Erin Holland bares all about IVF heartbreak: ‘I feel a sense of inadequacy’

As she begins a second round of IVF treatment, TV presenter Erin Holland talks through the agony of finding out you are infertile at a time when you are not yet ready to have children, and why she decided to go public about her feelings of failure and frustration.

Seven weeks ago, TV presenter and model Erin Holland broke down. Not in private or behind the closed doors of her seemingly perfect life, but in front of the half a million people who follow her every move on Instagram. Posting a teary, emotional and raw admission about the “sense of failure” that comes with an unsuccessful IVF attempt, Holland was overwhelmed by the response she received. Now, during her second round of treatments, Holland sits down with Stellar to talk through the agony of finding out you are infertile at a time when you are not yet ready to have children – and why she decided to go public about her angst-ridden waiting game.

Erin Holland is feeling a lot right now. The 33-year-old sports presenter is confused and overwhelmed. She’s also sad and angry because she feels her body has failed her. She now knows that having a baby is not a straightforward option for her and her cricketer husband Ben Cutting, 35.

On top of that, Holland is conflicted. She doesn’t yet feel ready to become a mother, but she senses her body clock ticking.

It has been roughly seven weeks since Holland shared her fertility grief with her more than 500,000 Instagram followers.

The former Miss World Australia posted an image of herself cuddled up in a foetal position as she detailed the fact that her first round of IVF had “resulted in nothing viable” and “the sense of failure is overwhelming”.

A few months prior, fertility doctors had told Holland that IVF was her only option to become a mother as she suffers from polycystic ovaries. In Holland’s case specifically, her body produces an “abnormally large number of eggs” of around 35 follicles per cycle.

Holland adds that while that might sound like a good thing, in reality it means her body is “constantly confused” and never gets the cue to ovulate.

“Which means I don’t get a period or have the chance to fall pregnant naturally. Also, a shock to me was that quantity does not necessarily equate to quality.”

A self-described “massive perfectionist,” Holland says part of the reason she has found this hurdle so hard to wrap her head around is because she has always believed that if “you work really hard and you do whatever you need to do [you will] get there in the end.

“But this is my body and there is something so intensely personal about failing physically,” she adds, raw with emotion and in the midst of undergoing her second round of IVF.

“As much as I don’t think I was put on this Earth to produce and I don’t think a woman’s only role is to produce, of course there is something really almost primal about these feelings, in that it is something I thought we were all able to do – and I can’t. It has been a lot to get my head around, that is for sure.”

Erin Holland: “There is something so intensely personal about failing physically” Picture: Steven Chee.

Given she is not yet ready for motherhood, the decision to harvest her eggs and freeze the embryos provided what she calls a “safety net”. And yet, she still doesn’t know if the process has made her more or less ready to become a mum.

“I have always put career first. I still don’t feel like I am ready yet, but this was going to mean that when I [was] ready, I would have this good to go. When that kind of broke, as in there was nothing that I could use from the first round, I didn’t know what to think.

“It has been a confusing time and in some ways I feel like it could be the universe saying, ‘You are not meant to be a mum, your body doesn’t work that way. This is not for you and you have always known this is not for you, and this is your reality.’

“I was really upset to know it was never going to be ‘normal’ for me,” Holland continues.

“Or that it was never going to be easy. If it was something that I didn’t want, I wouldn’t be so upset. And when I look at Ben, he is so ready and so desperate to be a dad so I feel a real sense of inadequacy.”

Holland laboured over whether or not she share her story publicly. In the end it was the fact she had struggled to find resources to support her through the process that pushed her to talk.

“For someone who was never really very maternal at all, I was shocked by how much it affected me and I felt a real sense of loss of it being a natural process,” she explains.

“I kept thinking, it is never going to be a surprise, and it was always going to be a relief or a disappointment – because IVF is really time-consuming and financially consuming – all of those things.”

Holland listened to podcasts and read “anything I could get my hands on” about the subject.

“I found everything was either post the fact, whether it was successful or unsuccessful. There was not a lot of stuff from people while they were going through it.

“And so I got to a point that I was like, if I am doing this, maybe I should be brave and be that person for someone else – because I found the more I talked about it, the better it made me feel.”

Erin Holland: “I can find it really hard to say I am fine when I am not.” Picture: @erinholland on Instagram.

About a week after sharing her story, Holland put on a brave face as she frocked up to sit front row at numerous Afterpay Australian Fashion Week shows in May.

It felt as though everyone she saw commented on her IVF post, which was both comforting and confronting.

“When someone looks me in the eyes and asks how I am going, I can find it really hard to say I am fine when I am not,” she tells Stellar.

“It was kind of cathartic for me, as well as finding there was a hole in people sharing their accounts of going through it.

“The response was insane. It was super overwhelming the number of people who reached out, and people I know and respect in the industry I work in [who] had gone through it that I had no idea [about], so it was crazy.”

Holland likens the IVF process of egg harvesting and embryo freezing to a Hollywood movie.

She had to inject herself daily in the lead-up to the procedure, during which they harvested nine eggs in the first round. Then, it was an angst-ridden waiting game to find out if the embryos developed and survived.

“Then it becomes like The Hunger Games. They inseminate the eggs and the day after call you and tell you how many have taken.

“Eight from the nine fertilised – they told me that was a good number. By day three, there were seven left; two were good quality, five were bad quality.

“They said things could change and they would call me on day five,” she remembers.

“By day five there were three left, of not great quality, and by the next day there was nothing. It is such a roller-coaster. Each day you don’t know what to expect. By the end there was, unfortunately, nothing viable.”

Erin Holland features in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Steven Chee.

Holland’s feelings change daily, often hourly, and even by the minute.

“I am ready, I am not ready. I want this, I don’t want this. The hormones they put you on are crazy and I guess I am just strapped in for the ride.

“I have to realise this is a long journey and not one I can control. Hopefully, one day the journey of motherhood will start and that is a whole other thing.

“I don’t know what the future holds but Ben is extremely supportive and we do want a family together. So we keep going, putting one foot in front of the other and facing each day as it comes.”

Originally published as Erin Holland bares all about IVF heartbreak: ‘I feel a sense of inadequacy’