Carli Lloyd Is Pregnant And Sharing Her Infertility Story For The First Time
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Former pro soccer player Carli Lloyd helped the USWNT win two World Cups (2015 and 2019) and two Olympic gold medals (2008 and 2012). She's currently a soccer analyst and correspondent for Fox Sports and lives with her husband, Brian, in New Jersey. In recent years, she's been on a secret journey involving unexplained infertility and multiple rounds of IVF treatments. Here, for the first time, she shares her full story exclusively with WH, in her own words.
Being a mom was always something I wanted, but it wasn’t necessarily something that was always on my mind. As a professional soccer player, I was on the sole mission of becoming the best in the world. In order to get there, I knew soccer had to be my number one priority. It would require a selfish mindset.
My husband, Brian, and I met in high school, so we’ve been together for 24 years. He supported me through every step of my career, and without his support, I never would have reached the heights I did.
When I retired in 2021 at age 39, I’d spent 34 years of my life playing soccer, 17 of them professionally. Having a baby was on our mind, and I thought putting it off for a little bit longer to enjoy life wouldn’t pose an issue. For the first time, soccer wasn’t my priority. I could actually choose what I wanted to do and spend time with Brian, my family, and my friends without soccer consuming my mind and body. (In retrospect, I wish I had been more educated about pregnancy and how to prepare for it, and that I looked years ago into the options I had for freezing my eggs.)
The only thing that changed when I retired was that I wasn’t training or playing. I was very grateful for the opportunities that continued to come my way. I was flying all over for appearances, shoots, speaking engagements, and filming for the Special Forces show, and I got to play in an amazing charity soccer match.
In the summer of 2022, Brian and I thought it was time to try to get pregnant and see where it would lead us. My whole life revolved around defying odds and proving people wrong. Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results. But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began. The casual whatever happens, happens turned into disappointment month after month. I was starting to feel like this was a race against the clock—my 40-year-old biological clock.
The journey began to eat me alive and consume me.
I kept saying to myself, “Why is my body failing me?” I had taken such good care of myself, was never a smoker, didn’t drink much. I started talking to a former teammate who had gone through similar struggles, and she helped guide me and encourage me. She suggested I start building a support team around me. I began doing acupuncture and going to a health and wellness center that could help with the process. Brian and I also decided to both get checked out to make sure there were no issues going on.
After getting all the necessary tests done, there was nothing standing in our way except my age. I left that visit with the doctor asking when I wanted to start in-vitro fertilization. I was taken aback, as we were in the early stages and I hadn’t even thought about IVF. I wasn’t ready to go down that road. In my mind, we could still get pregnant naturally and just needed to give it some time.
The months continued to pass, with the thought of trying to get pregnant constantly on my mind. I decided to schedule a consultation with another fertility doctor. I asked around about other doctors, and Dr. Louis Manara at the Center for Reproductive Medicine and Fertility in Voorhees, New Jersey, came highly recommended. At this point, my COBRA insurance that I had for a year after I retired was expiring. We didn’t have any insurance at the consult, but I didn’t care, as I wanted to hear what he had to say.
I met with Dr. Manara, who has been a fertility doctor since 1985. He gathered some information about myself and Brian. He was empathetic, knowledgeable, and honest. He said, “With your age and the timing, the best and most straightforward route is to do IVF.” I fought it so much up until this point. As a woman, I wanted to get pregnant naturally because that’s what our bodies are supposed to be capable of. I felt like my body let me down. But at that moment, I was ready to take the next steps.
The first time I sat in the waiting room, I remember feeling really ashamed and embarrassed. I wanted to put my head down, afraid that people would recognize me. I felt as if I shouldn’t be there. But as time went on, I realized that we’re all human and many women are going through similar struggles. There’s a stigma that comes with needing help or needing to go through fertility treatments. It isn’t talked about enough, but it’s just a different process to get to the same end goal: becoming a parent.
We began our first round of IVF in April 2023.
