Tara Lipinski’s experience with infertility had a deep impact on her mental health. Even though her surrogate’s pregnancy was progressing beautifully, Lipinski’s traumatic journey left her unable to fully enjoy it. “Even with ‘positive news,’ I’m still scared,” Lipinski shared on Instagram. “The PTSD I have is still quite enormous — evidenced by the nightmares that jolt me out of bed most nights.”
Lipinski compared her state of mind during that time to a night of insomnia when a nagging thought keeps a person tossing and turning for hours — except in her case it was years. “Maybe [it was] irrational at times, or maybe not because we had a lot of trauma that built up and caused all this PTSD,” she said during Episode 12 of “Unexpecting.” Doctor appointment days were the absolute worst, she said. Because of her trauma around scans, Lipinski opted not to go to any of Mikayla’s until halfway through the pregnancy.
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“I had waited til the anatomy scan to hear the heartbeat for the first time,” Lipinski captioned an Instagram post featuring her reaction caught on video by Mikayla. Before that, Mikayla would FaceTime with Lipinski after learning everything was OK. “It’s sad to say these scans are never ‘fun’ for me; infertility took that away,” she wrote on Instagram.
However, Lipinski is grateful for how understanding Mikayla was of her fears. “She’s been able to give me reassurance and make the journey as good as it can be,” she said on Episode 13.
