Erin Foster Opens Up About Undergoing IVF Over 20 Times: ‘Nobody Wants to Be Doing’ It
October 17, 2024
Written By: Hannah Sacks
The ‘Nobody Wants This’ creator is partnering with sister Sara Foster to create a line of T-shirts with the slogan “IVF, Baby”
Erin and Sara Foster are working to bring increased awareness and support to the journey of in vitro fertilization (IVF) — one cute T-shirt at a time.
The sisters, who run the podcast The World’s First Podcast with Erin and Sara Foster, are teaming up with their fashion brand Favorite Daughter and CCRM Fertility, a nationwide network of fertility clinics, to release a line of limited edition T-shirts with the slogan “IVF, Baby.”
For Erin, this is an issue that hits close to home. The Nobody Wants This creator, 42, has been outspoken about her experience with IVF and hopes that by creating these shirts, others will feel inspired and proud to have gone through the process as well.
“I’ve done an extraordinary amount of IVF and I know so many women who have done IVF and at the end of the day, it’s not ideal,” Erin tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview, noting that she’s gone through the process over 20 times. “Nobody wants to be doing IVF, going through the process of struggling to get pregnant.”
“Sara and I are always big fans of leaning towards the thing that you’re avoiding and you’re scared of,” she continues. “And so we liked the idea of being able to wear it with pride because even if it’s not how you wanted to get the family that you want, that you were looking to have, seeing somebody else wearing a shirt that brings attention to IVF, sending it to a friend, we believe that it’s really a connector.”
“I know so many women that having the conversation or someone admitting that they went through what you went through, makes you feel less alone in the process.”
Although Sara says she’s been fortunate enough that getting pregnant wasn’t something her family struggled with, the mom of two, 43, adds that IVF is a process that touches so many different people, including LGBTQIA+ couples and families who want to start a family later in life.
“I started my family younger and it all looked different but where I’m at now, I maybe would’ve done it differently,” Sara says. “I maybe would’ve frozen eggs. I mean, I still can but I just think at the end of the day, without IVF, so many families wouldn’t be complete and so many same-sex couples. Many couples have a really hard time getting pregnant.”
“This should be something that everyone openly talks about. And Erin’s been really open about it and it’s helped other women feel okay to also feel open about it. And these T-shirts, we want you to wear them proudly. You’re an IVF family, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Erin, who welcomed her daughter Noa in May with husband Simon Tikhman, was pregnant when the filming began for her hit Netflix series starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. Because she’d been trying for so long to get pregnant, the proud mom says she was a little nervous and on edge while making the show.
“I mean look, it was hard. I was really sick when I was in the writer’s room and I was puking in my trash can in my office,” she remembers. “And like a bagel and cream cheese was the only thing I could eat.”
“So being as busy as I was, being on set and working 12-hour days, yes it was physically challenging but it was kind of mentally fantastic because I was too distracted and too busy to worry all the time,” Erin says.
She tells PEOPLE that there was one coping mechanism she did lean into, even though many people told her not to do it.
“I was one of those people who against everybody’s advice bought the little doppler,” she says. “I was told vehemently do not get this because it’s sometimes hard to find the heartbeat and you panic. I got it anyways, I found the heartbeat all the time.”
“I took her heartbeat every single night without fail. If Simon was traveling, I would send him a video of her heartbeat. I was nervous. So being really busy, I was honestly too tired, distracted to stress every day about if she was surviving and it was a gift.”