Two weeks ago Andrews and Stoll were overjoyed to welcome their first child, son Mack, via surrogate.
I was very work-driven immediately out of college.
I just always had this mindset that I wanted to do as much as I could.
So then, if I wanted to take time and have a baby, I would do that.
I was working multiple sports a week.
So my personal life really took a backseat.
Erin Andrews and her husband, Jarret Stoll
I started freezing my eggs late.
I started at 35.
I had a feeling I wanted to be a mom, but I was married to my job.
Baby Mack supporting his father’s old hockey team, the Los Angeles Kings
I was having a good time.
Young girls ask me all the time: What would you recommend about sports broadcasting?
Id say, Freeze your eggs, and then worry about football.
I just wish somebody had said that to me in my 20s.
It was still hush-hush, which is so bizarre to me now after going through all of this.
Three years into dating my husband, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Then we really had to deal with some big-time stuff.
I mean, we werent even engaged yet.
Now, I had frozen eggs.
My body was stressed out.
Ihadto get it done.
I didnt even know if my husband was going to propose.
And then it was kind of a mission to get some eggs and make embryos.
Look, my husband is a two-time winning Stanley Cup hockey player.
He was not thinking, Were gonna struggle at this.
You’re not really thinking, This may be really, really hard.
We had to put our big-boy, big-girl pants on real quick.
Before that conversation with my oncologist, there really wasnt much conversation with him about fertility.
And then, it was just like, Im gonna do this.
Women may be intimidated to talk about fertility with men.
Sometimes we dont want to have the conversation about just getting engaged.
Imagine having to broach the subject of fertility.
Thats not easy either.
But honestly, my advice to any woman is just do your thing.
And until you become a unit, you have to worry about you.
And thats something I was proud of myself for doing.
But obviously things got real for us.
I had multiple surgeries for cancer.
Thank goodness they were able to get it out of me.
And then its genetic testing and all that kind of stuff.
It took years, and we were just having tons of failed attempts at getting pregnant.
You expect things to come easy and they dont.
It doesnt matter who you are.
My skin was never the same.
My bodys never really been the same.
Youre a total cranky bitch.
You just are because youre pumping all this stuff into your body.
Your husband or your boyfriend or your family members, they dont know what to say.
They dont know what to do.
In that situation, you get your shots done real quick.
We had Easter alone without our friends who all had kids.
And we just decided, Im not getting pregnant.
I cant attempt to do any more transfers into my uterus because Im going to lose these embryos.
We dont have many embryos to work with.
That was our biggest problem.
We didnt have many.
We just decided we should take the surrogacy route because this sucks.
Were sitting here alone.
Were not getting any younger.
What are we doing?
We need to bite the bullet.
So it was right after that in the summer that we started to make some moves.
We started touching base with surrogacy companies, and we just thought it was going to work.
We knew it was a risk because we didnt have many embryos.
We lost the two babies.
And that was really, really hard.
It was right before Fathers Day.
They called and said it didnt work.
We went to our friends house after we lost the babies and we were a mess.
I remember theFriendsreunion came out and we sat and watched it and laughed because we were sick of crying.
Its hard seeing other couples have kids.
After we lost ours, you see things like so and so is having their second.
And were like, We cant even get one.
Like, what are we doing here?
What are we doing wrong?
That Fathers Day weekend we went to go be with all our friends.
We blew it out that weekend because they knew we were sad.
I told him, Its going to be okay.
I dont know how its gonna be okay, but its gonna be okay.
I dont have time for this.
I really kind of gloss over some things.
It wasnt until a month later, my friends were like, Youre not handling this.
I was forgetting words in my sentences.
I just couldnt hold a thought for very long.
I was crying at a drop of a hat.
We were matched with five different women.
Since we didnt have many embryos, our doctor was really, really picky.
He would pair us with a woman and we would meet her on Zoom and wed be so excited.
And then shed go get checked out and hed call and say no.
And it was like, Oh my God.
We did it five times and then we found our girl.
I remember the day we were going to find out if the transfer worked was a Monday.
I was flying home from a game and I had glazed over it.
I was on the plane and I looked out the window and I just started bawling.
Because I was like, What if it doesnt work?
Holy shit, here we go.
If the results are bad, I dont know what thats going to do to him or I.
We dont have much left.
I just kept texting my husband: Im having a panic attack on the plane.
Going through this before and having had losses, you start losing the feeling in your limbs.
He was just going upstairs and then coming back downstairs.
Finally it was 5:00 and we hadnt heard anything.
I finally called the clinic and I just said, My chest cant take this, whats happening?
And they said, Youre going to have to wait till tomorrow because the test results were delayed.
I started bawling, my husband started crying.
Then Jarrett looked at me and he goes, You know what?
Get your clothes on.
Were going to Hollywood.
So we called an Uber.
At 7:00 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, youre pregnant.
You guys are pregnant.
I was like, Okay, thank you.
Experiencing pregnancy with our surrogate was amazing.
Maybe the opposite of me with the calm part, which I think my husband was very happy about.
My girl was very special.
Look, its scary.
You dont want to force a relationship.
But she had done it before, and she is an angel.
She has two kids of her own.
Shes a good mom, shes a great wife, shes a fantastic friend.
So our friendship with her and her husband just started growing and growing and progressing.
Wed go to lunch with them and see them.
I had them go to a hockey game one time.
Theres still a stigma surrounding surrogacy, and some people feel shame.
I think people think that if you are not carrying the baby, its not your baby.
I know the one thing my husband kept saying to people is, Its our baby.
And I was like, You dont have to say that.
But that worked for him for a while, you know?
He wanted to just say, This is our DNA.
Id like to see it not be such a sensitive thing in conversations.
I know people dont know what to say, but lean in a little bit.
Also, I want people that are going through it not to be embarrassed about it.
I think in the beginning we were like, Oh, gosh, we have to go this route.
Now I dont care.
I grabbed her hand.
My husband and I turned into sports fans.
We were like, You got this!
We have this one picture thats really, really special.
They put Mack on her chest as they were cleaning him up and my husband was cutting the cord.
In the photo Im kissing her head.
Its the picture of what surrogacy is.
You are just so happy that your baby is here.
You dont care about what led you here.
We have to start talking about it more, being comfortable about having this conversation.
We worked withFamily Match Consulting, which was part of the group that paired us with our surrogate.
We need to help other people be able to do this.
She had mentioned to me that she always attends events for this group calledBaby Questout here in Los Angeles.
The best part of being a mom so far is seeing my husband with Mack.
Hes wanted a baby forever.
Just sitting there watching my husband with him.
He was so excited to just sit and watchSeinfeldwith him.
Im excited for this next chapter.
Im excited to watch a game with my kid.
I cant wait to watchMonday Night Footballwith my son.
Not so much to see him on skates; weve got a couple years for that.
So on the Fourth of July, we went to our friends house.
It was just really, really cool.