Our plan was to stash as many embryos as we could because we would love to have two children, and now was the time to retrieve my eggs at a younger age. So, again, being a bit naive, I’m thinking, We’ll get four on the first one. Totally. Not a problem.
During my career, I put myself through rigorous workouts, did ice baths every day, and had a very high pain tolerance. I was always “no pain, no gain.” So, for me, the injections were the easy bit, and I did all of them myself. The hardest thing was the emotional toll. The uncertainty. The waiting. The constant worrying about what if.
I had 20 eggs retrieved, but we expected those numbers to dwindle after they were fertilized by day five and six. Then the numbers are expected to dwindle even more when the embryos are sent for genetic testing. So it was a waiting game that we literally had no control over. And it’s hard. I felt all the emotions during my career—stress, worry, fear, anxiety—but I’d never felt all the emotions that IVF brought on. I felt completely out of control. It’s an indescribable roller coaster unless you go through it.
After my first egg retrieval, I was waiting for the call to find out how many embryos had made it after day six. I was in Washington, D.C., in the dining hall of the Capitol building, doing media and meeting with senators about the excitement of the upcoming 2023 Women’s World Cup with the team at Fox Sports.
When the nurse called, I had to excuse myself. She told me that three embryos had made it, which meant we would likely end up with even less than that after genetic testing. The nurse needed an answer on whether we wanted to hold off on genetic testing and do another retrieval. We could group the first and second rounds together to save money, or go ahead with sending these three off to get tested. Genetic testing results usually took one to two weeks.
I started tearing up. The emotion hit me like a ton of bricks, and all I wanted was to be alone in private. I hadn’t said anything to my colleagues at Fox. I felt incredibly rude and apologized profusely, and they supported me even though they had no idea what was going on. Meanwhile, we started our tour around the Capitol building.
I called Brian and shared the news with him and couldn’t control my emotions. But I had to pull it together. I called my other friend who had gone through the IVF journey and was supporting me every step of the way, asking her if we should do another cycle right away or wait for the genetic results.
I was just so gutted. My expectation was that we would get enough embryos this first round, we would do a transfer, I would get pregnant, and then I would go work at the World Cup in July, and everything would be absolutely perfect. But life is never perfect and never how you plan it. That was when I realized you cannot have any expectations going through this process.
We decided to try a second round of IVF the following month.
We chose to pay to send the embryos off for genetic testing. We wanted to know how many genetically normal ones we had before we started a second round. Two of our embryos came back genetically normal, so now we had a bit of a dilemma. If we wanted two kids, both embryos would have to work. We went back and forth about whether to do another cycle, and there’s never a right or wrong answer. You just make a decision that inevitably decides the path. It’s also a costly decision.
A lot of this was paid out of pocket, because our health insurance didn’t cover it. I know that many people struggle to even be able to consider fertility treatments, so we were very grateful that more rounds of IVF was an option for us.
My schedule was insanely packed throughout this process, but this cycle was particularly challenging. Anyone who has gone through IVF knows that you are at the mercy of your body and you don’t control the timing. It took a lot of patience and understanding when my agent would tell some of the brands I was working with that, confidentially, I was going through this and we may need to reschedule some events. Believe it or not, I was able to get through everything seamlessly. One shoot I had with Delta required stopping the shoot so I could do my injections. We were shooting all over D.C., and I had a 15-minute window to duck into a hotel bathroom, do my shots, and come back out.
My body responded well to the medication and there were no issues retrieving eggs. The issue I was faced with was finding quality eggs that would fertilize and become strong embryos. This time, three made it to day six, and next was the genetic testing process.
I was in Los Angeles, about to host my soccer clinic, when the nurse called. I was walking to get breakfast with my cousin Jaime and my coach and friend Shaun. The nurse told me that zero embryos had come back genetically normal. The entire cycle was a wash—a complete waste of time and money.
