, keeping his emotions in check to support his wife.
Erin says she has encouraged him to open up, and is now seeing him slowly begin to believe this pregnancy will go the distance.
With a 20-week scan now behind them and movement being felt for the first time, Erin says she is closer than ever to allowing herself to believe it.
“We had the 20-week scan recently and I’m starting to feel movement and it’s an absolute bloody miracle to be honest,” she said. “I’m very lucky. It’s the only time I’ve used that word in this entire journey.”
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