In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Tara Lipinski is opening up about a secret she has kept for the past five years – her struggle with infertility. She and her husband, Todd Kapostasy, have always wanted to start a family – ever since they married in 2017 – but they’ve been met with one tragedy after another.
While she has never spoken publicly about it, she finally feels ready to connect with others going through a similar struggle – a struggle that can feel so isolating at times. “This was just the first time in my life — and it’s gone on for so long — that I felt like I was living this lie or living with this big secret,” she said.
She described the emotional and mental challenges that kept her from talking about it. “I was so overwhelmed and struggling day-to-day that I wasn't in a place to bring other people in and that thought really scared me." But she now sees the importance behind sharing her story and that’s what she’s doing.
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She described infertility as a ‘very lonely place’ that not everyone experiences and/or understands – and for that reason, many people don’t know how to support those going through it. Through her own ‘fertility journey from hell,’ growing a family has become a full-time job that consumed her life in the worst ways.
“Every waking moment was somehow circulating around fertility and the next appointment and the next doctor, the next cycle and grief and loss and it was a never-ending journey,” she said – it was a journey she never expected. "I knew I always wanted to be a mom. I just didn't think there was a time limit on it."
She called the idea of IVF ‘wonderful’ because it gives those with medical issues and those struggling to conceive an opportunity to grow a family, but admitted that it doesn’t always work out that way. In her and her husband’s case, it led them down a ‘long and winding journey full of failure after failure after failure.’
"It's just been years of facing almost every obstacle you can in the world of IVF," she said of her personal experience with IVF treatment. "There's so many different moments that I look back on where I thought, 'Oh, we're there, we're nearing the end.' And it just never got there for us." Even today, still no success.
Tara Lipinski Suffered Back-to-Back Miscarriages Last Summer
In case you were wondering just how devastating and calamitous her IVF journey has been, Tara Lipinski has undergone anesthesia 24 times, suffered four miscarriages, six failed transfers, eight retrievals, four D&Cs (dilation and curettage), was diagnosed with endometriosis, and had two subsequent surgeries.
"My lowest point was last summer, having two back-to-back consecutive miscarriages. One miscarriage was heartbreaking but four made me feel like a shell of myself. After the second miscarriage, I stopped crying. There were no more tears left. I just felt numb,” she said of the never-ending cycle of tragedies.
And while she gets asked often about her Olympic days – she won a gold medal in 1998 – and how difficult it was to get to that point, she says it’s nothing compared to what she has gone through these past five years. In fact, she calls this experience the ‘most difficult thing’ she has ever encountered.
"To get through this has really shown me how strong I am. You think as an athlete, 'Oh, I'm so strong and am able to get through anything,' and little did I know that this journey would actually teach me that I could do that,” she said. "My urge to become a mother is what had gotten me through and has kept me going.”
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Tara Lipinski and her husband, Todd Kapostasy, are set to tell their story in full detail – and we mean FULL detail – in a new podcast titled Tara Lipinski: Unexpecting, which premieres on August 29. The title alone is heartbreaking, but it’s a title that thousands of hopeful parents can, unfortunately, relate to.
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