My clinic was starting 30 minutes later in front of 100 kids, and once again I had to wipe away tears and carry on. My cousin Kerrie, who lives in Los Angeles, met us for dinner that night. Thankfully I was not alone and had Kerrie, Jaime, and Shaun by my side. I cried to Kerrie and Jaime in my hotel room, explaining the journey. They both said to stay hopeful and that it will work out the way it is supposed to work out.
At this point, I didn’t have time to do another retrieval cycle. I was leaving for Australia for the Women’s World Cup with Fox Sports at the beginning of July. I also was so emotionally drained that I needed a break. My thoughts were consumed with this. It was time to get away, let loose, have a cocktail or two, and enjoy my experience. And that is exactly what I did. I was surrounded by an incredible team of people working the Women’s World Cup, and it was the exact break I needed.
But I was still left with the decision of what to do. Is two embryos enough? Do we take our chances? Do I go through another retrieval? Brian was ready to go through with a transfer, but I wasn’t quite sure, and he knew I wasn’t ready to make a decision. But I didn’t need to have an answer right away. I had plenty of time to think.
We went ahead with our first embryo transfer in October.
When I came home from Australia in August, I purposely waited to start the transfer process until I had adjusted back to the time zone and was feeling good. No matter how much you want to speed up this process, you can’t. It is very time consuming and unpredictable. We had two frozen embryos, and we decided to take the chance with one. We felt that maybe these two were meant to be our children.
The embryo transfer was quick and easy. You don’t have to be put under anesthesia like you do with an egg retrieval. I was still feeling as if I could somehow control this journey, so I went to the grocery store and purchased all I could to help allow my body to accept this embryo—pomegranate juice, pineapple, nuts, teas. I kept my socks on daily. I did a medicated transfer, which required daily progesterone shots on my butt, alternating sides every day. It was much easier having Brian do these for me while I lay on my stomach. He never liked having to do these. I didn’t like them either. I bled and had bruises and knots on each side of my butt.
So now the waiting began. To be honest, it was torture. My life stopped completely, as I felt like I needed to control everything for this embryo to take. I was traveling around this time and needed to wait an extra few days to go to the doctor’s office to get blood work to see if I was pregnant. Usually I would have gone in nine days after the embryo transfer. In my case, it was 12 days later.
I was driving to our local dump to throw trash and cardboard out, which I do quite often, when I received a call from Dr. Manara right before I pulled in. My heart was beating so fast, and I was holding my breath.
He shared the bad news: I wasn’t pregnant. I felt sick to my stomach. He was heartbroken for us. He said that even when you take all these steps, there’s only a 60 percent chance of a successful transfer with genetically normal embryos, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out. He suggested we go ahead with another retrieval since now was the time to get as many embryos as we could for future children. That afternoon, I had to put a smile on my face, wipe away tears, and shoot some social media content. Life went on.
I wanted answers. I thought maybe there was something I did wrong. I felt hopeless. I didn’t see light at the end of the tunnel. I had never been this broken in my life, ever.
My life had been revolving around all of this, consuming me. Everything I ate or drank, anything I did, there would be guilt. Should I have this? Should I not have this? Should I work out? Should I not work out? I was literally driving myself crazy. Throughout this entire process, my schedule was busy and I was juggling so much. I’d have to leave my home, go speak or do a shoot, put on a happy face, and pretend that none of this was going on in my world when it was eating me up every single moment of the day.
I’ve felt every emotion throughout this process. When I look back at all the things I went through on the soccer field—whether it was a poor performance, getting benched, or missing a penalty kick in a World Cup final—there was always something I felt I could do to control the situation. I would go out and work 10 times harder. I was incredibly focused during my career. The majority of the time, the world saw me in competitor mode. A machine. I was often emotionless and numb because that’s the only way I felt I was able to survive and thrive.
But this situation hit me so differently. I wasn’t emotionless or numb. Some nights I would lie in bed crying uncontrollably to Brian. I cried and worried a lot. I leaned on Brian more than I ever had, as well as on my family and friends. For the first time in my life, I needed their support to keep going.
