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Baby Boy on the Way for CNN's Chloe Melas After IVF Journey: 'I've Been Through Hell and Back'

CNN's Chloe Melas spoke to PEOPLE exclusively about conceiving both her first and second sons via in vitro fertilization

Chloe Melas is adding another baby boy to her brood!

The CNN reporter and husband Brian Mazza are expecting their second son this summer, they announced Tuesday on Instagram with a sweet sex-reveal video .

In the clip, the second-time parents-to-be pull a cannon and kick a soccer ball that exploded into clouds of blue smoke, indicating a baby brother is on the way for their 17-month-old son Leo .

“Wow! I still can’t believe that I’ll be a mom of two boys 💙 But I also want to say this — when we were struggling to get pregnant the first time, seeing these types of posts made me very sad. Our road both times to expand our family has been challenging,” Melas, 32, captioned a follow-up set of photos from the reveal.

“If you’re one of the ones reading this who doesn’t think you’ll ever have a baby for whatever the reason — I promise you that if you want a child you can have one,” she continued in the Wednesday post. “Whether it be through adoption , surrogacy etc — it will happen. Just don’t give up 💙”

Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Parents newsletter .

RELATED GALLERY: 10 Celebrities on Dealing with Infertility

The couple’s journey toward parenthood was indeed not a straightforward one. As Melas explains to PEOPLE in an exclusive interview, she and Mazza decided to start trying for a baby two years after their October 2014 wedding but soon learned that he had a low sperm count and she had a reduced ovarian reserve, which means a lower-than-average egg count compared to most women her age.

“There were problems on both sides, so we went to a really dark place together,” she says of the time before Leo was born. “I was super depressed, crying all the time. I was convinced that we would never have children, that I would never carry my own child or have my own biological child.”

Following a series of blood tests and numerous doctor’s appointments, the couple finally turned to medicated intrauterine insemination (IUI) to attempt to start their family, but had no luck after three rounds of the treatment. And to top it off, the journey was beginning to truly test the spouses’ relationship.

“I was at a fertility clinic and they were monitoring my cycle, and then they were telling us when to go have sex. That took the joy and fun out of sex,” Melas laments. “I was also peeing on the ovulation sticks, and I remember one time my husband came home late from work and we were supposed to have sex at a certain time, and we got into a huge argument. I had a box of the ovulation sticks, and I threw it up into the air — and literally, like 50 or 60 of those sticks went all over our apartment. It’s almost comical, like something out of a movie.”

RELATED VIDEO: Minnesota Mom Who Struggled with Infertility Welcomes Seven Children After Winning IVF Cycle in Raffle

Eventually, the couple turned to in vitro fertilization to conceive Leo, transferring his day-three embryo instead of waiting until day five, since it was the only “normal”-looking embryo to survive to that stage. (They did the same for baby No. 2, after trying naturally for a few months and undergoing one more IUI treatment after Leo turned 1.)

Melas tells PEOPLE she was initially “devastated” to entertain the idea of IVF because of her fear of “What if?” surrounding the scenario where it wouldn’t help her expand her family. So she treated herself “like a fragile egg” in the two weeks following her first embryo transfer — and luckily, it led to a positive test that resulted in little Leo.

But that didn’t make it easy to enjoy the fruits of her labor after the “total nightmare” of going through hormone injections ahead of her egg retrieval, which made her feel like she was already pregnant and affected her moods in a significantly negative way.

“You would think that’s great, and it was great to hear, but I didn’t believe it,” Melas recalls of finally seeing a positive pregnancy test. “I don’t think that I believed that I was ever gonna be a mom until I gave birth and I met him and I held Leo in my arms. The joy of finding out you’re pregnant and everything that happens along the way to get there … the joy was gone.”

For a long time, the television personality avoided baby showers and had a difficult time seeing pregnancy announcements left and right, telling PEOPLE that despite her own joyous news, “I’ve been through hell and back to become a mother” — however, she “would do it again and again.”

But through discussions about fertility with fellow moms like Sarah Jessica Parker , Nicole Kidman and more, Melas recalls “finally” feeling “kind of like, ‘Wow I’m not alone’ ” and hopes to use her own experience to help get the same message across to other women struggling with infertility.

“This story is for the woman who’s on her computer at 2 a.m. reading message boards and constantly feeling like they’re never gonna have their own child and constantly feeling sad when they get that baby-shower invite, and feeling like they only hear the happy stories from people,” says Melas, whose little one on the way is the result of yet another singular surviving day-three embryo in a second IVF egg retrieval.

