U.S. women’s national team legend Carli Lloyd has announced that she and her husband Brian Hollins are expecting their first child.
Lloyd made the announcement in an Instagram post on Wednesday, saying that she is due in October.
The 41-year-old retired in 2021 after a decorated career that saw her go down as one of her sport’s all-time greats. At the time of her retirement, Lloyd said that she was hoping to start a family.
But Lloyd had a difficult journey to pregnancy, revealing in an essay for Women’s Health Magazine that it took her nearly two years and several rounds of in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
“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,” Lloyd said.
She added: “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.”
Lloyd said she wanted to fully share her story in order to let other people struggling with infertility know that they are not alone.
“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,” she said. “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.”