Ultimately, we chose to do a third round of IVF.
Growing up, my parents attended church and would take me and my sister and brother. We attended Sunday school and some youth group events, but it wasn’t something I necessarily enjoyed. Throughout my career, I had many teammates who would hold Bible study on the road, and I would occasionally join in. It wasn’t until after our failed transfer, where I felt lost and completely hopeless, that my faith kicked in. Former teammates of mine would send me prayers and encouragement. I truly believe that everything in our lives happens for a reason. You can’t always see it or feel it in the moment, but when you look back in time, you understand it.
When I called my parents to tell them our transfer didn’t work, they both said, “It just wasn’t meant to be. For whatever reason, God has other plans for you. Don’t lose hope.” And while hearing this was hard to process, it was the only thing I could hold on to. I had to believe that what is meant to be will be and to trust the process. It sounded familiar. Something I would constantly tell myself during my career.
At the start of our third cycle, my mindset was totally different. I finally surrendered. Whatever was meant to be would be, and I had to continue to live life. Life is short. I didn’t want time to pass on by and look back and say I didn’t enjoy my life while we were going through this. You don’t get time back. So I tried to stop thinking about the future and started living in the present, one day at a time. We have chickens, so I spent time outside in nature with them, and that was very therapeutic. I started to journal every day. I wrote down my fears and worries, I read, and I prayed. For once, I became vulnerable and leaned on all the support I had around me.
Brian and I had a vacation planned to the Bahamas in December, and of course, here we are on unplanned IVF cycle number three at the mercy of my body’s timing. We hoped it wouldn’t interfere with our trip, but we knew we couldn’t control that. Thankfully, our third retrieval ended up being a week prior to our departure. The nurse called and left a voicemail as we were flying to the Bahamas letting us know we had four embryos that made it to day six, which was great news for us. Those got shipped off for genetic testing—more waiting. Two of those four ended up being genetically normal. After three retrievals, we had three embryos, and we felt good about that. Dr. Manara felt good about it as well.
We started the transfer process at the beginning of January, and our transfer was at the end of the month. Of course we had another trip scheduled. This time, I was invited to play in the Waste Management Pro-Am in Phoenix. I was now worried whether it would be okay to play and swing a golf club while we waited to see if this embryo took. I consulted with Dr. Manara, and he said it would be okay. It was nice to be away and have a distraction. Since we were traveling, I wouldn’t be able to go into the office to get my blood drawn to see if I was pregnant. So, instead of having to wait until we got home, the office wrote me a script to go while in Scottsdale.
We got up early, took an Uber, and walked into a Labcorp. I expected the results to come back three days later, since it was a Friday. The next morning I woke up early and noticed an alert in my portal that I could view the results. Since this was a Saturday, no one was at Dr. Manara’s office, so I got the news before they could call to tell me. Without clicking on the downloaded version, I saw only my beta hCG level. I texted my friend—the one who had been supporting me throughout this journey—a screenshot of the number. She texted in all caps: “OMG CARLI!!!!! YOU ARE PREGNANT.” Brian was just waking up as I shared the news. We hugged and held each other and, for the first time in a long time, felt at peace.
I was finally pregnant, but we weren’t ready to celebrate just yet.
While I wanted to jump up and down and celebrate, we knew we weren’t out of the woods. We would have four more blood tests to make sure my hCG levels were rising, and the ultrasounds would follow. Every appointment brought anxiety. Our first ultrasound was to confirm that the gestational sac was inside the uterus and everything was looking good. Since we had a ski trip coming up the following week, we went back to the office two weeks later.
During our second ultrasound, we were thrown a curveball. The baby still had a heartbeat, but the measurement was calculated at five days behind, and Dr. Manara was concerned to see this in a genetically tested embryo for which we knew the exact date of the transfer. I immediately thought I did something wrong.