“I just want everybody to know that it’s not always a happy journey to get the outcome that you want, but don’t give up, stay on the road, because the outcome is so worth it,” she adds.

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A cnn reporter struggled with infertility but says the journey was worth it.

Published by CNN Health – Read the Full Article

(CNN)It was 6:30 p.m., and I was exhausted. I’d been up on television at 5 a.m. and after an hour commute home, my husband and I had a chaotic dinner with our two kids followed by bath time.

I was ready to collapse into bed. Just 10 more minutes of reading a bedtime story to my 2-year-old, and it would be lights out.

He had other plans.

I told him I was going to run downstairs to look for his favorite stuffed animal. As I quickly glanced back, he made a strange face that felt like it was in slow motion. The next thing I knew, he was projectile vomiting everywhere.

Continue reading here.

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Their IVF journeys did not end with children. Here’s what these women want you to know

By Faith Karimi, CNN

When Jennifer Aniston opened up recently about her struggle with IVF treatments while trying to start a family, she gave a voice to people who’ve undergone arduous infertility journeys that ended with no biological children.

In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is a method of assisted reproduction that involves removing eggs from the ovaries and fertilizing them outside the body. The resulting embryos are then typically placed in a woman’s uterus in the hopes that they spur a pregnancy.

The procedure is not cheap. Each cycle can cost between $12,000 and $17,000 out of pocket, according to one estimate, although in some places it’s covered by insurance.

CNN talked to four women who’ve tried IVF unsuccessfully. They described months of daily shots, ultrasounds and labwork. Of long waits, hope and disappointment. Of financial strains and painful questions from loved ones and strangers alike on why they don’t have children.

“The current infertility narrative is dominated by success stories, as people seem more willing to talk about their experience after they’ve become a parent,” says Katy Seppi, 40. “For those of us who close our infertility chapters without a baby, we’re often met with unsolicited advice, reinforcing the narrative that we obviously gave up too early.”

Aniston’s story helped put a face to people who are involuntarily childless — a deeply personal struggle many say they quietly face in the shadows.

Here are their stories.

She plunged into grief after giving up trying to have a child

Seppi struggled with infertility for four years. In April 2017, she turned to IVF.

She picked baby names and a birthing center. She had a room ready for a nursery at her home in Salt Lake City. But after one cycle of IVF, her embryos were not viable.

The process worsened her fibroids — noncancerous growths in the uterus — and her endometriosis, a condition in which the uterus lining grows outside the uterus. Seppi decided not to pursue a second cycle after her reproductive endocrinologist warned it would likely lead to a similar outcome as the first one, she says.

For Seppi, the detailed ovulation calendars, obsessive attempts to conceive and the despair that came with negative pregnancy tests became unbearable. After weighing all her reproductive health concerns, she decided to end her motherhood journey and get a hysterectomy in 2017, a decision that initially plunged her into a grief that she described as all-encompassing.

“I am one of the lucky few who had IVF coverage through my employer, so it didn’t come as a financial sacrifice for me,” she says. “But I stopped to protect my physical, emotional and mental health. My heart would shatter every month when I’d get my period, and I didn’t know how much more I could take.”

She started seeing a therapist who told her it’s OK to put herself first and helped her process what not having a baby meant for her future.

“I’d spent my whole life dreaming about motherhood. … I stayed at my job so I’d have maternity leave — I had held space in my life for a baby,” she says. “Through therapy, grief work, and connecting with others in the childless community, I slowly started to create a new vision for my life. I chose myself and my wellbeing over holding onto the hope of a baby.”

During her infertility journey, Seppi says couldn’t find many resources for people who are involuntarily childless. She poured her energy into trying to change that. She started a blog and an Instagram account devoted to childless people, and slowly began to connect with them.

She also founded Chasing Creation , an online community of people facing similar challenges that now hosts an annual online summit.

Seppi says she believes Aniston’s openness about her own IVF journey helps validate the experiences of many people who are involuntarily childless.

“There’s a common belief that anyone can have a baby if they want it enough, hope enough, and never give up,” she says. “It just isn’t true, and leads to a lot of misunderstanding and dismissal of the grief you’re left with when you realize you have to let go of your dream of parenthood.”

The many decisions surrounding the IVF process took a toll on her

When Sherrae Lachhu decided to undergo IVF, she bought a pregnancy journal, maternity clothes and egg retrieval T-shirts for her and her husband.

