Tara Lipinski expecting baby via surrogate after 5-year infertility struggle

By Katie Kindelan

Former Olympic gold-medalist figure skater Tara Lipinski is expecting her first child via surrogate.

Lipinski, 41, and her husband Todd Kapostasy shared on their "Unexpecting" podcast Thursday that their surrogate, a woman named Mikayla, is pregnant.

The couple said they waited to receive the news of Mikayla's positive heartbeat scan before sharing the pregnancy news publicly.

"It was just so surreal, like it couldn't have been happening to us -- like we don't get this news, like this doesn't happen to us," Lipinski recalled of her reaction to the positive scan results. "It was almost like I didn't believe it."

She continued, "All I remember ... I was just sobbing, but that ugly sobbing of years of all of this trauma pouring out of my eyes."

Lipinski previously shared on the podcast that she and Kapostasy began their journey of trying to get pregnant back in 2018.

Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

Tara Lipinski attends the 2022 Los Angeles Ballet Gala honoring Bari Milken Bernstein at The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage, April 23, 2022, in Santa Monica, Calif.

Over the last five years, she said they have experienced four miscarriages, six failed in-vitro fertilization transfers and eight egg retrievals.

During the process, Lipinski was also diagnosed with endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the kind that normally lines the inside of the uterus grows outside of the uterus, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health.

Lipinski said previously she had to undergo two "major" surgeries as a result of the diagnosis.

The long journey to parenthood made the news of their surrogate's pregnancy feel all the more surreal, according to both Lipinski and Kapostasy.

"It was just like I sat there stunned for hours, thinking, 'Is this real? Is this actually happening?'" Lipinski said, adding, "We were always the people that watched everyone else sort of move on into a different phase where [pregnancy] eventually worked, and it just never did for us, before this moment."

Kapostasy noted that the couple celebrated the pregnancy news by going to Malibu, California, where they watched the sunset together.

"In a way, it felt like this crazy, almost cliche end of a movie where the sun was finally setting on our horrific fertility journey,” he said.