Dr. Manara assured me this had nothing to do with skiing or traveling. He did say, “I’m still hopeful, but I am concerned that this could potentially lead to a miscarriage.” We left that visit extremely uneasy and worried. And I was leaving for Mexico the next day. We now had to wait another week after I returned from my travels to go back and make sure that everything was okay. Again, we held on to that faith that God has a plan and it will work out the way it is supposed to work out. I continued to journal. But it was never off my mind. I feared I’d miscarry at any moment.
This next appointment couldn’t come any faster. To say we were anxious and worried was an understatement. I felt as if everyone in the office was anxiously waiting as well. The ultrasound tech was quick to get in and make sure there was a heartbeat. And we had a heartbeat! What a relief. And the baby had gained a day and was now measuring four days behind. Dr. Manara was feeling a lot better after this visit, but he still wanted to check again, so we came back four days later to do another ultrasound.
Each week we went back, we would go in holding our breath. The ultrasound tech would say, “Okay, there’s a heartbeat,” and we all could breathe again. We didn’t want to let ourselves get too excited. But with every appointment since then, the baby’s been steadily progressing each week.
After 10 weeks of monitoring this pregnancy, it was time to graduate. In the IVF world, you graduate from your fertility clinic and then start going to your ob-gyn. It was bittersweet, and I knew I would miss everyone in the office. The most exciting moment was when I was done with the daily progesterone shots. I had some serious scar tissue, knots, and bruises that I couldn’t wait to go away.
Dr. Manara’s office is a very small practice with very special people. They made me feel comfortable and truly cared about me as a patient. Dr. Manara is the best; I am so grateful for the way he handles his patients, the knowledge and expertise he provides, and the care and empathy he showed throughout our entire journey. At every visit he is face to face with his patients, going over everything and answering any questions. I couldn’t have been any happier with my experience there.
It is still hard to believe I am pregnant. It truly is a miracle, and we are so excited to be parents!
I want to show other women going through IVF that they are not alone, and that good can come from this.
I’ve conquered the soccer world and I consider myself to be really strong, but I was at my weakest during this entire process. I want to show other women that it’s okay to struggle. It’s okay to feel broken and to feel hopeless, but to never give up and to keep going. We don’t know the future chapters of our lives, and it is important to just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
I went from feeling embarrassed, ashamed, and afraid to tell people that I was going through IVF to now wanting to share my story to help others. In times of struggle, we see what we are made of. We grow. We learn. And most important, we have more appreciation for the things we do have in life.
Going through something like IVF also puts things into perspective. I’ve been blessed with many things in my life. It was not easy for Brian and me to navigate the journey from high school to attending different colleges, to a professional career, and then a long-distance relationship as I traveled the world. Our relationship continues to be tested and strengthened. This experience brought us closer than I had ever imagined. I couldn’t have gotten through it without him. He kept me going. He would say, “Just trust. Trust that it’s going to work out.” His strength and calmness was something I never realized I needed.
I always try to extract positive things or lessons that come out of struggle. And there are many things, but the one that is truly special is that it brought me closer to my parents, as well as my sister and my brother, after years of not speaking. We can never get back lost time, but we can soak up all the present and future times together, and I am grateful for that. We are truly blessed with the family and friends we have in our lives who were there for us when we needed them the most.
Since I retired, my heart has come alive. I have felt I can be more like myself. I am not in the pressure cooker anymore. I can let my guard down and be more vulnerable. For those who have never experienced the national team, it’s hard to truly understand how cutthroat it is. For 17 years, I was a machine. I was on a mission. And the only way I felt I could achieve my dreams was to be like this. The women’s national team either makes you or breaks you. Only the strong survive. And now for the first time in my life, I needed others to help carry me along.
I have been told that nothing I have accomplished or faced in my soccer life will ever be as great as being a mom. I know this will change me forever, and I am so excited for the journey. This was not an easy journey, but that’s true of most things in life that are worthwhile. Brian and I look forward to loving and raising a strong little one to be the best version of themselves.
My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain. My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping.
—As told to Amanda Lucci
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