The T-shirts were emblazoned with the words: “Legs up, lights out, time to get my eggs out.”

Lachhu, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, had a good feeling about it. She bought about a dozen white and gray onesies, and a couple of additional pink ones, hoping for a baby girl.

But her two rounds of IVF were unsuccessful. The first one led to a positive pregnancy test in February, and bleeding and a miscarriage about six weeks later. The second transfer was conducted last month, around the time the first baby would have been due, and was not successful.

It takes immense strength to pursue a lifelong dream that comes with repeated disappointments, Lachhu says.

Every stage of her journey involved numerous decisions, including whether to test an embryo and how many to get implanted, she says.

“The toughest part has been the decision-making process. There are many decisions you have to make, starting with the decision to even embark on this journey when you’re at an advanced age, as I am,” says Lachhu, 45, an entrepreneur who owns a virtual practice for coaching and therapy.

“Then decisions around the medical provider, which protocol sounds like it might work best for you, the loads of supplements the IVF community encourages you to take, the decision to continue to eat and drink as you normally would or go clean for months or years on end. For someone like myself with ADHD, the decision fatigue was at times overwhelming.”

Lachhu has three stepchildren through marriage but says she has moments of sadness in which she thinks about what she’s lost. She says she and her husband hope to keep trying to have a child, but their financial options are limited. Her husband’s job pays for two rounds of IVF, but they’ve exhausted those opportunities.

For them to try again, she says, her husband would have to get another job that provides the benefits all over again. Or they’d have to raise their own funds.

Lachhu says people sometimes ask her whether she chose not to have her own kids.

“It likely doesn’t dawn on most of them that infertility is much more common than they realize, and every woman doesn’t just get pregnant and experience a live birth because she desires children.”

Her embryos didn’t survive, but she still owed $17,000

Meaghan Hamm, 35, went through the egg retrieval and fertilization process in August.

Doctors collected seven mature eggs, and after fertilization, she ended up with five embryos. But none of them survived.

It was an emotional and financial blow for Hamm, a customer support agent at a bank in Ontario, Canada. She’d paid for the process by skipping vacations with her husband and getting money from her family.

“The toughest part was feeling like we are getting somewhere to have five embryos and end up with none with no actual chance to do a transfer,” she says. “It was a rough blow financially since we still had to pay for everything.”

The egg retrieval cost almost $12,000 and the medication about $5,000, she says. Testing on the embryos would have been an additional $5,000, but the couple didn’t have to pay for that since they did not get to that stage.

In Ontario, the provincial government pays for one cycle of egg retrieval, but there’s a wait list of nearly two years, she says. She says she and her husband paid out of pocket, but their names remain on the wait list.

Hamm says that stories of unsuccessful IVF procedures are not told enough and as a result, most people don’t understand what the process entails and how difficult it can be. Aniston’s story sheds light on these struggles and may help reduce the stigma for people who feel they are judged for not having children, Hamm says.

“Many people are uneducated on infertility issues and have this belief that IVF will fix it,” she says. “The concept of IVF fixing infertility needs to end. People sharing their unsuccessful IVF stories will help others see that it isn’t their fault. It can help others not feel so alone.”

She felt like a failure when her IVF didn’t work

April Barsby, 32, had one cycle of IVF in September of last year. Her lone mature egg was graded a C, she says, but it was the only one she had and she hoped it would help fulfill her dream of motherhood.

Barsby, who lives in Norman, Oklahoma, struggled with endometriosis and low egg count, so she’d pinned her dreams on one egg.

“The hardest part about it was all of my hopes being crushed at the very end, as my sweet little egg didn’t stick and my cycle failed,” she says. “I only had one mature egg after my retrieval and put all my hope and excitement into it.”

Barsby does not have a job. Her friends and family donated items she then sold at yard sales to help fund the procedure.

The process drained her and her husband’s finances and left her struggling to accept her body. The couple put their IVF journey on pause for now and Barsby says she’s not sure what to do next.

“My husband is my biggest supporter and it hasn’t affected our marriage in any way,” she says. “I had a very hard time for months to even feel remotely like a woman due to my body’s failure.”

Barsby says she grew up watching Aniston on “Friends” and was reassured to realize the wealthy celebrity with the girl-next-door persona went through similar struggles. She says Aniston’s story will raise awareness about the negative side of IVF and what it does to prospective parents who go through the process without producing a baby.

