What you need to know
Erin Foster shares how she started seeing light at the end of the tunnel during multiple rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
On Tuesday, Oct. 21, the “Nobody Wants This” creator appeared on Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Goop podcast with her sister Sarah Foster. While talking about IVF, the Marty Supreme actress asked Erin how she stayed positive during such a difficult time.
“There were a lot of things that didn’t make me feel positive,” Erin answered honestly. “I mean, there was a time after maybe 10 or 11 rounds that I had a mental breakdown and thought I had to go somewhere.”
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“And I don’t remember if I asked or she offered, but our sister Jordan got on the plane. She had a baby. She lives in New York and she got on the plane and met me in Sonoma,” she continued. “And we turned off our phones for three days, drank some wine, went on a bike ride, got a massage, got off the phone, and that’s what saved me.”
“That gave me another three or four years of going through this. It gave me stamina because I almost lost my mind a little bit with frustration. Then I hit a breaking point.”
Erin went on to say that although she wasn’t always positive, she had faith that things would work out. She likened having a baby to finding a husband, and said that when dating didn’t go well and she felt like things weren’t working out, the only thing that kept her going was the belief that she would find someone.
“And I remember thinking, when I was about 32, that my age was very clear in my head. I might not meet my partner until I was 41,” Erin recalled thinking. “That age was scary for me. Like, I might not meet my partner until I’m 41, and he already has kids and I might be a stepmother. And that’s how it works out, but even if it works out, I have to be okay with it.”
“I don’t like how it looks, I don’t like how it sounds, I don’t like how long it takes, but I have to make it okay,” she explained, telling Paltrow that she needed to let go of the idea that her life was going to be this way.
“I don’t know where that came from,” Erin replied. “I think it’s because Sarah had an easy first half of her life, whereas I had a much harder first half of her life. And then we kind of switched roles, and Sarah started having a hard time because she was looking at herself, and I started having it easy.”
“But my life didn’t turn out the way I expected it to. It’s completely different now,” she candidly admits. “And then I ended up having a child at 41. I didn’t think I was going to have a child at the time. But I look at it now and I think, wow, the timing was really perfect. And it worked out.”
Erin gave birth to her first child, daughter Noah, with her husband Simon Tichman in May 2024. She has previously opened up about undergoing IVF more than 20 times to have a baby.
“I’ve done so much IVF, and I know so many women who have done IVF, but at the end of the day, it’s not ideal,” Erin told PEOPLE in an exclusive interview last October. “Nobody wants to go through IVF and have a hard time getting pregnant.”
