Astronaut, mom and researcher Kellie Gerardi has been taking TikTok followers on her IVF journey. She recently shared the good news that she was pregnant, but on Feb. 15, she announced in a heartbreaking video that her pregnancy had come to an end.
The first moments of her video show a hopeful Gerardi sitting in her car and crossing her fingers. The video text reads, "POV: 30 minutes before my final ultrasound to graduate from my IVF clinic!"
One hour later, she tearfully says, "This is not the update that I wanted to give." She explains, "During that final ultrasound, there was no heartbeat. So I must have lost the pregnancy in the last two days but my body doesn't know it yet. I have to get a D&C (dilation and curettage) at the beginning of the week."
Because Gerardi is booked for a space mission in 2026, she has previously explained that the last possible month she could conceive was January 2025. If she wants to continue with the space flight, having a second baby may have to wait.
Gerardi, the mom of 7-year-old daughter Delta, suffered from secondary infertility. She spent six years "trying it all" to get pregnant, she's said, including acupuncture and progesterone, but nothing worked. She started IVF in the fall of 2024 and retrieved 24 eggs, but only 13 of those eggs were mature and just 10 could be fertilized.
In the end, Gerardi and her husband had only one genetically normal embryo.
In a video, Gerardi says, "I keep telling myself that 'you only need one,' and now that I found out that I only have one ... " Her voice trails off and the video ends with Gerardi wiping away a tear.
Gerardi has lost a number of pregnancies through the years and has shared those losses with her followers. Two weeks prior to transferring their one and only embryo, she also shared her fears about the fate of this potential pregnancy.
"Until now, I've been able to think of this one healthy embryo as limitless possibilities," she says in a video in late December. "The minute that it's transferred, it's a binary. It either is a pregnancy or it's not."
Nine days after the transfer, Gerardi's blood test indicated that the pregnancy was progressing well and her six-week ultrasound confirmed it. But then she miscarried at eight weeks.
“I had committed to sharing all of this in real time, so I wanted to be transparent about this too. And tomorrow’s my 36th birthday," Gerardi says in her video. After a pause, she continues, "I don’t have anything else to say. This is me unannouncing the pregnancy.”