“Having no baby at the end can be extremely disheartening and destructive to a person’s mental health,” she says. “I’m not sure there’s any right way to normalize infertility, but to talk about it and let the women and men share their stories is a good start.”

Barsby says she’s doing better a year later. But she still grieves over what could have been.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

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A Family at Last: One Couple’s Journey Through Infertility

October 14, 2019

College sweethearts Diana and Bernie Nasser had their lives perfectly mapped out.

They were 27 when they married and hoped to have their first child by age 30 and their second by 32.

But reaching those goals was much harder than they ever imagined. Diana eventually visited the Yale Fertility Center in search of answers (and solutions) to the couple’s infertility issues. Over the next four years, during attempts at in vitro fertilization (IVF ), she experienced one hurdle after another, including polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) , endometriosis , ovarian torsion , and miscarriage . 

This video tells Diana and Bernie’s story, and how, with the help of the Yale Fertility Center and reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist Luba Pal, MBBS, MS, they were able to overcome each of those hurdles to achieve their happy ending.

To learn more about the Yale Fertility Center, click here.

More news from Yale Medicine

Kourtney Kardashian 'Stopped' Intense IVF Journey After 5 Failed Cycles

Kourtney Kardashian is sharing some new information about the intense experience she had with IVF prior to getting pregnant with baby Rocky .

The Poosh founder took to her Instagram Stories on Monday (May 27) to answer a follower question about finding the "strength to keep going" after six failed attempts to conceive through in vitro fertilization, per Page Six . Kardashian, who has previously opened up about her difficult journey with IVF , revealed that she herself went through several rounds before stopping.

"I stopped after a year of trying (5 failed IVF cycles, 3 retrievals) my body relaxed and I believed in God's plan for my life," she said.

After ending her IVF journey, the Kardashians star said she focused on her health and faith to lead her through whatever happened next. She and her husband, Travis Barker , eventually conceived and welcomed their son Rocky in November 2023.

"Lots of prayers for whatever was meant to be for us. Also lots of optimizing my health," she wrote, before sharing some inspiration to fans who may be going through something similar. "I know how hard it is to feel like you're not trying, but believing in God's plan and saying your prayers is so powerful. All the best!"

During a recent episode of The Kardashians , she shared more details about her pregnancy, specifically opening up about the "terrifying" reason she had to undergo emergency fetal surgery months before giving birth.

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Kourtney Kardashian went through ‘5 failed IVF cycles and 3 retrievals’ before getting pregnant with Rocky

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Kourtney Kardashian revealed she went through five failed IVF cycles and three egg retrievals before she and Travis Barker conceived their 6-month-old son, Rocky.

She shared the personal news in response to a fan’s question about how she found “the strength to keep going” amid her struggles.

“I stopped after a year of trying (5 failed IVF cycles, 3 retrievals) my body relaxed and I believed in God’s plan for my life,” the Poosh founder wrote on her Instagram Story Monday.

“Lots of prayers for whatever was meant to be for us,” she continued. “Also lots of optimizing my health. 🙏🏻❤️.”

Encouraging the fan — who said they had gone through six rounds of IVF — Kardashian, 45, added, “I know how hard it is to feel like you’re not trying, but believing in God’s plan and saying your prayers is so powerful. All the best!”

The eldest Kardashian sister and Barker, 48, welcomed their first baby together in November 2023.

They were quite open about their conception journey from the start, revealing during the premiere season of Hulu’s “The Kardashians” that they were trying to conceive .

The couple — who tied the knot in a Santa Barbara, Calif. courthouse in May 2022 — were also open about the unorthodox ways they tried to amplify their chances of getting pregnant.

During Season 1 of “The Kardashians” for instance, Kardashian said her fertility doctor suggested she drink the Blink-182 drummer’s semen four times per week.

By December 2022, she and Barker confirmed on the hit reality series that they had taken a break from IVF and later said they would try to conceive naturally.

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They announced their pregnancy at a Los Angeles Blink-182 concert in June 2023.

After undergoing an “urgent fetal surgery” that saved Rocky’s life in September, Kardashian gave birth to a healthy baby boy. She went on to describe motherhood as “the most important job in the world.”

Rocky joined Kardashian’s three children she shares with her ex, Scott Disick: Mason, 14, Penelope, 11, and Reign, 9.

Barker, meanwhile, shares Landon, 20, and Alabama, 18 , with ex-wife Shanna Moakler. He also raised and remains close with Moakler’s daughter, Atiana, 25, from a previous relationship.

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